REITS Cut Online Rates 8.6% Through Peak Season While Independents Held

The median REIT store cut its online rate for a 10×10 unit by 8.6% between May and September, while independent operators held within half a point of their May rates, according to State of Self Storage Q3 2026, the first quarterly report from Cubby.

The cuts drove occupancy. Across stores on the Cubby platform, same-store occupancy reached 80.4%, up 2.9 points year over year. Average move-in rents fell 4.4%, and revenue per available square foot still rose 4.9%. Only stores that cut starting rents more than 10% grew move-ins (up 5.2%), and 38% of stores cut that deep. Every other group lost move-ins. Three in four single-store owners didn't change their online rate all quarter.

“Most operators already know advertised rates are down. What we couldn’t see before is whether those cuts brought in more renters. If you run an independent store, you’re competing with the online rate at the facility down the street, and that rate has changed." says Andrew Capranos, President, Self Storage at Cubby.

Other findings:

• Rent increases under 8% barely moved churn. Tenants of 12+ months who got an increase under 8% moved out within 90 days at 8.5%, against 7.9% with no increase. At 25% or more, it doubled to 16.0%.

The report also sets top-quartile benchmarks for nine metrics and includes scorecards for 31 states and the 25 largest metros. It's free at cubbystorage.com/state-of-self-storage-q3.

About the data:

Built from anonymized, transaction-level data on stores and tenant records on the Cubby platform with competitive rates for 50,000+ US stores from StorTrack, a Green Street Company. No operator, facility or tenant is identified.

About Cubby:

Cubby is the smarter platform for self-storage, bringing facility operations, revenue management, call management, communications agents and e-commerce into one system.