Where Do The Facts & Trends Reports Come From?

Facts and Trends articles are based upon the Self Storage Association (SSA) owned databases and industry information. Article topics are selected from the following categories when the topic can be supported by available SSA data:

• Supply, demand, capacity issues and trends
• Revenue, expenses, net operating income
• Occupancy, board rental rates
• Consumer and business self storage demand
• Miscellaneous industry topics

SSA owned and maintained databases and data resources that exist to support these publication categories include the following:

National Facilities Database (NFDb)

Updated twice yearly, consists of all primary self storage facilities in the US (52,453 as of January, 2008). NFDb updates employ yellow page scanning (total US), telephone-confirmation, state and county business records, survey sampling, and statistical estimation or modeling procedures. Each facility record carries over 50 bits of information about that facility ranging from estimated square footage, annual sales, number of employees, type of ownership, longitude-latitude, etc.

Financial and Operational Characteristics Databases

Yearly facility survey participants (2,027 in 2008) provide revenue (expenses, income), square footage capacity, occupancy, facility characteristics, features, etc. for each facility. Information is used to generate yearly publications regarding current status, trends regarding occupancy, revenue characteristics, etc.

On-line Demand Estimator for the Self Storage Association (ODE*SSA) Batch Databases

Underlying databases used to support the SSA 2005, 2007 demand studies, ODE*SSA is an on-line demand estimation. Databases consist of estimated demand for states, markets, counties, demand by unit size, consumer and business category. Also includes state, market, county demographics.