Joe Margolis, CEO of Extra Space Storage Inc. (NYSE: EXR), participated in a video interview at Nareit’s REITworld: 2022 Annual Conference held in San Francisco on Nov. 15-17.
Margolis discussed why Extra Space Storage’s third quarter same-store revenue and NOI increased compared with the same period last year.
“We have very high occupancy in our stores, about 95%, and strong rate growth, which is indicative of both strong customer demand and our ability to capture that demand,” Margolis said.
During the pandemic, Extra Space saw a great increase in people storing due to lack of space at home, Margolis said.
“We believe that [was] people setting up a home office, or emptying a room out to teach their children in, or just being stuck at home and finally cleaning out the garage,” he said. “But that’s all changed and now we’re back to more traditional, historical demand drivers, really centered around housing transition.”
Turning to how customer needs are evolving for the self-storage REIT sector, Margolis said customers want to interact with their storage companies in many different ways, including in-person, via mobile devices, dialing call center agents, scanning QR codes, and more.
“To allow these different channels for customers to rent and do business with us efficiently and quickly is a direction that we’re certainly headed in,” he said.