LOS ANGELES–“New construction is the hot topic in the self-storage sector,” says R. Christian Sonne, EVP of the self-storage valuation group within CBRE's valuation & advisory services platform. “While some investors are concerned about the level of new construction, overall supply and demand metrics remain roughly in line.”

Sonne's assessment is reassuring in view of the dramatic uptick in development across the sector. CBRE says approximately 900 new facilities are expected in 2017, a 50% increase on the 600 new projects built last year.

As of the third quarter, there were 474 self-storage projects under construction in the US, representing about half the total of planned new developments. Historically, about one-third of facilities make it out of the planning staged and are actually completed, but CBRE sees a significant increase in the number of planned projects and actual starts lately, with the planned/start ratio at the highest level in 10 years.