Nuveen Real Estate announced that it invested in MyPlace, a “vertically integrated self-storage platform” started by Kurt O’Brien, founder and former CEO of Simply Storage.
The MyPlace website as of early 2023 has a “coming soon” notice and talked of “bringing three decades of expertise providing a tradition of exemplary storage rental experience to customers for years to come.”
“MyPlace will operate nationally but will primarily focus on secondary markets across the Midwest, Sunbelt, and Mountain West with strong demographic trends and limited self-storage supply,” according to the Nuveen press release. “With a focus on technology, MyPlace will leverage its expertise to automate many of its facilities and streamline operations. MyPlace and Nuveen started acquiring assets together in 2022 and have approximately $300 million of assets under management across both value-add and core-plus strategies – the partnership aims to strategically grow its AUM to approximately $1 billion over the next two years.”
“MyPlace is investing capital as well as systems and know-how,” Matt Neary, head of US self-storage at Nuveen Real Estate, tells GlobeSt.com. “Nuveen and O’Brien have each invested significant capital to launch, grow and sustain MyPlace, The platform, over the long term, while simultaneously offering best-in-class services. As articulated, self-storage is a high-conviction sector for Nuveen, as well as O’Brien, and we plan on investing in the platform and across the sector accordingly. The pair’s investment and management outlook on the sector is very complementary, which made the decision to start acquiring assets as well as launch a platform quite easy. We like to think that assets under our management will benefit both from MyPlace’s operational expertise, as well as Nuveen’s scale.”
Nuveen will continue to invest, both through one-off purchases and portfolio acquisitions, funded by “existing Nuveen accounts and dedicated third-party capital,” according to the release. “Through MyPlace, Nuveen will bring direct operational capabilities to its investment platform.”
Nuveen entered self-storage investment in 2003 and claims to be a top-15 private owner in the sector, having doubled its AUM since 2019. “Nuveen’s investment in MyPlace follows other similar strategic transactions it has more recently made, having invested in several leading real estate operating companies, over the last several years,” said the release.
As the press release also notes, Simply Storage was sold in two parts to iStorage and Blackstone for a “combined valuation of approximately $2.5 billion.” According to an Inside Self-Storage report at the time, the Brookfield Asset Management part of the acquisition in 2016 was a reported $830 million. Blackstone bought Simply Storage in 2020 for $1.2 billion.
