National Storage Affiliates, a Greenwood Village, CO-based real estate investment trust, has struck a deal to acquire 112 self-storage locations from Orlando, FL-based Simply Self Storage for $1.325 billion dollars. Simply is majority owned by Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management.
The portfolio features 8.7 million rentable square feet of space in over 68,000 storage units. The properties are located across 17 states and Puerto Rico. NSA will acquire the properties as part of a joint venture with real estate investment firm Heitman LP.
Heitman will own a 75 percent stake in the joint venture, while NSA will own 25 percent, according to a press release announcing the deal.
Six facilities in Puerto Rico and a single facility in Ohio will be spun out of the portfolio to be wholly owned by NSA upon closing of the transaction with Simply. NSA will be investing $160.8 million in cash up front, along with an expected outlay of $482.3 million from Heitman.
The remaining balance of $643 million will be financed over 10 years. NSA has also commenced a public offering of 5.9 million common shares to finance parts of the acquisition and to repay the outstanding balance of its revolving line of credit.
The transaction will bring NSA, which went public about three years ago, even closer to catching up with four established self-storage REITs CubeSmart, Life Storage, Extra Space Storage and Public Storage in terms of size. As of March 31 NSA had a total of 551 locations, comprising 479 wholly-owned locations and 72 joint venture locations. Not accounting for any other transactions, the Simply portfolio would bring NSA to a total of 663 locations.
As of March 31, Life Storage had 664 wholly-owned and joint venture owned locations (not including third-party managed locations) and CubeSmart had 606 wholly-owned and joint venture owned locations (excluding managed locations).
Simply Self Storage currently has a portfolio of about 235 facilities and is ranked nationwide as the seventh largest storage operator by square footage. Simply was founded by Kurt O’Brien in 2003. Brookfield acquired a majority stake in Simply in 2016 for $830 million. Simply had 175 facilities at the time.
