Malvern-based CubeSmart and the entire self-storage industry are continuing to outperform expectations, but the growing competition is creating some concern for the future, writes Ryan Dezember for The Wall Street Journal.

Stocks in self-storage companies have surged since the economy began recovering from the housing collapse in 2008. In fact, the four largest self-storage owners, which includes CubeSmart, have all seen their shares more than quadruple.

They’ve also outpaced the S&P 500 in total returns over the last 10 years with CubeSmart’s 10-year total return currently 783 percent.

The success of the industry over the last decade has attracted investors in new companies. They are now investing billions of dollars in competing facilities.

“The fundamentals had been phenomenal for years during the economic recovery,” said Eric Frankel, Senior Analyst at Green Street Advisors. “So there’s been a lot of supply coming online.”

Now, many analysts and investors are worried the nation’s for-rent storage space is larger than current demand. But for now, demand for storage is not slowing down as around eight percent of the population uses self-storage, significantly more than 30 years ago.

Read more about the self-storage industry in The Wall Street Journal here.

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