Heitman LLC (“Heitman”), a global real estate investment management firm, has announced the acquisition of Rent-A-Space Shrewsbury, a high-quality UK self storage asset by an affiliate of Heitman. The investment marks the first acquisition expanding Space Station, a UK self storage platform that a Heitman affiliate acquired in late 2020, and is the platform’s first storage solution in the West Midlands region.
The asset was purpose-built in 2016 and comprises approximately 58,000 square feet of net rentable area and is in the final stages of its lease-up. Upon acquisition of the property, Heitman plans to complete the remaining lease-up of the asset while converting bulk space into additional conventional self storage units as part of the value proposition of the acquisition.
“We continue to see significant value opportunities within them and an attractive risk profile, given that their demand drivers are delinked from the broader economy.”
Heitman has been an investor in self storage since 1996 and plans to continue the expansion of Space Station through further acquisitions of assets and businesses across the country. Heitman manages more than $5 billion of self storage assets across the globe. Specific to the UK and Europe, a Heitman-managed investment vehicle owned 51% of the region’s largest self storage operator, Shurgard, for more than 10 years prior to its IPO in 2018.
“We are pleased to add the Rent-a-Space Shrewsbury asset to the Space Station portfolio while providing liquidity to the sellers. The opportunity to add a sizeable and high quality property to the platform, as well as the opportunity to create value within the asset itself, we found attractive. We look forward to continuing to scale the Space Station platform with further self storage assets across the UK,” said Caleb Mercer, Heitman Managing Director of European Real Estate Investment. “We have been a long-term investor in self storage and the adjacent non-traditional sectors. We continue to see significant value opportunities within them and an attractive risk profile, given that their demand drivers are delinked from the broader economy.”
The sellers were advised by JLL’s Alternatives capital markets team.
