When most people think of publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT), they think of billion dollar companies with hundreds or even thousands of properties. Public Storage and Extra Space Storage are two companies that come to mind in the self storage industry. According to Yahoo Finance, Public Storage’s market value is approximately $37.5 billion and it has an enterprise value (includes debt) of $41.5 billion. Extra Space is valued at $9.6 billion and $13.2 billion respectively. Even National Storage Affiliates, the industry’s newest REIT and the company most people think of as the industry’s smallest public self storage company, has a market value of over $1.5 billion.
However, there is a smaller publically traded self storage REIT. This micro-REIT’s market value is not in the billions or even the hundreds of millions. Global Self Storage, which trades on the NASDAQ, has a market value of approximately $34.8 million and an enterprise value of just over $47 million. This New York-based publically traded micro-REIT owns just eleven storage facilities. Public Storage operates over 2,300 properties and Extra Space owns and manages over a 1,400 properties. Public Storage holds an asset total worth almost 900 times those of Global.
According to the company history Global became a self storage REIT in 2012. Before that it was a closed-end management investment company (mutual fund). While most REITs are billion dollar companies this micro-REIT seems to navigate the regulatory demands of being a publically listed company quite well. Global Self Storage is an anomaly in the world of billion dollar publically traded real estate companies.