SANTA MONICA, CA-The William Warren Group, which owns and operates the StorQuest Self Storage brand, is adding 23 new storage properties to its operations, with plans to drastically expand in the next year.
Bill Hobin, the president/CEO of the WWG, a privately held self-storage development and operating company based here, says it anticipates expanding to operate over 100 storage facilities in the next 12 months. The newest facilities will be added in Florida and South Carolina. The company already has facilities operating in California, Arizona, Colorado and Hawaii. There are 35 locations in California, including three in Los Angeles. Overall, the company currently operates 46 facilities. Not all of the new facilities will be StorQuest location. The company also manages as a third party for other investors.
WWG has opened a regional office in Tampa, Fla., where the newly-formed Southeast region's division will be led by storage industry veterans Brenda Scarborough and Travis Lawhorne, the latter the former CEO and president of Accountable Management, Inc.
“There has been little to no new storage supply developed in the past five years,” Hobin tells GlobeSt.com. “As a result, occupancies are firming up in most markets. As the broader economy continues to improve, so does consumer confidence, which bodes well for the storage industry. Simultaneously, as the U.S. housing market returns, more people will be in transition and in need of a storage unit. We are optimistic that we will see rents increase at a faster pace than inflation, thus keeping values up even in an inflationary environment.”
For commercial storage, StorQuest provides units ranging from 25 square feet to 300 square feet. Price for a large commercial space approximately 162 square feet is $320. No estimates were provided on the average number of units at a facility or the footprint of an individual site.
Hobin says clustering assets in a particular market in order to achieve operating scale is the WWG plan, adding that operating a dominant storage platform in each of the markets the company enters is a key to success.
WWG expects to increase the number of StorQuest locations through continued acquisitions and development of new properties. Hobin says increased demand from institutional investment firms for storage facilities operated by experienced management will help the company's growth.
Earlier in GlobeSt.com, Hobin provided an analysis of the storage market's outlook for 2013, saying occupancies in storage units will continue to rise.
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