Prime Group Makes a Flexible and Resilient Investment in Orlando
Self-Storage properties are popping up around Orlando — and investors are taking notice.
Robert Moser’s firm recently achieved quite a task: It raised $2.5 billion for a private-equity fund solely focused on storage.
The founder, CEO and principal of Saratoga Springs, New York-based Prime Group Holdings in a January interview with PERE News sought to flip a common criticism of the asset type on its head. “You’ll hear people say it’s driven by death, divorce and disaster, as well as other periods of change. That need base makes it very resilient.”
Moser — whose firm owns Prime Storage Apopka at 1566 E. Semoran Blvd. and is seeking more Orlando-area acquisitions — elaborated to OBJ: “It doesn’t matter if we’re in a boom time, a small recession or a slow period of growth. Life events still occur.”
In fact, the storage market’s resiliency coming out of the Great Recession is what led Moser to focus Prime Group solely on storage, he said.
Flexibility is another big plus for the sector, Consalvo said, calling the business a consumer product that is valued as a commercial real estate asset.
What sets storage facilities apart from other real estate is much shorter lease terms that allow those properties to respond more immediately to where the market is. In other sectors, profit-and-loss outcomes essentially are “baked in” for the length of those tenant leases, he said. “We have 30-day leases in self-storage, so it’s kind of like an airline seat. As our occupancy fluctuates, we have the ability to adjust pricing up or down as the market dictates.”
There also are operational efficiencies investors have come to appreciate in the sector. For one thing, self-storage in Florida is popular for its “trouble-free nature,” Yardi Senior Editor Francis Chantree told OBJ. “Operations are relatively straightforward, and people are less of a factor, both in terms of staffing and tenants.”
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