Every time I convert a 10x20 into a 10x40, it rents within a week.

I've done it three times now. Same building. Same market. The 10x20 sat for months. The 10x40 was gone before I finished updating the listing.

The demand was always there. My unit mix just wasn't built for it. And I'd bet yours isn't either.

Most operators track one and ignore the other, which is how you end up 92% occupied and still underperforming your market.

The result: too many 10x10s when the market wants 5×10s. Too much drive-up when climate control is now table stakes. Too many large units priced for household moves when the majority of demand is short-term overflow from apartment transitions, not six-month relocations.

About a quarter of our rentals are short-term (in and out within 90 days). These aren't people storing a house worth of furniture. They're bridging a move, clearing out a garage for a project, or holding inventory between jobs. They don't need a 10x20. They need a 5x10 for six weeks.

Your occupancy might be fine. Your revenue per square foot isn't.

The customer mix is different.

Contractors want power outlets. E-commerce sellers want extended access hours. RV and boat owners want covered units that don't exist on your site plan. The demand isn't just about size, it's about features your facility wasn't built to offer.

Climate control is expected, not premium.

Non-climate units are discounting faster every year just to stay competitive. The market already decided climate control is standard. Your 2006 unit mix didn't get the memo.

The biggest surprise for us was large unit demand.

We assumed 10x20s were the problem. They were, but not because large units don't rent. They don't rent when they're the wrong kind of large.

That's the conversion from the intro. and it wasn't a fluke. The demand for large commercial-grade units was sitting in our market the whole time.

Contractors, business owners, people storing vehicles. They wanted the space. They just couldn't find it because our facility was sliced into mid-size units that fit nobody's actual use case.

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The number that surfaces all of this is revenue per square foot by unit type.

Pull your rent roll and run it in a spreadsheet: group units by type, calculate total square footage per type, calculate total monthly revenue per type, divide. It's a report your PMS probably doesn't surface automatically, and it's the one that changes how you see your facility.

Add vacancy rate and days-to-lease per type while you're in there.

What you'll probably find: the unit types you assumed were your best performers aren't generating the highest $/sqft. The ones leasing fastest might be your smallest inventory. And the ones sitting vacant might just need a different configuration, not a discount.

That's the market telling you what it wants. The question is whether your facility is set up to listen.

You can't tear down buildings and start over. But you also can't afford to leave money on the table because your unit mix was designed for a different market.

There are four levers that don't require a building permit.

1. Combine small units into bigger ones.

This is the most direct fix. Two 10x20s become one 10x40. Remove a partition wall, update your PMS, list it. One afternoon of work.

Every time we've done this, the 10x40 rented within a week. The 10x20s had been sitting for months.

The demand is there, contractors, business owners, vehicle storage. They need the space. They just couldn't find it because your facility was sliced up for a customer that doesn't show up at the same volume anymore.

The revenue math depends on your market, but the occupancy math is simple: a vacant 10x20 generates zero. A leased 10x40 generates everything. Run your $/sqft on both scenarios before and after. If your large unit demand matches ours, the conversion pays for itself the month it rents.

2. Remarket your unit use cases.

This one costs nothing.

If you've got excess 10x20 non-climate units, stop advertising them as "perfect for moving and household storage." That customer is shrinking.

Start positioning them for contractor equipment, seasonal business inventory, e-commerce overflow during Q4, or vehicle and trailer storage if your doors fit. This doesn't change the unit. It changes who sees your ad and what problem they think you solve.

Stop bidding on "moving storage near me" for a unit type sitting at 30% vacancy. Start bidding on "contractor storage" and "business storage."

3. Add features that change who rents the unit.

You don't always need to change the size. Sometimes you just need to add a power outlet.

A 10x10 non-climate with a standard roll-up door is basic inventory. The same 10x10 with a power outlet, LED lighting, and 24-hour access is a business-grade unit. Different customer. Different price point.

Power outlet install runs $200-400 per unit depending on how close your panel is. LED lighting is under $50. Extended access is a gate code change. Total investment per unit: under $500. Rent premium: 15-25% over the same unit without those features.

Contractors won't rent a dark unit they can only access until 6pm. Give them light and a plug and they'll pay more for a unit you couldn't fill last month.

This is the cheapest way to reposition inventory without moving a single wall.

4. Reprice non-climate as a deliberate value tier.

Stop pretending non-climate is worth climate rates. Price it 20-30% below your climate comps and own the positioning.

You'll fill it faster. And you'll stop training customers to expect discounts on climate units as a side effect.

The REITs already operate this way. CubeSmart has talked explicitly about a value-tier strategy for non-climate inventory in oversupplied markets. They're not trying to get climate prices for non-climate product. Neither should you.

The unit mix you inherited wasn't designed for the current renter. It was designed for a broker's pro forma in 2006. That's not a reason to accept the revenue it produces. It's just the starting point for fixing it.

Here's how to figure out if commercial demand exists in your market before you change a single ad, reposition a single unit, or spend a dollar on construction.

Open Google Keyword Planner. It's free with any Google Ads account. Type in "contractor storage [your city]," "business storage [your city]," "commercial storage near me." Look at monthly search volume for each term in your specific market area.

If you see 50-200 searches a month, there's demand worth chasing. If you see 10, there isn't and remarketing your 10x20s for contractors is a waste of time in that zip code. The search volume tells you what the market actually wants before you bet operational changes on it.

Now check what you're currently bidding on. Pull your Google Ads search terms report and sort by spend. If 80% of your budget is going to "storage units near me" and "cheap storage," you're competing with every facility in town for the same generic customer. Commercial keywords are usually cheaper per click and convert at a higher rate, less competition, more specific intent.

Next, run Google Trends. Compare "self storage" vs "business storage" vs "contractor storage" in your state over the last 12 months. You're looking for direction, not just volume. If commercial search is trending up, get in front of it now before your competitors notice. If it's flat, focus your energy on the other levers from this issue.

Last step: check your own phone logs. If you're on Quo or CallPotential, search for calls where the caller mentioned a business name or asked about power outlets, 24-hour access, or large unit availability. That's commercial demand already calling your facility. You just weren't categorizing it.

If you want to systemize this instead of doing it manually every month, Make.com can run a weekly scrape of your target keywords in Google Trends and drop the data into a Google Sheet. Set a threshold alert — if "contractor storage [your city]" crosses 100 monthly searches, you get a Slack notification. You stop checking manually and start getting notified when the market moves.

This whole audit takes 30 minutes the first time. It tells you whether the remarket strategy from this issue is worth pursuing in your specific market or whether your time and budget are better spent on one of the other levers. Don't reposition inventory around demand that doesn't exist in your zip code. Confirm it first.

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If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

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