In 2011 Drivas Jonas Deloitte was commissioned by the Self Storage Association for the UK to produce a report based upon feedback received from self storage companies in the United Kingdom.

To access the report’s Executive Summary please click here.

The CEO of SSA UK, Rodney Walker, commented that “The self storage industry continues to show resilience in the current testing economic climate and our operators maintain a cautiously optimistic outlook.

Last month it was widely reported that the internet sector alone was worth over £100bn to the UK economy making up more than 7% of the UK national economy.
The UK has the biggest per capita spend on ecommerce with people buying billions of pounds of goods and services every week.
The majority of the business goes to the companies who have good online exposure for their websites, this is predominantly search engines, more precisely Google, Yahoo & Bing.

The bottom line is if you commit to the internet, you will gain a chunk of the £100bn per year, and you may be surprised how little an investment is required.

ENGAGE are currently offering any UK business a Free Analysis considering the following:

1. Strengths and weaknesses of your website.
2. Your website’s current online exposure on the search engines.
3. What can be done to increase your online exposure.

The advice given will be very useful to you if you want to be part of the £100 billion a year UK industry.  31 million people purchased goods or services via the internet in the last 12 months alone.

So, if you’re interested simply leave a reply to this article with the following information:

1. Your website address (URL)
2. Your company name
3. Your main competitors

As you’re all aware, Facebook is big business. There may be 500 million users worldwide, but what exactly do we know about Facebook users in the UK? Well, as of today, here are some headline figures statistics.
Please note that these will probably change on a daily basis!

1. There are 27,969,360 Facebook users in the UK.
2. Women account for 14.8 million users whilst men account for just 13.1 million users.
3. 87.1% of UK Facebook users are aged 18 or older.
4. London accounts for over 5 million UK Facebook users.
5. 50% of active Facebook users log onto their account every day!

In 2008, the United Kingdom was said to have a population of about 61.5 million. That means that over 45% of the entire population are users of Facebook. If you’re not trying to take advantage of this, you should be. If you’re not sure how to access this vast pool of potential business, ENGAGE can help. Send us an email (info@engagemanagement.co.uk) for more information about how we can help.

While the self storage industry hasn’t exactly been immune from the effects of the recession, it is generally accepted that the sector has experienced recession resilience and that the devastation that has visited other types of real estate has been less damaging for the self storage industry. This isn’t because of luck. It’s because of natural, positive differences in the way self storage works as business.

On average a self storage customer hires a self storage unit for about 12 months. If a self storage facility experiences an occupancy fall of 5% in a year, the remaining 95% of customers are likely to have moved in within the same year. This says something very positive about the self storage industry and tells a greater story that there is still a need for the service.

This isn’t a claim any other real estate class can make about its demand, especially during the worst recession in nearly 80 years!

Every other type of commercial real estate can spend huge amounts of money to acquire new customers. Retail, industrial and hotel industries have their own unique but expensive ways of acquiring tenants. Self storage seldom requires large capital expenditures of any kind and rarely does a storage unit require material refurbishment after a customer has vacated. The apartment landlord can only dream of such a situation whilst he repaints, buys appliances or fits new carpet between tenants!

A factor that contributes heavily to self storage remaining an effective service is the short term lease periods. Most self storage companies operate on 28 day or monthly storage contracts. This helps both the customer and the operator. Customers enjoy the flexibility and operators are able to adjust rental prices freely and reach quickly to market demand changes.

The Self Storage Association, in collaboration with Mintel, has released information identifying that over the past three years, self storage revenues have continued to grow. The average self storage operator has seen an increase of 20% during this period.

Resilience is a concept used to describe the ability of an area to withstand and respond to shocks in the external environment. Experian has released research, commissioned by the BBC, that ranks areas in terms of their resilience and what factors influence these rankings. The research took an holistic view of local areas and ranked them in terms of their ability to respond to economic shocks, such as public sector cuts.

As one would expect, the top ten contained areas in the south east and London with Elsmbridge and St Albans ranking 1st and 2nd. Middlesbrough could be found at the other end of the scale, positioned last of the 324 areas ranked.

The research not only looked at business ranking, but that of the community, population groupings and places providing a good indication of financial health and robustness.

The Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) reported an 8% year on year rise in prices in August, much higher than the 2.6% and 3.1% reported by Halifax and Nationwide. The DCLG’s measure gives more weight to high-priced areas of London and the South East. It also lags the lenders’ measures, so it is likely to soften in the coming months.

Surveyors confidence has slipped again with 41% believing prices will fall in the next three months. However the sales to stock ratio remains stable, which may be a signal that the pace of future price falls may be relatively modest.