PHOENIX — U-Haul (NYSE:UHAL.B), a national provider of moving and storage services, has acquired a four-property portfolio of self-storage facilities in the Midwest totaling 3,345 units. NexPoint Storage Partners, the self-storage arm of Dallas-based NexPoint, sold the portfolio for an undisclosed price.
Three of the facilities are concentrated in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, and the fourth is located in Kansas City, Kan. The properties include 101 American Blvd. W and 3216 Winnetka Ave N in Minneapolis; 631 Transfer Road in St. Paul, Minn.; and 500 Southwest Blvd. in Kansas City.
U-Haul has begun operating the assets under its own brand of self-storage and moving services. Extra Space Storage formerly operated the facilities.
The portfolio totals 327,791 net rentable square feet of climate-controlled space. Overall, the portfolio was 88 percent occupied at the time of sale.
JLL represented NexPoint Storage Partners in the transaction.
In addition to the acquisition, U-Haul is growing its footprint in the Twin Cities area via a new U-Haul Moving & Storage location in Ramsey, located northwest of Minneapolis. The facility represents U-Haul Co. of Northern Minnesota’s first ground-up build.
U-Haul acquired the 8.7-acre property at Highway 10 and Riverdale Drive last week. The lot was previously home to a local organic farm.
The retail, moving and self-storage center will encompass seven buildings with a total of 1,150 indoor climate-controlled and drive-up storage units. The facility will also include a U-Box warehouse that will provide storage for up to 800 portable-moving containers.
U-Haul aims to hire up to 20 team members to staff the Ramsey location upon completion, which is scheduled for fall 2026.
Based in Phoenix and founded in 1945, U-Haul operates more than 23,000 rental locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. The company’s stock price closed on Monday, Oct. 7 at $68.82 per share, up from $51.91 a year ago, a nearly 33 percent increase.
NexPoint Storage Partners was launched in 2020 following NexPoint’s take-private acquisition of Jernigan Capital, a publicly traded self-storage REIT. The firm and its parent company have underwritten more than $12 billion of prospective self-storage investments in the past seven years. About 96 percent of NexPoint Storage’s portfolio is concentrated in the top 50 MSAs.
— John Nelson