Anne Ballard, president of training, marketing and developmental services for Universal Storage Group (USG) and founder of Universal Management Co. (UMC), both of which serve the self-storage industry, has announced that she’ll retire at the end of this year.
Though it may take a few years for self-storage prices to stabilize in the Greater Atlanta area due to recent overbuilding as well as rate declines caused by a small price war that occurred during the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, the market is expected to rebound nicely. In fact, industry experts remain bullish on the region for the long term, predicting that the population and economy will grow, thus spurring more industry demand.
The reasons for optimism are the same factors that caused Atlanta’s current predicament. It’s a hot metropolitan area that self-storage operators and developers want to mine to its fullest. In the last three years, the market has seen a 14 percent increase in supply, bringing it to about 41 million square feet, according to Radius+, a company that specializes in self-storage data, analytics and location intelligence.