"They're able to steal market share in a time like today, when demand is growing but at a slow pace," said Murphy. "With revenue management, they know which facilities they can increase rents on" week by week.
The geographic diversification and large base of tenants gives the publicly traded storage REITs some protection from economic swings, offsetting the short-term nature of storage leases, said Murphy.
Sovran, which operates under the Uncle Bob's Self Storage name, has been reducing concessions, or landlord incentives, as the economy came out of recession starting in 2009, said Diane Piegza, a spokeswoman for Sovran Self Storage, based in the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Williamsville. During the recession, Sovran offered as much as six weeks free rent and ran a "name-your-price" promotion to attract renters.
"We're not recession-proof by any means but we're a little more resistant than other types of real estate," Piegza said.