It was announced on March 14 that Recreational Realty has acquired eight self storage facilities in the Houston, Texas, area. This family-run company already has facilities located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro in Texas, and Jacksonville, Florida, and is rapidly expanding. They have a goal to grow their presence in Houston to 15 facilities and to have a total of 75 locations in Texas and Florida by the year’s end. Their recent acquisitions follow several other storage deals in the Houston and Dallas markets, including those involving Simply Self Storage and Public Storage in the fall of last year.
Recreational Realty specializes in building, developing and managing storage facilities for recreational vehicles, including motorhomes and boats. This sub-sector of the storage industry is thriving, with many people having discovered the advantages of vacationing with close family during the pandemic. Houston is an advantageous place for expansion on account of its proximity to many outdoor recreational options. In addition, like much of Texas, its advantages currently include a growing population, generous housing options and a diversified employment market.
Recreational Realty chooses sites close to where clients need to pick up their vehicles, and some of their new facilities around Houston are well placed for boating locations such as Lake Houston and Lake Conroe. They will feature enclosed garages, 24-hour accessibility and entrance gates with electronic access. The advanced on-site security measures include video surveillance cameras. To assist customers further, easy access to electricity and water enables washing of vehicles and battery charging, and there will also be places on-site to dump waste.
Storage units in Houston are some of the most attractively priced of any large city in the nation, with a street rate of $95 per month for a standard non-climate-controlled 10’x10’ unit, as per Yardi Matrix data. The city’s provision of self storage space is also generous, with about 10 square feet for each resident, spread across more than 300 facilities. For Houstonians wishing to store recreational vehicles away from home, about half of these offer that possibility, and some offer indoor units that can be a large as 1,000 square feet.
There are currently more than 76M square feet of storage space in the Houston metropolitan area, according to Yardi Matrix.
