Americans’ clutter, mobility a boon for self-storage

Thanks to consumers on the move, United Stor-All is thriving

Friday, Nov. 24, 2006

Carol Shipley is thankful for America’s affluence — and its penchant for clutter.

Those factors have helped Shipley’s company, United Stor-All Management of Mount Airy, become a successful player in the booming self-storage industry, with more growth on the way.

The company recently borrowed $77.25 million to buy nine new storage properties in Florida, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. United Stor-All now has more than 200 employees and owns or operates 55 facilities with 3.6 million square feet of storage space. In Maryland, it has facilities in Silver Spring, Kensington, Baltimore and in Frederick at 100 Storage Way.

The $18.5 billion self-storage industry thrives on the mobility and affluence of Americans, Shipley says.

‘‘We are a transient society and people have disposable income,” she said. ‘‘Homes are smaller and people need storage space.”

There is also a lot of demand from businesses. ‘‘We have pharmaceutical reps and newspaper distributors amongst our customers,” she said.

Two 60-second radio spots, part of a current ad campaign by the Self Storage Association, show how clutter also creates demand. In one spot, a departing dinner guest reaches to open a coat closet when the host screams, ‘‘Please! No! Not that closet!” It’s too late and the contents tumble noisily into the living room.

In another spot, a man and a woman are being romantic on a sofa when the man asks: ‘‘What’s this under the cushion?”

‘‘It’s my yearbooks,” his sweetheart answers.

Americans who move a lot and buy things they can’t easily fit into their homes have made the self-storage business so recession-proof that it has become an investment vehicle for average investors, often through real estate investment trusts, according to Shipley. The REITs provide federal tax advantages to partnerships that sell shares to investors in real estate, allowing smaller investors to participate in profits from hotels, hospitals, office buildings and other properties.

In Shipley’s company, 60 percent of the storage facilities are owned by financial partners who have formed REITs; her company owns the balance.

Though self-storage has become a blue-chip investment, popular images of storage space are not always so inviting.

Shipley acknowledges that her least favorite movie is ‘‘The Silence of the Lambs.” In the 1991 movie, an FBI investigator played by Jodie Foster is on the trail of a serial killer and visits a dark and scary storage facility at night in search of clues.

‘‘That really is not what we look like today,” Shipley said. ‘‘Women should know especially that we are well-lighted, friendly and welcoming.” She says her company’s storage units feature computerized entry systems, security cameras, individual unit alarms, climate controls, security lighting and a resident manager.

According to information on the Web site of the Self Storage Association of Alexandria, Va., in the first quarter of 2006 self-storage space in the United States totaled 2 billion square feet, an area three times the size of Manhattan. One in 11 U.S. households now rent a self-storage unit; that’s up from one in 17 households a decade ago.

Shipley said this steady supply of customers and the low construction cost of new facilities have made the business ‘‘simple and reliable.”

Shipley, 49, founder and president of the United Stor-All, got in on the ground floor of the industry in the 1980s in Bethesda. Shipley, who was born and grew up in Rockville, was a rental clerk working for the Robert T. Foley Co., which built one of the first self-storage facilities in the area, she said. She was put in charge of renting the new self-storage units.

Later Shipley worked for several years as a senior vice president for Storage USA — now Extra Space Storage Inc. — and served a term as the president of the Self Storage Association.

She started United Stor-All in October 2000.

‘‘I never anticipated that when I first got into the storage business, that I would have my own company,” she said. ‘‘But I had the great opportunity to work with some wonderful people, and in 2000 decided it was the right move for me ... and it’s been fun.”

She said she started by building a facility in Langhorne, Pa., that cost upward of $4 million.

Since then she has seen the company grow annually at double-digit percentage rates to an estimated $36 million in revenues this year. The company is headquartered in Mount Airy because ‘‘I have lived here for 31 years,” she said. She attended high school in nearby Damascus, liked the area and decided to move there.

‘‘At the time it was very inexpensive and I thought it was a great place to raise a family,” Shipley said.