Blackstone to Acquire Simply Self Storage for $1.2B

Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Simply Self Storage from a Brookfield Asset Management real estate fund for approximately $1.2 billion. Simply Self Storage is one of the top five private owners of self-storage and operates a portfolio totaling eight million square feet across the US. BREIT currently owns a $300 million portfolio of self-storage facilities, and following this acquisition, BREIT will be the third largest non-listed owner of storage in the US.

The acquisition adds some diversity to BREIT’s income-generating real estate, which is heavily weighted towards logistics and multifamily assets.

BREIT CEO Frank Cohen says Simply Self Storage “has significant potential for growth through future acquisitions in a highly fragmented sector, and similar to logistics, self-storage is a resilient sector through economic cycles because of low tenant turnover, minimal maintenance costs and stable cash flows.”

The self-storage sector is dominated by a handful of public REITs and numerous smaller companies.  Simply Storage is among the largest of private operators. “The opportunity to acquire a $1 billion-plus storage portfolio, including a brand and a team, is incredibly rare,” Tyler Henritze, head of acquisitions in the Americas for Blackstone’s real-estate group told the Wall Street Journal. 

Brookfield acquired Simply Self Storage in 2016 in one of its opportunistic real estate funds. Since that time, Brookfield more than doubled the size of the company.

This transaction is expected to close prior to the end of 2020, subject to certain customary closing conditions.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP is serving as legal advisor to BREIT, and BofA Securities and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. are serving as financial advisors to BREIT. RBC Capital Markets LLC, Newmark Group Inc., and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP advised Brookfield.