Blackstone REIT to Acquire Simply Self Storage for $1.2 Billion
Blackstone REIT announced that is has agreed to buy Simply Self Storage from Brookfield for $1.2 billion.
Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, Inc., the perpetual-life non-traded real estate investment trust sponsored by private equity giant Blackstone, announced on Monday that it has agreed to buy Simply Self Storage from a Brookfield Asset Management real estate fund for approximately $1.2 billion. Brookfield acquired Simply Self Storage in 2016 for $830 million.
According to Blackstone, Simply Self Storage is one of the top five private owners of self-storage and operates a “high-quality” portfolio totaling eight million square feet across the U.S. Blackstone REIT currently owns a $300 million portfolio of self-storage facilities and will become the third largest non-listed owner of storage in the U.S. upon completion of the acquisition.
Frank Cohen, chairman and chief executive officer of Blackstone REIT, said, “This transaction is a complementary addition to [Blackstone REIT’s] high-quality portfolio of income-generating real estate, which is heavily weighted towards logistics and multifamily primarily in growth markets. Simply Self Storage is a best-in-class company with significant potential for growth through future acquisitions in a highly fragmented sector, and similar to logistics, self-storage is a resilient sector through economic cycles because of low tenant turnover, minimal maintenance costs and stable cash flows.”
According to Blackstone, since acquiring Simply Self Storage in 2016, Brookfield has more than doubled the size of the company and helped “transform the business into a fully-integrated institutional platform.”
More than 90 percent of Blackstone REIT’s real estate investments are in multifamily, industrial, and net leased assets. As of September 30, 2020, the REIT owned a property portfolio valued at $32.8 billion and had positions in real estate-related securities and loans totaling nearly $5 billion.
This Simply Self Storage transaction is expected to close prior to the end of 2020, subject to certain customary closing conditions.
In other Blackstone REIT news, the company recently updated its monthly net asset values per share for its share classes of common stock as of September 30, 2020.
