![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Pay-gap-3.jpg\")
Before (L) and after (R) Holmes helped a customer sort out their \u2018cupboard of doom\u2019. Photo composite: Supplied <\/p>\nOn a weekday afternoon in the second week of summer, a woman clad in gym gear walks out of the elevator at National Mini Storage in central Auckland and into the carpark, grasping a large plastic box with a handwritten label reading \u2018December\/Xmas\u2019.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a steady trickle of vehicles coming and going from outside the large white and blue building: some load trolleys with bags and boxes to wheel into the lift and up to their storage unit, others go empty-handed to retrieve a little, or a load, of their belongings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Inside, the multi-storey building is made up of corridors lined with security cameras, which monitor garage-type spaces with manual roller doors. It\u2019s a bit like renting an apartment for your stuff: a $217 monthly fee will get you 2\u00d71 metres of space while at the larger end, $532 will pay for the monthly lease of a \u2018single car garage\u2019 sized unit.<\/p>\n
A growth in the storage industry comes amid the largest-ever transfer of generational family wealth, which in New Zealand is expected to see $1.6 trillion change hands in the next 25 years. Alongside cash and property, baby boomers and the silent generation will pass down the mounds of belongings they\u2019ve collected over their lifetimes.<\/p>\n
The problem of where to put these heirlooms is being squeezed by housing intensification, particularly in Auckland where work is underway to enable higher-density development along transport routes and around town centres.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sam Scott, who specialises in the self-storage industry at real estate company CBRE, says homes are getting smaller but \u201cwe still have lots of stuff\u201d.<\/p>\n
The supply rate of self-storage units in New Zealand is 2.39 per 100 people; relatively small when compared to America where around one-third of people have rented a unit before and 10 percent are current renters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Demand is expected to balloon with an aging population and a growth in medium- and high-density housing, as well as e-commerce businesses which are often run from a home or small office with product stored elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of my job I go out and meet these storage managers who are the people on site, and I hear about people\u2019s stories,\u201d Scott says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistorically, a majority of people would have had one car in a garage and then maybe use the other half as storage \u2026 but we\u2019ve obviously had more apartments and townhouses built and they don\u2019t have that flexibility. They don\u2019t have space to store stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are also people moving, people between moves and cases where a family member has passed away and relatives have had to clean the house out, and they will just store possessions somewhere until they can figure out what they want to do with everything \u2013 that\u2019s pretty common,\u201d Scott says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cStorage for business is another common one, with e-commerce stuff that offers a really flexible option for businesses who can upscale and downscale pretty quickly and they\u2019re not being subject to what might have historically been a two-year leave on a small workshop or industrial building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Big money<\/p>\n
Scott is seeing a corporatisation of the industry, with fewer single operators and more cases of \u201cthe big guys\u201d buying up smaller facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He points to a deal over the ditch involving Australia\u2019s National Storage REIT, which at the beginning of December agreed to a AUD $4 billion (NZD $4.5 billion) takeover offer by a consortium backed by Brookfield Asset Management. <\/p>\n
The deal drove National Storage\u2019s shares to an all-time high of AUD $2.810.<\/p>\n
National Mini Storage and its 13 Auckland sites has this year been acquired by Kennards, a private Australian-owned business with a market value of more than $4 billion. Kennards is another of the key players in the New Zealand market alongside National Storage and Storage King.<\/p>\n
Open spaces at National Mini Storage are available for storage of a car, boat or RV for $445 a month. Down the road at the umbrella company\u2019s Mt Eden site, climate-controlled wine cellars are available for rent at a rate of around $100 for a 24-case unit.<\/p>\n
As with any property, you\u2019ll pay a premium for location. Comparatively, at Total Storage on Tyne Street in Invercargill, car storage will set you back just $140 per month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Makala Ffrench Castelli, chief executive of the Self Storage Association of Australasia, says Auckland\u2019s square meterage of self-storage space per capita has grown by around 50 percent since 2013. <\/p>\n
Nationwide, there are around 129,000 storage units spread across 780 facilities, with 1.29 million square metres of net storage area.\u00a0Looking ahead, a further 12 facilities are in the supply pipelines.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHomes are getting smaller, more people are moving more often and businesses need extra space too. These lifestyle, demographic and economic shifts are driving steady demand and self storage has become a practical, flexible solution for thousands of households and businesses,\u201d Ffrench Castelli says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia\u2019s self storage market is expanding more rapidly due to its size, population dynamics and depth of new development activity. New Zealand remains a healthy, demand-led market with a more moderate growth profile.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth markets are underpinned by strong long-term fundamentals, with New Zealand continuing to mature steadily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Small business<\/p>\n
Smaller operators are also contributing to this market growth, such as East Side Storage in Rotorua.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The owner, who preferred not to be named, describes himself as a \u201csmall businessman in a big market\u201d. He purchased the business four years ago, decreased the average unit size, increased the number of units from 46 to 120 and boosted its profitability.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndustrial Property tends to be less cyclical, and this is just a version of an industrial building.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty simple business, really. You\u2019ve got security, you\u2019ve got cameras, you\u2019ve got roller doors, and you get people to pay by direct debit. It\u2019s a great cashflow business with lower risk because you\u2019ve got multiple tenancies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne downside is the banks traditionally haven\u2019t liked them because the leases are only short term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rotorua is a different market from Auckland, the owner says, with around half of the market comprising boat and car storage for \u201call the holiday people\u201d.<\/p>\n
Clear the decks<\/p>\n
While CBRE and East Side Storage are facilitating places to store this \u201cstuff\u201d, another industry has sprung up made up of professional organisers and \u2018declutterers\u2019, offering to help customers purge anything that\u2019s not in use or, in the words of Marie Kondo, sparking joy.<\/p>\n
Beks Holmes, of The Decluttering & Organising Co., started the business under a different name close to eight years ago. It\u2019s now grown to a team of four, which caters predominantly to women aged between 40 and 60.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Customers can opt for in-person organising sessions or online coaching for those needing motivation and accountability. At the end of an in-house session, Homes or her co-workers will take away anything needing to be thrown out or donated \u2013 though they do not sell on behalf of a client.<\/p>\n
Holmes says decluttering is hard work for her team and often emotional work for their clients. After a couple of instances early on in the business\u2019 lifetime where she was engaged by hoarders, she now conducts a screening call and will turn them away if they fit into that category.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very keen that we do more good than harm \u2026 and I don\u2019t have specialist training for that type of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inheriting a parents\u2019 possessions upon their death can be a catalyst for someone seeking help, as can kids leaving home and failing to clear out their old clothes, toys and school books. For many, the trigger is both of these things happening at once.<\/p>\n
Before (L) and after (R) Holmes helped a customer sort out their \u2018cupboard of doom\u2019. Photo composite: Supplied <\/p>\n
Letting go of things can be difficult and the mentality of older generations who in the past may have had less access to things they needed is often that it\u2019s best to hold on to things \u2018just in case\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor anyone that\u2019s 40-plus that\u2019s holding on to things for other people, I tell them \u2018don\u2019t\u2019. Ask them now \u2013 get a family chat going and say: \u2018I\u2019ve got this thing I\u2019m holding on to for you, do you want it?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo often the answer is no. \u2018We don\u2019t want the family crystal\u2019, \u2018We don\u2019t want the silver\u2019; they don\u2019t want that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of Holmes\u2019 clients tell her they\u2019ve had moments where they\u2019ve looked around and thought: \u201cNone of this is my stuff\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kind of people that we have as clients, probably many of them have a tough time saying no in all areas of their life. So they become what we call the family storage unit. We ask them: \u2018Are you the family storage unit at the moment? Are you holding on to things for multiple different people, like a sibling moving overseas for a few years?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThat space is yours, and you should fill it with your own things, and the things that make your life easier or make you happy to kind of look at.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a weekday afternoon in the second week of summer, a woman clad in gym gear walks out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,50,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-363412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-personal-finance","12":"tag-personalfinance","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}