The assets, which operate under the brand name of Private Mini-Storage, are located in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. They were built between 1994 and 1998. Portfolio occupancy was 80%.
"We had a lot of interest in these, largely because they were in Texas, which has held up better than any other region," comments Aaron A. Swerdlin, senior management director with Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP's Houston office. Swerdlin, who represented the seller in the transaction, tells GlobeSt.com another appeal of the portfolio was the assumable debt, which carried a 5.93% interest rate and a 2014 maturation.
Swerdlin says the seller received multiple offers for the portfolio, primarily from well-capitalized self-storage operators and public and private institutional investors. The offers, he continues, were in a fairly narrow range. Harrison Street ultimately got the nod to purchase because the company had recently acquired other self-storage facilities in Texas and "our comfort level with their execution was pretty high," comments Swerdlin, who marketed the portfolio with Holliday Fenoglio Fowler managing director Doug McCarron.
"Self storage has become a hedge in a storm, a product type that wasn't declining like everything else is," Swerdlin continues. "They didn't participate in huge increases in value when the market went up, and so they haven't seen huge decreases in value either. This product has held up better than everything else."
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