Nate Paul’s World Class Holdings has sold a 64-property self storage portfolio across 10 states to global real estate investment firm CBRE (NYSE: CBRE) and facility operator William Warren Group/StorQuest for $588 million in a bankruptcy sale.
The portfolio comprises over 4.1 million rentable square feet in Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Colorado, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Indiana, New York and Nevada. The facilities were previously operated by Great Value Storage, Paul’s operating platform. The sale did not include any of Paul’s facilities in California and any of the firm’s new self storage developments and conversions nationally.
We plan to continue to invest in the self storage sector. As a firm, we have over 2 million square feet of new self storage developments and conversions underway nationally.”
At nearly $600 million, the acquisition is among the largest-ever private transactions in the burgeoning self storage sector, which has seen unprecedented growth since the onset of the pandemic.
Nate Paul, founder, chairman and CEO of World Class, began investing in self-storage in 2008, acquiring properties from private independent owners as well as from public REITs such as LifeStorage and Cubesmart. Since 2008, World Class has amassed one of the industry’s largest privately owned self storage portfolios.
“We have been long-term investors in self storage since entering the industry nearly 15 years ago,” Paul said. “The sale of this mature portfolio of assets to CBRE and William Warren Group presented us the opportunity to capitalize on that foresight, monetize our value-creation strategy, and achieve a highly favorable realization of our investment.”
“We plan to continue to invest in the self storage sector. As a firm, we have over 2 million square feet of new self storage developments and conversions underway nationally,” Paul said.
