Metro Self Storage Pays $29 million for Self-Storage Portfolio in Suburban Philadelphia

By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor

Hot on the heels of the National Storage Center’s record sale in Michigan, another portfolio of self-storage properties changed hands this month in suburban Philadelphia in a transaction brokered by HFF on behalf of the seller, PFG Capital of York, PA.

StorageWORKS! – Warminster, PA

The portfolio was purchased for $29.25 million or $153 per square foot by Chicago-based Metro Self Storage, which operates more than 100 self-storage facilities in 11 states. “The aggressive pricing of this portfolio was dictated by the strong fundamentals of the self-storage industry combined with the abundance of institutional equity chasing quality self-storage properties,” said HFF Managing Director Richard Schontz in a prepared statement.

According to an official statement, the buyer teamed up with LaSalle Investment Management—a subsidiary of JLL—to purchase the three-property portfolio, expanding Metro Self Storage’s existing Pennsylvania assets by 191,000 rentable square feet. All three properties were 89 percent occupied at the time of sale.

The portfolio acquired by Metro Self Storage included:

– Newton Storage, a 26,568-square-foot complex consisting of two two-story buildings and located at 100 Silver Lake Road in Newtown, roughly 28 miles north of Philadelphia;

– StorageWORKs! Warminster, an 89,210-square-foot self-storage assembly of 15 buildings located at 1634 Mearns Rd. in Warminster;

– StorageWORKS! North Wales, which consists of eight single-story buildings totaling 75,120 square feet of rentable space located at 418 N. Sumneytown Pike in North Wales.

With this new acquisition, Metro Self Storage now owns and operates 10 self-storage facilities in suburban Philadelphia. According to The SpareFoot Storage Beat, last year the Chicago-based company purchased four properties in the area—three self-storage facilities totaling more than 259,000 square feet from Storage King USA and an 851-unit facility in Limerick, which was acquired for $9.93 million.

Image courtesy of Metro Self Storage