Many New Yorkers put things in storage during the pandemic. Now the dozens of owners of Manhattan Mini Storage are looking to cash in with a mega sale of the company.
Edison Properties, which manages the storage provider, is working with Eastdil Secured to find a buyer, Bloomberg reported. The company is believed to possess the largest market share among Manhattan storage providers.
Manhattan Mini Storage has grown immensely since being founded in 1978 by the late Jerry Gottesman, who formed Edison as a holding company for the storage firm’s now 70-odd stakeholders.
It prospered during the pandemic as lots of New Yorkers let their leases expire. The company’s portfolio covers 3.1 million square feet across 56,000 units, with an occupancy rate above 95 percent.
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True to its name, all 18 of the company’s locations are in Manhattan and it counts more than 150,000 people as customers. The city’s storage industry has made steady gains for years as New Yorkers found themselves with more stuff than they had space for — not to mention a serious homelessness problem.
Eastdil plans on contacting qualified and prospective buyers, specifically looking at REITs, sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors.
The potential $3 billion price point is informed by other massive deals in recent months for storage providers.
Earlier in the year, Public Storage acquired EzStorage for $1.8 billion. In late 2020, Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust purchased Simply Self Storage from Brookfield Asset Management for around $1.2 billion. If Manhattan Mini Storage sells for more than $3 billion, it would exceed those two deals combined.
Given how few jobs the industry creates relative to its physical footprint, New York politicians have taken a dim view of the storage boom and have taken some actions to limit its growth — to little effect.
[Bloomberg] — Holden Walter-Warner