Self Storage Model

Operating results depend on the facility's unit mix, rents, and lease-up pace. Total units and the mix of small, medium, and large types set counts, and net rentable square feet is units times size.

• Monthly rents are climate-adjusted and grown annually, then multiplied across NRSF to produce gross potential rent. Occupancy in each year is the lower of stabilized occupancy or cumulative months open times monthly absorption velocity, so lease-up speed directly sets revenue timing.
• Ancillary income and insurance participation add percentages of gross potential rent, while vacancy and concessions reduce it. These relationships mean that changes in mix, rent, or absorption flow through to revenue without requiring separate entry.

The model combines land, hard costs, soft costs, contingency, and quarterly construction interest into total development cost. Debt is sized as a loan-to-cost percentage of that total, and equity is the residual.

• Once operations begin, effective gross income less property expenses and management fees produces net operating income. Maintenance capital expenditure is deducted below NOI, and straight-line depreciation with a simplified net operating loss rollforward feeds tax.
• The quarterly construction draw schedule and capitalized interest shape the debt balance during build, while the debt schedule then tracks interest-only and amortizing periods. This flow connects assumptions to cash flow, debt coverage, and eventual sale proceeds.

The Returns sheet calculates sale value by capitalizing forward net operating income, then deducts sale costs and remaining debt to arrive at pre-tax and after-tax equity cash flows. From these, the model reports periodic IRR and multiple on invested capital, with a sensitivity that approximately scales existing leveraged cash flows.

• The Dashboard summarizes development cost, equity, Year 7 NOI, IRRs, equity multiple, and operating and debt trends. Debt coverage appears in the debt schedule.
• Because the sensitivity scales already-calculated cash flows rather than rebuilding each line, it is best described as an approximate IRR sensitivity. IRR failures may be masked as zero by IFERROR.

Use the case selector to compare Base, Upside, and Downside assumptions—rent factor, monthly lease-up velocity, exit cap rate, and hard cost per square foot—and see how development economics and debt coverage shift. The model is built for development and investment analysis, not for detailed partnership waterfalls, cost segregation, or full monthly mortgage amortization.

• Lease-up uses year-end cumulative occupancy for the full year's rent rather than average monthly occupancy, and concessions and ancillary revenue are percentages of gross potential rent. The seven-year schedule and exit references remain fixed at Year 7, and changing the hold period alone does not resize schedules.
• After-tax returns include operating income tax but exclude separate sale capital gains and depreciation recapture. There is no dedicated operating interest-reserve balance mechanism, so lease-up shortfalls are not fully funded by the schedule.

These boundaries help set appropriate expectations for the values-only preview.