The five self-storage REITs hold 23% of US facilities. We built the map to find the owner behind every independent one.

The conservative-view floor for active US self-storage facilities puts the number at roughly 52,000, which is the figure REIT investor decks and the trade press treat as the standard count. Orbital's facility-level map returns closer to 65,000 when mixed-use commercial properties and co-located facilities are included. The gap is definitional: both counts are defensible, and they answer different questions. We anchor on the conservative figure on this page because it is the one practitioners agree on.

By facility count, Extra Space Storage leads at roughly 3,700 facilities once the Life Storage acquisition (closed July 2023) is rolled in. Public Storage sits second with 3,334 facilities but leads on rentable square footage by a wider margin than the facility-count gap suggests. U-Haul is third with 1,691 self-storage facilities, in addition to its truck-rental footprint. CubeSmart and National Storage Affiliates round out the top five.

More than most local-service verticals, less than the press coverage implies. The top five REITs together operate around 23% of US facilities by count, a share that has grown from roughly 14% a decade ago and climbs a few points each year as the REITs acquire independents. The remaining 77% stays fragmented across independent operators, regional banners, and single-asset LLCs. That fragmented long tail is both the current vendor prospect list and the active acquisition pipeline for those same five REITs.

Yes. The dataset is filterable by state, metro, ZIP, chain affiliation, parent REIT, and facility type (climate-controlled, drive-up, RV and boat, business storage). Texas, California, and Florida together hold roughly 24% of the US facility base, so most vendors start with those three plus their named target metros. Tell us the cut you want when you request the sample.

Orbital refreshes the facility graph against the universe of US small and mid-market businesses on a rolling monthly schedule. Most industry rankings publish annually and lag by 6 to 12 months at any given point. The steady drip of REIT acquisitions of independents, which shifts facility counts every quarter, shows up in our data within a monthly cycle rather than at the next annual report.

Three cases. First, if you only sell into the top five REITs, you need five procurement relationships, not a facility map. Second, if you sell to storage tenants directly — movers, packing supplies, renter insurance to households — you want consumer data, not facility owner contacts. Third, if your sales motion only fires above $250,000 ACV, the single-asset LLCs and mom-and-pop operators will not fit your unit economics on day one.

Yes, and we label both layers. Extra Space, CubeSmart, and NSA all run third-party management books where they operate facilities for outside owners. The procurement decision differs across those relationships, so we tag both the managing entity and the owning entity. If you want the wholly-owned-only cut, ask for it when you request the sample.

Yes. Tell us the states, chain affiliations, or facility types you want and we send a sample of around 100 verified facility records with the named owner and operator contact, so you can check them against your pipeline before anything changes hands. No charge for the sample.