Many people make the mistake of assuming that more units mean more profit. Truth be told, the right unit mix for your facility depends on a number of variables, including the demographics of your local customer base, the intricacies of your facility and the competitive landscape you’re operating.
A space that serves a large student community will probably benefit from dedicating a significant percentage of its net lettable area to a panoply of smaller units – sized to accommodate a room’s worth of personal possessions.
But a facility located in a suburban area dominated by homeowners will be much more profitable if the lion’s share of available floor-space is dedicated to larger units, capable of storing a household’s worth of large furniture and 120+ boxes of personal possessions.
A Standardised Storage Unit Mix Won't Guarantee Your ROI
Without doing your research, it'd be risky to fill a small facility with large, 180 sqft. units. But equally risky to fill it with small units. And what if, in the latter case, all the competition in the area is doing exactly the same thing and offering cheap deals on these?
To get the most return on investment from your self-storage facility, you need to take these competing and (potentially) contradictory considerations into account – working with a dedicated specialist to create a unit mix tailored to your business’s specific needs and the opportunities offered by your local market.
Unfortunately, many self-storage owners skip this step, saddling many UK facilities with perennially-empty units and a sub-optimal net operating income (NOI).
