Public Storage buys 14 self-storage properties in Washington and Oregon for $151M

Public Storage has bought a 14-property self-storage portfolio across Washington and Oregon for $151 million, a purchase CoStar News reports as the sector begins to stabilize and Blackstone's real estate trust exits the asset class. The deal's two-state footprint suits an industry CoStar calls consolidating, and it is the buy side of a split: operators with scale absorbing regional portfolios while capital owners reallocate into data centers.

At $151 million for 14 properties, the portfolio averages roughly $10.8 million a store, though CoStar does not name the seller, identify the individual properties, or disclose in-place rents and per-door metrics, leaving the underwriting thin. Even so, paying that price for 14 cash-flowing assets at a normalized basis is consolidator behavior—a bet that 'stabilizing' means the market has found its floor.

Ten days before CoStar's report, BREIT sold its final 79 self-storage properties for $852.3 million, pouring the proceeds into data centers and closing a three-year unwind that cemented the asset class as the trust's priority. With data-center capital now gated by power and water rather than compute, storage sales are funding that buildout, and Public Storage's purchase is the other side of the rotation: storage assets Blackstone no longer wants remain desirable to a scale operator that knows how to run them.

The two trades amount to a sector sorting itself: buyers with public equity and operating scale absorb regional portfolios, and owners that want out find them, which points to more consolidation at the top if CoStar's stability holds. If more portfolios come to market at this basis, Public Storage's purchase will look cheap in hindsight and Blackstone's exit early; if sellers hold, the $151 million is the entry point of the cycle, and the data-center buildout Blackstone funded still has to clear power and water gates. The next thing to watch is whether owners list more storage properties at the $10.8 million-a-store price Public Storage just paid.