Who uses self storage?

One of the great benefits of self storage is anonymity. Customers are usually free to come and go as they please without being subjected to much questioning about who they are and what they’re storing.

Consequently, it can be somewhat hard to pin down exactly what type of people use self storage. Yet the information which the big companies publish about their clientele does give some interesting hints as to their identity.

Just 1% of households use self storage

Probably the most important statistic for understanding the UK self storage market is that, at most, just one in a hundred households rents space.

This can be gleaned from the fact that the Self Storage Association (SSA) thinks there are 235,000 or so customers of self storage in Britain, while the Office of National Statistics (ONS) puts the number of British households at 24 million. Therefore, about 1% of households rent a unit.

In fact, this website’s database suggests there are many more storage centres than the SSA thinks. But many of these are small and have low occupancy rates, meaning they probably don’t increase the overall number of customers by a huge amount.

The effect of this is counterbalanced anyway by also assuming that each household would have only one unit, when of course it’s really the case that many small businesses rent multiple ones, as do government organisations and a minority of domestic users.

It means that regardless of what type of people rent self storage space, the overriding truth is that there aren’t very many of them compared to the general population: one in a hundred. One in seven US households rents storage space, by comparison.

Where do self storage customers live?

The overwhelming majority of people who rent self storage space must live in the south, simply because it’s where most of Britain’s storage centres are found. Indeed, 63% of the SSA’s members are in London and the regions beneath it on the map.

Again, whilst there are many more storage centres in the country than is suggested by this statistic, a lot of the facilities not listed by the SSA are also in this area. As the most affluent part of the country, it makes sense that the South should dominate the market for a relatively expensive consumer product like self storage.

How old are people using self storage?

We can get an idea of the age of people using self storage by analysing why they need it. The fact that this is overwhelmingly because they’re moving house suggests a relatively youthful clientele.

The customer surveys carried out by one of Britain’s listed self storage companies revealed that 21.55% of people storing with them were shifting between rented accommodation, and another 35.95% were permanently moving house. It means that nearly 60% of self storage customers are involved in the property market in some way.

People in these positions tend to be fairly youthful. Many renters are 20-somethings trying to pay off their student debt and get started on a career before being tied down by a mortgage.

A lot of people also use self storage when they move house in their 30s or 40s to settle down and start a family. Having built up half a lifetime’s worth of possessions, both people in the relationship are forced to take up less space when they begin sharing a house – with the overspill often being kept in self storage.

It’s also younger people who tend to get divorced. The ONS calculates that people aged 25-29 have the highest divorce rate of any age group. Couples who are separating need to get their things out of the marital home quickly, meaning they often put them in self storage for a while.

The relatively young age of people who tend to move house for the above reasons suggests that self storage customers are typically quite youthful. However, people of retirement age may also use self storage for their belongings, as they move house to either downsize or enter sheltered accommodation.

Students occupy about 6% of UK self storage overall, although they represent a much higher proportion in areas near universities. The same must be true of military bases; soldiers account for 4% of US self storage customers because they tend to store their belongings while deployed overseas, so a similar figure for the UK would be reasonable.

Do more men or women use self storage?

A survey of the customers at a single-site container storage facility in South London found that a majority of them were male – 56% of customers, compared to 38% female (the gender of remaining 6% was not specified).

This can probably be partly explained by there being more men amongst the business customers, as they are often tradesmen storing tools or shopkeepers holding stock, both male-dominated professions.

Men also have a habit of collecting gadgets and sporting equipment which take up too much space to be stored at home – one customer at this centre kept a 22 foot-long Microlight in his self storage unit, for example.

Even if women are just as likely to indulge in space-consuming hobbies as men – collecting vast quantities of antique dresses, for example – they are probably more likely to make a husband take his chattels elsewhere. It would be interesting to do a survey of male self storage customers to see how many only took out a unit after being nagged into submission by their wives.

Self storage appeals to men from the southeast

One might draw the conclusion from this research that a majority of self storage customers are southern men in their 20s and 30s. Of course, this isn’t true in other parts of the country, but it is the statistical trend overall.  This picture may change if the results for a lot of other storage centres were added in – or it may just be that self storage, for demographic and lifestyle reasons, naturally appeals more to this group than others.