Self Storage Trends for 2026: Rent-Up Strategies, Smart Locks, Website Upgrades & Rate Increase Backlash

It’s a classic No Vacancy roundtable with Andrew, Brian, and Chris—kicking off with some off-the-rails podcast and bedtime-story chaos, then getting into what really matters for operators heading into 2026. The guys break down why 2026 looks like a strong year for rent-ups, what’s changing with smart lock technology (and why it’s a big operational win), and how Access is thinking about faster websites, smoother online rentals, and even e-commerce add-ons.

They also dig into what renters are saying online, especially the Reddit threads and why transparency and trust are still the best long-term revenue strategy. Plus: lawn-mowing robots, gravel parking hacks, and an ice maker that refuses to stay quiet.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We listen to this podcast called uh Wee Wow on the Weekend. Wee Wow. Wee Wow. Wee Wow. Wee Wow. And the beginning of every like song, every time the guy makes some big proclamation, he goes, It's like a very well-defined throat clearing that sounds exactly the same every time. Just in my head constantly. And anytime I do need to clear my own throat, I do it just like Dennis from Wee Wow. And then I found $10.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

What ki what kind of podcast is it? What do they talk about?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

His co-host is a giant pigeon named Reggie. It's not it's not. I think you told us about this before. Yeah. That's right. That's Reggie.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

No vacancy is the self-storage podcast that pulls back the roll-up door on the industry's most outrageous stories, toughest challenges, and unexpected laughs. Hosted by the team at Access Self-Storage, each episode brings together real operators, sharp marketers, and off-the-wall personalities to talk about what really goes on behind the gate code. From crazy tenant tales to hard-won lessons in customer service. It's raw, unfiltered, and a little irreverent. Just like life and storage.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

We also listen to uh, you know, I should probably just read to my kid like a like a normal person, but I just am so late. It's and I'm fried at the end of the day. I I don't even want to read anything else. So I just put on an audiobook. We listen to audiobooks together sometimes at bedtime podcasts or audiobooks. Have either of you guys read I think it's I don't know. I don't I'm not sure when it's from. I think early 90s maybe. Hatchet by Gary Paulson. That shit's intense, dude. I just was like, ah, it's like a kid has to survive in the woods. And I'm thinking, like, all right, this is some Boy Scout stuff, you know, like it's just gonna be a little light, you know, shelter building type of stuff. Meanwhile, it's the sequel to Saw. So it is so intense, dude. I and I'm trying to listen to this for my kid at bedtime, and like there's like so many brushes with death. There's so many like violent things that happen to this kid who's like 12. And basically the I'll just I won't tell, you know, whatever. The gist is it's no spoilers, it's the 40-year-old book, but the uh the gist is that the kid is in like a a small plane heading like to visit his dad, like in the Canadian wilderness somewhere where his dad is working, right? And it's just him and a pilot. Pilot has a heart attack and dies while flying the plane. And so the kid ends up being able to do just enough to crash the plane as the plane starts to go down uh uh eventually. He does enough to crash it into a lake or a pond so he can survive because it hits water. And then basically the story that the kid survives in the wilderness until somehow he gets found eventually. But oh wait, I just that whatever. He doesn't die. This is a bedtime book? Well, no, I it's not. I do not recommend it for bedtime, but that's what we chose to that's what I chose to do, and uh, you know.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

He didn't wake up my son a a book called Hatchet. Probably if it was called Pocket Knife, would have been maybe a little bit better for Swiss Army, yeah. Machete.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a movie. I think I saw that one. Isn't that a Danny Trejo? Oh, yeah, Danny Trejo.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

All right, Andrew. What do you want to talk about? It's 2026. We had a pretty good 2025. What are we looking forward to in 2026, gentlemen? Chris, from an operation standpoint, what gets you going about 2026? What are you excited about? Giant sigh from Chris, by the way, for those listening in. Excited is a tough tur term. Um I was talking to Roland uh towards the end of the day yesterday. Um and it like I think it really dawned on us that we have we have a we have a really busy 26 coming up because we have Franklin rent up. We still have Egg Harbor Branchburg rent up. We have the gates potentially coming on, we're treating as a rent up. We have a third party, which we're close to closing, rent up. And who knows how today's call goes. Maybe uh maybe we have a sixth rent up. But it's even without that one, it's gonna be. I'm like just realizing that we have all this stuff going on for 2026.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Anybody would have anything to add to that?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

I think it's a good time to be having f facilities and rent up. It's I think it'll be a lot I don't want to s I don't want to say no, I'm not gonna even say it.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

You dare say it. It's gonna be better as a podcast. You shut your mouth when you're talking to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Yeah. Don't say anything. I think 2026 uh looks like it's poised to be better for rent-up locations than it was in the uh the last or maybe four years. Especially in northern and central New Jersey. I think a lot of the competition, all the new supply is is uh stabilizing. You know, like we don't we're even in 25 we didn't see a lot of the same outlandish specials and pricing, I think, than we saw in 23 and 24. So I think a good time to be renting up. 2026 will be hopefully a little smoother. And we had good success in those in those last couple of years. So I'm I'm really I'm confident in what we'll be able to achieve this year for for our rent up locations.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Yeah. Two in the last sixteen months, both going pretty darn well. Uh yeah, with potentially five more coming on. Wow. Chris, just smoke is coming out of your ears here. Right, man? Yeah, I know yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Take a deep breath. We're gonna get through it. We're good. I'm ex I'm excited for what's ahead, but one one thing off the list at a time. Rates have to get better, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:27

I think in 2026. I think we'll start seeing rates going up again. Uh better for the business.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Is there anything new in 206 you guys are looking forward to? Like any um I don't know, any new processes that Access is gonna be doing, any new technology we've spoken about? Any I mean I have a few, but I'm gonna throw it out to you guys first because I have to formulate mine.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

The the easiest um the easiest answer for me is the KISS solutions locks that we're gonna roll out into our Woodbridge location. Um Woodbridge is a massive location. And these locks by using the Bluetooth technology and the um the power of our software system, um just to allow our employees to not have to worry about, you know, is it locked, is it is it unlocked, are people able to get in? You know, it's it's really th those locks I think are really going to help the efficiency of the location. You know. Because at 10 days, it sends a signal to the lock, and the lock goes into overlock mode. And as soon as they pay, it unlocks. It's tremendous. It's it's a really big, big deal for that location.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Aaron Powell, maybe I'm overblowing it in my mind, but I also feel like the amount of times that we in a given week kind of have to troubleshoot lock and key issues is you know, it's pretty significant. It happens. People lose their key, you know, whatever. Without putting anyone to sleep who's listening to this, we won't go deep dive into our lock and key setup, but you know, it it's not the most painful thing from our end, but like it happens. It's a lot of touch points. And um this will this will essentially remove that, you know. We don't I I just think it'll approve efficiency in so many ways, definitely. It's and and for the customer and it's just freaking cool, man. It's cool. I don't have to worry about a little another little thing dangling from my car keys, carrying this phone anyway. Tap, boom, done. You know, tap to pay, tap to store, boom.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

The feature that you can share your key, so to speak, too. Technologically text it over to uh to somebody who's going to the storage unit. That's that's really helpful. A business partner, anything. Yeah, terrific idea.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah, and it talks to the FMS, which is great, obviously. It talks to the gate operator so we can push the gate code, so it opens up a lot of remote situations for us as a third-party management. Um but yeah, it it's it's exciting. It's exciting.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yeah, we'll see if we still feel the same way in 90 days. I think we will. I think we will. I really think we're I think we will too. I think we're putting all our ducks in a row right now, and I I think we've we're vetting it probably more than we even needed to, and we're I think we're ready to go, and it's gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

And we're using similar systems, you know, in other locations. We have the Nokia system and the Branchburg location, and so we've got a good knowledge of how to use that and um what not to do, uh, which is m probably always more helpful than what to do. Um so and we have good people there that can certainly help the Woodbridge staff, you know, navigate through their questions and concerns. I'm excited for it. Lock technology is uh it's it's come a long way in the last five years, right? Mo most of this stuff got rolled out right before COVID. Um and they've been improving it every year. It's really at a good place now.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

What else we got on the in the pipeline for 2025?

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Tough one.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

It's tough.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

I think the internal dashboards that our FMS is um building out now. I'm pretty excited to see where that's gonna go over the next uh 12 months. We have a pretty good view right now, but I know they're gonna be pushing, I think, three to five reports, new reports every quarter. And I think there's from what we saw on the call, I think there's gonna be um ability for us to customize our own reports by putting whatever metrics we really want to see in. Um, I think that's gonna help us greatly because it also has a layer of AI built in, which makes that even easier. I think the revamp to our website is gonna be pretty exciting. That gives us a lot more capabilities in terms of like merchandise, a quicker online rental process, um, just faster all around. Um, so we're looking forward to that through our um agency partner and potentially the addition of Live Switch uh to be testing that, maybe if everybody's on board and we can, you know, get the process all worked out. I think that could be that could be pretty cool too. I was thinking to save us a little bit of money, maybe we automate the lawn care and snow removal as well. I keep seeing these really, really cool like lawn snow removal all in one. It's like a Roomba, but it goes outside and it can heav handle like heavy-duty stuff, and they're all over golf courses. I mean, it's how much how much are those bills every year? We can be saving so much. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

So, I mean, I I love that idea. I really do. I I love the idea of lawn maintenance a lot more than the snow removal, but I I do love that idea, and I think that we have a good number of properties that we could probably test that out at. You know, I think we should pick one where we've got a manager who understands maybe a little bit of technology and maybe an area to mow that is off to the side, and not necessarily, you know, dealing with uh heavy-duty traffic. Um, but I I I certainly have seen them at work in the neighborhood here. I mean, there there's one little guy that looks like he runs all day and night every day of the summer, just trying to mow this guy's friggin' lawn. But it I mean, it's beautiful. You see the lines, and it's been going for a few years. But Andrew's right. I mean, he he's describing it correctly. It's like a little larger than a roomba vacuum. Um it's a very interesting idea, and and I think one that um that we should probably try somewhere. W what do you mean by heavy duty? What what type of snow removal robot have you seen that can handle heavy duty stuff?

SPEAKER_02 13:10

So there's I have to look up the name. I I want to say it's like a it starts with a Y, Yar. I was gonna say Yardy, but that's just uh I think a vendor that we use for certain things or that's available in our industry. I think it's like Yarbo, maybe? Yar yeah, I nailed it. Yarbo. Check that out when you get a chance. But it's like uh yeah, I mean it's like a heavy duty outdoor snowboard. I'm gonna see this thing. You wanna share?

SPEAKER_03 13:41

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

For the listeners, well that's okay. We're we're expanding. How do we how do I do that?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Do they use lasers?

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Can you see that? Yeah. Look at that bad boy. Look at the look at the look at this. It's like a tank, like a little mini tank.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

This makes me so nervous. Why? Because some little ambient. You just described something as a mini tank. Yeah. It's like hatchet.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Well, now you gotta include that story. We're not talking about pocket knife, we're talking about a hatchet. It's so out of context for what we're talking about. Just seen nothing but downspouts of my nightmares. But we gotta map it. You guys do you guys have a self-cleaning vacuum at home or no?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

You mean like a Roomba? We've we've got one. We call him Ralph. And uh Ralph hasn't really been as active over the last couple years. I think he he may have semi-retired on his own. I'm not not necessarily sure. Did you check the bottom for uh a couple Legos?

SPEAKER_02 14:46

That happens to us often.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, yeah. He's he's clear, he he's empty and clear. I just don't know that he's uh providing the same services. He just quiet enough quit. Yeah, I think Ralph quiet quit on us.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

That's right. Well, we got a shark, and we named him Tony Shark, and he also seems to be on the road to retirement after just a few years. But Yarbo, yeah, like a tank.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Love the idea. I I can't I can't say no to that idea. Where do you want to try it? Where do you want to try it? What location has good grass? I'll tell you what, I I like the first one that springs to my mind, because they have a huge front yard and not a whole lot of grass on the backside of the property. I'm gonna say Congress.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Not what I was gonna say, but alright, yeah, we can do that one. Doesn't that have like a huge driveway though?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Like a really big Well, they've got uh a drive-in and a drive out separate. So one way in, one way out. But between those two driveways is this huge um swath of land there. But it is on Route 9W. You know, I mean sucker goes into the yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

We're gonna have to add, like, you know, pick up all the down sticks and branches from the lawn off on our to our our walkthrough uh list there.

unknown 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Well that's that's true. But it isn't that a nice Tuesday afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Sure.

unknown 16:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Have a little bonfire. Let's do it. Yeah. Doggers. Do you who who's gonna weed whack and blow blow everything off? Who's gonna do the blower? Does Yarbo blow?

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Um is that your question? Yes. That's not my question. Please write to Andrew Rockoff at 208 Gates Road. Including snowblower, mower, leaf blower. Yeah, it sounds like it does. It does blow. All right, what else in 2026?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Um, I'm I'm really excited about the phone system. Uh I'm really stunned that it's been working. Um, in in all honesty. Uh maybe not that it's been working, but so smoothly. That makes me nervous. Um really nervous, anxious. Um, but it seems to be flowing the right way. Um, Brian, I think you've had a lot more confidence in this than I have because you've seen it used in in other places before. Um and it's gonna it's really gonna save us a lot of money. I mean, between what we're able to do with um, you know, getting away from some phone dependency uh vendors, it's um it's really gonna be helpful. And the bottom line, and um I I really think help us also on on um on an employee and more communication between employees, I think, is always a good thing. Familiarizing everybody with various properties. Um, you know, it's been really smooth and our FMS has really delivered, uh, along with the phone system that we're using. So that's that's the big one for me. Getting everybody on that thing is gonna be uh a big bonus for us and uh a huge relief for me.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

You're gonna have people answering the phone that are in-house, so they it they're just focused on access, they're not focused on any other companies. So hopefully that leads to more phone conversions, a higher conversion rate, and um yeah. It's gonna be it's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

I mean, we employ the experts in our area, in in our geographic area as well, so um, I'm excited to give them all the chance to do what the call center has been doing for us for a number of years now. It's gonna be really good. We'll be right back. While some guys crank up prices after just a couple of months after moving in, we believe in fairness, transparency, and treating people the right way. No surprises, just honest storage from a family-owned company that actually gets it. Now, back to the show.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Just some more loose. I got a Mad Elf downstairs.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Oof. You want to have that kind of episode?

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Uh no, not not this early in the day. Um used to really get excited for Mad Elf. Um, it's a relatively local beer to us, um, and it wasn't always available across the country. I think it is now. The distributorship has gone way, way up. But as I've gotten older, any beer that's really over six percent alcohol i is is quite a mission to to finish. And mad elf being uh, you know, ten and a half percent and made of cherries, uh not not so much anymore.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

I remember the first time I had Mad Elf, we were out at a restaurant in Montclair, and Lee I had never heard of it before, and Lee was like, Oh, they have Mad Elf here, and I'm like, Alright, let's let's try that. And we were out to dinner, and I finished it like fair like it was it it didn't take me very long. Like it wasn't a sipper at that time. Right. And man, the rest of that dinner was interesting. Man, oh man. Did you have a second one of those? I may have asked for a second just because I finished that one. Uh it's like a it's not a terrible tasting beer for something that's like that high percent. So yeah, I think I did, but it after the first one, I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna finish the second one. And for everybody out there listening, potentially laughing at me after just one beer, you go try and sip down a mad elf when you're out with your girlfriend for one of your first dates.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

What are the top uh changes coming for the new website in 26? Is there anything kind of it it is it really just kind of updating the the visual of it and the style stylizing, or is it uh is there kind of anything impactful that's like a you know a functionality change that we're looking at?

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Or is it so we are gonna move to a cloud-based um setup which allows us to call, make the API calls a lot faster. So the website should be running a lot faster. There's gonna be a new cart setup, which is kind of customized to how we want it to go, whether we want it to be one page, two pages, three pages. Uh they're currently working on what's called a drawer cart also. So if you're on the website, if you've been on e-commerce websites before and you hit cart, sometimes you see a cart kind of slide from the right out. So you're not really leaving the page that you're on, it's just the carts now appearing. Um that's gonna be a feature coming down the road. The new setup will have an e-commerce aspect to it. So any merchandise we want to sell, we can start doing that on the website. And they might be our agency might be partnering with a company that can um deliver uh merchandise as well. So we could potentially have. People coming to the website that order merchandise, have it shipped to them, and it's taken care of. So we can start to hit them much earlier in the in the process for merchandise. Right now it's tough because they're coming to the website, and you would imagine that for storage, they'd probably have a lot of their things already packed up, and they're just looking for like that endpoint. But now we can we would be able to hit them a lot earlier in that process. So I think those few things, there's gonna be a few layout changes, but fast to answer your question, a faster website, a more efficient cart, and an e-commerce aspect are some of the things that um I'm really looking forward to for this new this new site.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Have we seen any other um storage operators that kind of have like uh the ability to sell merchandise through their website?

SPEAKER_02 22:57

So one of the REITs used to do it. I don't see it too much on their site anymore. I'm assuming for them it's just it hasn't panned out too much, but I think they also had the ability to deliver. I don't know how much effort they were putting into to merchandise sales, though. Other than that, I don't I don't think there's been too many.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah, I don't think I've seen it.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Either. Interesting Reddit thread. Why don't self-storage places hire working cats to fend off rodents?

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yeah. Well, I've never tried to hire a cat before. However, if I have seen a cat on the property, I have never chased it off.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Because I'm partial to the quarterly pest control bill in lieu of stepping in cat shit. And nothing quite says professionalism like a bunch of feral cats wandering about. I think they think think that think that uh Redditor got really well said. Well said, Graham 2990.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

I don't know. Could be I I really like that type of thinking. Um so when I first heard that idea, uh, I thought this is a great idea. But then I thought, well, they're gonna approve the idea, and then we're gonna left, be left with Wrangling Larry.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Um Larry the Assassin Snail. That's my my snail's name is Larry. Remember? Oh. Yeah, I thought that was Gary. Well, no, Gary died.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You still have Larry? Or it might be Mary.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

We're not sure if it's a male or female. Larry, uh, we we just go with Larry. Yeah, Larry the Assassin is the full name.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

What is the tank still there?

SPEAKER_01 24:52

The tank is, yeah, yeah. What do you think happened to it? It's still there. Are we empty? No, no, no, no. We got, you know, we've got three guppies holding on strong and Larry the Assassin. He's a snail.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

Why Larry the Assassin?

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Because he's called an assassin snail and he eats other snails. Yeah, Larry is a badass.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Right on. Is that what happened to Gary?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

My my No, Gary just died, and then we got Larry as the replacement. What kind of snail was Gary? Um uh mystery snail. They're called mystery snails.

unknown 25:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

He was, he didn't last very long. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

The mystery was why can't you stay alive? R.I.P.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

But Larry sounds like he's gonna be around for a while because he can fend for himself.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Just Larry at the bottom of the tank.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

He's got a hatchet.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Chris, growing up outside of Philly, yeah, did you was your beach like going to the Jersey Shore? Oh, Jersey Shore, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Yeah, they just uh swam in the school.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

That's that's why I have gills. I develop them throughout the years. We've evolved to survive the school. Yeah, I guess I should have assumed that it's the Jersey Shore, but yeah, it's the Jersey Shore, man. We're down the shore.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Yeah, all right.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

All right. They they um they create the people the people who live in South Jersey have create they created a term for people from Philadelphia. You know, shoeby is is a term that people down the shore use to describe someone coming from Philadelphia or the Philadelphia suburbs on a bus in the summer for the weekend to basically ruin their weekend. I mean, they called them Shubi because they packed everything they had to bring to the shore in a shoebox and took the bus down. So we've been uh really bothering the people of South Jersey for longer than I've been around. Generations, yeah. Yeah. And uh yeah, we used to go to LBI every summer in Long Beach Island. Um I think it was Brandt Beach. Um, so yeah. Uh Jersey Shore. Jersey Shore forever, yeah. Down the shore. That's one word. Down the shore. Don't know how to spell it, but LBI was our place too. And it was only 90 minutes. So for you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's why we would go. It was either that or Dutch Wonderland, and that was the opposite way. And after you were 10 years old, you did not want to go to Dutch Wonderland.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Was that amusement park on LBI called? Um was it like Pirate's Cove? Was that the one Treasure Island? Treasure Island. Treasure Island. Yep. I remember going there as a kid, and there would be you remember the mechanical man? Did you ever see that? It was like a guy who would hand out like the wooden treasure island coins. Nothing. But he would be doing all this like his movements would be like a robot, but I think they called him the mechanical man. Nothing?

SPEAKER_01 28:04

I'm confused. Go ahead. Is this a real man? Yes. An actual man or a robotic? No, it was an actual guy, but his movements doing the robot. He's just doing the robot like the dance. Huh. Interesting. Is it was he like a mime?

SPEAKER_02 28:22

I I remember him wearing like what they used to wear in like a quartet. I I'm thinking a barbershop quartet. Hello, my lady. Hello, my hunter. I don't know why I'm remembering it that way, but that's what I'm remembering. I can't be right. And we will be right back. For 50 years, Access has been Northeast's go-to third-party management partner, driving stronger performance, smarter marketing, and better customer experience. We don't just manage facilities, we grow them. That's the access difference. Now back to the show.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Here's another self-storage thread that's mildly amusing. The subject line is just uh you can't paint gravel. And then, you know, there are four paragraphs that say, well, I mean, you can paint gravel, but it just kind of sucks. So what are the better long-term solutions for marking parking spaces and gravel? I I just the the headline grabbed me, you know. You can't paint gravel. I was like, I think I could. I think I could do it.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Challenge accepted. Well you can. I agree with you, you can. I've done it. It doesn't work for long. Um, but I have found that the for us, the best solution to mark parking spaces in gravel is to purchase, and they sell this on Amazon and other places, fire fire supply places sell it also. Um, purchase used fire hose from a fire company, roll it out, cut it, nail it down into the dirt, it will live forever. Like that. So there you go. You can paint gravel, it won't last long, but if you're marking parking spaces on gravel, get yourself some old used fire hose, bright yellow.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Chris, you just made this episode worth listening to the card. What you go? What a golden nugget. How about that? They only have to wait till the 44th minute to find out.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

You know, unfortunately, the the the trend that I see mostly on the Reddit threads, though, is really um frustrated consumers complaining about aggressive rate increases. You know, I I I I think it's like eight out of every 10 posts on the self-storage Reddit thread are about um people just being really frustrated, you know. Uh the one that jumps out is a I got an 830% increase in my storage rent. So it didn't seem to me in the explanation that it was a complete misunderstanding on the customer's part in that case, right? Like it said that their lease agreement says that the rent was $18 a month. Gotta assume it's like a locker type of unit or of something really small. And um and that there was a the promotion on it was that the first few months were nine dollars. So they're like, okay, you expect it's not gonna stay a nine or eighteen, but to go from one of those numbers to $170 in the third or fourth month, um, you know, obviously that customer was frustrated enough to take their gripes to Reddit.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

What do you what are the the companies that use that kind of like low introductory rate and then a huge in rate increase, like why would a company um use a strategy like that? Just for the people who may be new to self-storage or like don't understand what's the purpose of that?

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Bait. Yeah, you know, I mean it works. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

That strategy works. Just get them in, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, we we ever everybody has a price, right? Oh my goodness. Uh like the old million dollar man used to say. Um and a lot of people, once it is out of their possession, will go through great pain to not have to deal with it anymore. And I think these companies know that. So they push and push and push until they find the breaking point. And then they're okay with the breaking point because they're gonna do the same thing to the next guy. And it's one way to do it. I I don't understand why I don't understand why you do that on a personal level. But um Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Just feels like a bad faith start to the relationship, you know. I mean, it's everybody's happy when they're getting a great deal and move in, but um you know, obviously our our our different approach is just that, you know, yeah, of course we use aggressive move-in specials and and we might be in a situation also where a customer is paying $18 or $30 a month for the first month to um on a unit that should cost $170. But um we we just really believe strongly in making that uh very clear and well known up front. You know, like that it doesn't we're not sending you a rate increase letter in 90 days. We're telling you, hey, you get this move in special for the first month, two months, maybe three months, depending on the deal. And going forward, after that, this is what you'll be paying for the first year. Uh and I just think that pays off tremendously in terms of just being transparent, having a an honest start to the relationship, and letting the customer know what to expect, you know.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

I think in 2025 we've probably seen or I've heard more of our managers talk about tenants coming from other companies who use that philosophy than I ever have before. Um so that frustration that Brian was talking about in those, you know, Reddit threads or wherever else, like it's we're we're seeing it.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

I I think the larger companies continue to buy up the smaller ones. And usually the smaller ones in most cases um seem to put more of a value on the relationship than some of the larger companies do. So when when they're bought out, um the larger company comes in and puts in their revenue management strategy and um you know does the same thing. And and quite a few smaller chains were bought out this year, and we were surrounded by quite a bit of them. So we really benefited from that larger company, you know, just inputting their revenue management strategy again.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Chris, do you have like an oscillating fan behind you? Or is there is is your Roomba just like, you know, cleaning your desk as we speak? What's going on there?

SPEAKER_02 35:29

God damn icemate.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Is Ralph coming out of retirement? A piece of shit icemate. Thanks for listening to No Vacancy. If you liked what you heard, our episodes are available wherever you find your podcasts.