Public Storage vs Extra Space Q2 2026 - Who won?
By Chris Berg · July 31, 2026
The five things
- The street rate is identical. Public Storage's average move-in was $13.49 per square foot. Extra Space's was $13.53. Four cents apart. Whatever separates these two companies, it is not pricing power at the front door — they are selling into the same demand curve at the same price.
- The gap is a rate mortgage, not an operating gap. Public Storage's departing customers were paying $19.34; Extra Space's were paying $17.22. Same replacement price, different price being replaced. Public Storage's street rate sits 38.9% below its in-place book against Extra Space's 32.2% — and that spread closes on its own as street rates rise.
- Both companies raised guidance in the same week, and their slopes cross. Extra Space is guiding to a 100 basis point deceleration in the back half. Public Storage to a 20 basis point acceleration, exiting the year positive. The 231 basis point first-half gap narrows to 111.
- 2027 is a supply story, not a rate story. The Fed held on a 9–3 vote with all three dissenters wanting to raise; futures price two hikes before year-end. Neither company's plan needs a rate cut or a housing recovery. Forecast deliveries fall 17% next year and 29% by 2028, and starts are already down 29%.
- Market selection now outweighs operating skill. The spread between the best and worst disclosed market this quarter was 27 percentage points of NOI growth — St. Louis +17.5%, Tampa -9.8%. Tampa has six times St. Louis's construction pipeline as a share of stock. No operating platform closes a 27-point gap. Site selection does.
Contents
- The scorecard
- Nineteen of twenty-one markets
- The mechanism: a rate mortgage
- Opposite levers
- The guidance slopes cross
- What the next six to twelve months look like
- Los Angeles
- St. Louis, and what it proves
- How the quarter was actually built
- Two capital models
- Eight anomalies
- What would change my mind
- Methodology
- What I did not verify
01The scorecard
Same industry, same quarter, same street rate — and a 5.7-point spread in NOI growth
| Second quarter 2026, same-store | Public Storage | Extra Space | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same-store revenue growth | -0.6% | +2.4% | 3.0 pts |
| Same-store expense growth | +4.4% | -0.5% | 4.9 pts |
| Same-store NOI growth | -2.2% | +3.5% | 5.7 pts |
| Average occupancy | 92.5% +20 bps | 94.0% -10 bps | 150 bps |
| Period-end occupancy | 92.4% +50 bps | 94.2% -20 bps | 180 bps |
| Rent per occupied sq ft | $21.89 -0.8% | $19.95 +2.3% | 3.1 pts |
| Move-in rent per sq ft | $13.49 +1.6% | $13.53 +1.1% | $0.04 |
| Move-out rent per sq ft | $19.34 | $17.22 | $2.12 |
| Core FFO per share | $4.17 -2.6% | $2.15 +4.9% | 7.5 pts |
| Same-store NOI margin | 74.2% (77.4% direct) | 71.9% | 2.3–5.5 pts |
| Revenue per available sq ft | $20.96 | $19.46 | 7.7% |
PSA Financial Supplement pp. 10, 14, 16–17; EXR Supplemental pp. 4, 16, 25. PSA same-store pool 2,755 facilities / 192.1M sq ft; EXR 1,870 stores / 141.8M sq ft. PSA move-in and move-out rates are contract rent; EXR's exclude 73 LA County stores under state-of-emergency price restrictions — close, but not perfectly comparable.
What the scorecard actually says
The first three rows look like an operating rout. The tell that it isn't is row seven: both companies rented a new unit at the same price — $13.49 versus $13.53 — across 190 million and 142 million square feet of stabilised space.
Row eight is where the quarter lives. Public Storage's departing customers were paying $19.34; Extra Space's were paying $17.22. Same replacement price, different price being replaced. Every turnover costs Public Storage 30 cents on the dollar and Extra Space 21. That is the 5.7 points — without a single conclusion about who runs a better store.
The occupancy rows confirm it from the other side. Public Storage's occupancy rose 20 basis points and revenue still fell; Extra Space's fell 10 and revenue still rose. When occupancy and revenue move in opposite directions at both companies at once, the variable doing the work is rate mix, not traffic.
For an investor, three consequences. The drag is finite and measurable — it is the distance between an in-place book and the current street, and it shrinks every time a legacy cohort rolls. The company with the worse quarter has the better runway: Public Storage sits 150 basis points below Extra Space on occupancy in a business where 94% is close to the ceiling. And Extra Space is out-growing on a 2.3-point thinner margin and 7.7% less revenue per available square foot — growth rate and asset quality are different questions, and this page answers them in opposite directions.
02Nineteen of twenty-one
Same cities. Different result. Almost everywhere.
This chart requires mapping Public Storage's 25 disclosed markets onto Extra Space's top-30 MSA table by hand, which is why nobody builds it. Extra Space out-grew Public Storage on NOI in 19 of 21 overlapping markets and on revenue in 20 of 21. The only two Public Storage won were San Francisco and New York.
It matters because it kills the easy explanation. If the gap were geography — Public Storage over-indexed to a weak Sunbelt — it would show up as a mix effect. It doesn't. It shows up in every city, including the ones where both are winning.
03The mechanism
Public Storage is paying off a rate mortgage
Here is the entire quarter in one picture. The two companies sit at almost exactly the same point on the left. They are nowhere near each other on the right.
Public Storage's street rate sits 38.9% below its in-place book. Extra Space's sits 32.2% below. National Storage Affiliates, in its last quarter as an independent company, was at 35.0% — in between, which is exactly where you would expect a portfolio that pushed rate less aggressively than PSA and more than EXR.
That spread is a wasting asset. It closes every time street rates rise or the highest-rent legacy cohort finishes turning over. Public Storage's move-in rate went -2.4% in Q1, +1.6% in Q2, roughly +4% in June — with management confirming June's promotional strategy was identical to June 2025, so the acceleration is not a comparison artifact. Chief Executive Tom Boyle described the position as "the latter end of stabilization moving into recovery."
Why this is the investor insight rather than the operator insight
Existing-customer rate increases are benchmarked to a replacement-cost model — what it would cost that tenant to re-rent today. Public Storage told analysts it made no change to its ECRI program. It doesn't need to. When street rates turn positive the benchmark rises and the headroom re-opens on its own. The recovery in Public Storage's revenue line is therefore not a management decision that could be reversed. It is arithmetic that follows street rates with a two-to-four-quarter lag.
04Opposite levers
One bought occupancy. One held rate. Only one has room left.
The lines cross in opposite directions and that is the point. Public Storage bought occupancy and gave back rate. Extra Space held rate and gave back occupancy. Extra Space's entire 2.4% revenue gain came from rate, other income and expense control — not from filling units.
The forward implication is the one most people will miss. Extra Space is running at 94.0–94.2%, close to the practical ceiling for this asset class; there is very little left to harvest. Public Storage is running 150 basis points lower — 150 basis points of runway — and it now has positive street rates and 50 basis points of year-over-year occupancy gain simultaneously, the first time both have been true since 2021. Same-store churn also improved, to 18.2% from 19.6%.
05The guidance slopes cross
Extra Space is guiding down. Public Storage is guiding up.
Both companies raised revenue guidance within 24 hours of each other, by almost the same amount — Public Storage by 90 basis points at the midpoint, Extra Space by 100. That synchronisation is itself the industry signal: two independent management teams, two different portfolios, the same conclusion about the second half. Back out what the raise implies for the six months not yet reported, and they point in opposite directions.
Extra Space's own explanation, from Chief Financial Officer Jeff Norman, is that the deceleration is comps plus deliberately conservative macro assumptions that have not yet appeared in the numbers — "we haven't felt it in the first two quarters or in July." That is a range built to be beaten. Take the midpoint and the gap halves; take the high end and it closes.
06The next six to twelve months
No rate tailwind, no housing recovery — and the best supply setup in a decade
The rate picture is going the wrong way
The FOMC held at 3.50%–3.75% on July 29, its fifth consecutive hold, but the vote was 9 to 3 and all three dissenters — Hammack, Kashkari, Logan — wanted to raise. Chair Kevin Warsh, who took office May 22, told the press conference that "there is no soft inflation target… there is only a target, and it is 2 percent." Futures are pricing two 25 basis point increases before year-end. The 10-year sits near 4.64%–4.69%; the 30-year mortgage rose to 6.66% in the week ending July 30.
The cause is energy, not core inflation. The March Strait of Hormuz disruption took roughly 10 million barrels a day offline; Brent is near $89.53 and U.S. regular gasoline hit $4.096 in the week ending July 27 — up 9.5 cents in a week. Headline CPI is +3.5% year over year while core is +2.6%. That 90 basis point gap is entirely energy, and the Fed cannot fix a supply shock with rates.
For storage: no cap-rate compression in the next twelve months. Any thesis that needs cheaper debt, a reopened transaction market, or refinancing relief is running against current market pricing. Extra Space's guidance assumes a 3.73% weighted-average one-month SOFR against a July spot near 3.62% — if the implied hikes land, that assumption proves light.
Housing is not coming to the rescue either
Existing home sales ran at a 4.09 million annualized rate in June, up 2.8% year over year but historically depressed. New home sales were 628,000, down 5.6%, with 9.3 months of supply. Single-family permits fell 2.4% and are running below starts. Builder sentiment sits at 34, under 50 for a fifteenth consecutive month, with 37% of builders cutting prices. Extra Space CEO Joe Margolis: "We haven't seen any pickup in the housing market. We don't see any indications… that there's more customers out there."
And it doesn't matter, because the demand base has partly decoupled
Both companies described the same mix shift, in nearly the same words, without coordination. Extra Space: moving-related customers have fallen from the low 60s as a share of move-ins to about 55%, replaced by "ran out of space at home" customers whose expected length of stay is at least twice as long. In-place length of stay is roughly 1.5 months longer than a year ago. Public Storage: millennials are now the largest cohort at a higher propensity to store than prior generations, with Gen Z behind them — a tailwind CEO Tom Boyle sized at 10 to 15 years.
The industry spent a decade arguing storage demand was a derivative of housing turnover. Both largest operators just posted their best quarter in years with housing turnover near a fifty-year low.
The supply curve is the actual trade
A note on why this chart starts in 2026. I wanted to show a ten-year delivery history and could not do it honestly. Yardi Matrix revises its series upward as its tracked universe grows — the same publisher reported 2018 deliveries at 55.2M sq ft in 2020, 56.9M in 2021, and "past 70 million" in a June 2026 write-up. 2023 appears as 51.2M in a March 2024 report and an implied ~55.6M in a January 2025 one; 2024 as 59.5M in January 2025 and an implied ~64.6M in December 2025. Those are not comparable years, they are comparable vintages of the same year. Charting them together would manufacture a trend out of a methodology change. The forward curve above comes from a single source at a single vintage, which is the only version of this chart I can defend.
The call
- Q2 2026 was the trough, and it was a rate trough, not a demand trough. Move-in rates turned positive at both companies simultaneously. Public Storage's went -2.4% to +1.6% to roughly +4% in June. National advertised rates bottomed in March and have risen sequentially for four consecutive months.
- Expect the gap between the two to close, not widen. Guidance already implies 231 basis points narrowing to 111. The mechanism — roll-down exhaustion plus ECRI headroom re-opening as street rates rise — runs with a two-to-four-quarter lag, which puts the crossover in the first half of 2027.
- 2027 is the year, and it is a supply story. Forecast deliveries fall 17% next year and 29% by 2028; starts are already down 29%; the under-construction pipeline has fallen every month since December. Neither company's plan requires a housing recovery or a Fed cut.
- Underwrite the supply curve, not the yield curve. If rates are not going to rescue asset values in the next twelve months, the only lever left is buying into markets where the pipeline is thin. Which is the next section.
- Three things to watch before October: whether Public Storage's move-in rate stays positive through the seasonal turn — the cleanest read on the recovery anywhere in the sector; whether the Los Angeles rate recapture produces move-outs or revenue; and whether the September FOMC actually hikes, because that determines whether the 2027 transaction market opens or stays shut.
07Los Angeles
One market is 41% of Public Storage's entire NOI decline
Public Storage owns 219 facilities in Los Angeles. That is 7.9% of its same-store store count. Those stores produce 15.1% of its same-store NOI — the concentration you would expect from the most expensive major market in the country, where its rent per occupied square foot is $34.59 against a portfolio average of $21.89.
And in the second quarter they produced 40.7% of the company's entire NOI decline.
The squeeze came from both ends at once. Los Angeles revenue fell 3.5% while its operating expenses rose 9.8% — the widest revenue-to-expense scissor of any market Public Storage discloses. Add the eight major Sunbelt markets and you get $11.0 million more of decline; Los Angeles plus eight Sunbelt markets explain 105% of the total, meaning the other seventeen disclosed markets were net positive.
The part that is not an operating story
The Los Angeles County post-wildfire rent restrictions expired July 1, 2026 — the day after this quarter closed. Public Storage quantified the cost precisely: roughly 70 basis points of same-store revenue growth in 2025 and 50 basis points net in 2026, with the original 2026 drag of 80 basis points now cut to 50. President and CFO Joe Fisher said the company will take "a pretty measured and phased approach" to recapturing rate rather than snapping back to market — which pushes most of the benefit into 2027.
Extra Space has the same market and the same regulation, but 122 stores against 219, and its Los Angeles rent is 25% lower ($27.67 versus $34.59 per occupied square foot) — less absolute rent to be capped away. Extra Space's LA NOI grew 3.7%; Public Storage's fell 5.8%. That 9.6-point gap is the largest in the entire overlap set, and it is substantially regulatory exposure, not operating skill.
08St. Louis
The anomaly — and what it proves about site selection
St. Louis was Extra Space's best market in the country: revenue +7.6%, expenses -8.7%, NOI +17.5% in the quarter and +15.9% year to date, on 29 stores and 2.29 million square feet. It contributed 5.3% of Extra Space's entire same-store NOI gain from 1.6% of its square footage. Public Storage doesn't break St. Louis out — it falls in "all other markets."
Neither supplement says why. So I checked it against an independent source.
And a second independent confirmation, on rate. Tract IQ's St. Louis street-rate series for a 10×10 non-climate unit runs $1.10/sq ft/month in June 2025 to $1.25 in June 2026 — +13.6% — and $1.09 to $1.29 in July, +18.3%. Climate-controlled ran +9.9% in June. Against a national advertised rate down 1.7% year over year, St. Louis is an outlier by roughly 15 points.
Note what this does not require: a demand story. Population, income and household formation in St. Louis are unremarkable. The market is outperforming because nobody built there. Supply discipline, not demand growth, produced a 17.5% NOI quarter — and with national deliveries falling 29% by 2028, the markets that never got overbuilt are where that arithmetic compounds first.
09How the quarter was actually built
Revenue, expenses, and the 5.7 points between them
Revenue explained 3.0 points of the NOI gap. Expenses explained the other 2.7. Here is the whole bridge for both companies, line by line.
| Same-store, Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025 | Public Storage | Extra Space |
|---|---|---|
| REVENUE | ||
| Rental income (PSA) / net rental income (EXR) | -0.5% | +2.5% |
| Late charges & admin fees (PSA) / other income (EXR) | -1.7% | -1.5% |
| Total same-store revenue | -0.6% | +2.4% |
| …of which, occupancy | +20 bps | -10 bps |
| …of which, rate per occupied sq ft | -0.8% | +2.3% |
| OPERATING EXPENSES | ||
| Property taxes | +5.9% | +4.2% |
| On-site property manager payroll | -1.8% | -2.3% |
| Marketing | +6.3% | -4.6% |
| Repairs & maintenance | +3.2% | -15.5% |
| Utilities (PSA) / property operating (EXR) definitions differ | +3.3% | -7.3% |
| Insurance | n/d | +4.5% |
| Other direct (PSA) / office (EXR) definitions differ | +5.4% | +2.8% |
| Indirect cost of operations | +5.7% | n/d |
| Total same-store operating expense | +4.4% | -0.5% |
| NET OPERATING INCOME | -2.2% | +3.5% |
Read the revenue block first. Public Storage gained occupancy and still lost revenue, because rate per occupied square foot fell 0.8%. Extra Space lost occupancy and still gained revenue, because rate rose 2.3%. Neither company filled or emptied its way to this result — the rate line did all of it, which is the roll-down mechanism from section 3 showing up in the income statement.
Then read the expense block, where the two companies moved in opposite directions on almost every line. Both cut payroll, and both did it with technology. Public Storage disclosed a machine-learning staffing model built on three to four years of property-level traffic and seasonality data that has taken labour hours down more than 30%, with payroll down 1.2% year to date despite higher incentive compensation — alongside an AI service agent, "Ellie," that has handled more than 90,000 customer interactions, and a customer-survey volume that went from 2,000–3,000 a month to roughly 90,000. It is one of the most concrete AI-in-operations disclosures any REIT has made.
The divergence is marketing. Public Storage raised marketing spend 6.3% and bought 50 basis points of occupancy. Extra Space cut marketing 4.6% and lost 20. Extra Space is running the more efficient funnel; Public Storage is paying to fill the units its rate roll-down keeps emptying. Both are defensible. Only one is repeatable at scale without margin damage.
Two lines I would want explained before repeating them
Unverified driver Extra Space's repairs and maintenance fell 15.5% in the quarter but only 3.0% year to date — the cut is concentrated in Q2. That is either genuine efficiency, a timing shift, or deferred maintenance. The disclosure does not distinguish, and management was not asked.
Timing, not run-rate Extra Space booked a favourable mid-year insurance renewal that only touched June, so the full benefit lands in the second half and in 2027. Some of the expense outperformance in this quarter has not yet annualised — and some of it lands again next quarter.
10Two capital models
They operate roughly the same amount of real estate. They own wildly different amounts of it.
Extra Space operates 341 million square feet and owns 45% of it. Public Storage operates roughly the same total after the NSA close and owns close to 90%. Extra Space is an operating platform that also owns real estate. Public Storage is a real-estate owner that built an operating platform. Both are legitimate, and they produce completely different earnings streams.
| Public Storage | Extra Space | |
|---|---|---|
| Stores owned | 3,196 facilities · 231.4M sq ft | 2,037 stores · 154.1M sq ft |
| Stores operated | 4,500+ post-NSA · 327M sq ft | 4,410 · 341.0M sq ft |
| Owned share of operated | ≈88% pre-NSA | 45.2% |
| Third-party managed | 463 contracted · 34.2M sq ft | 1,964 · 154.9M sq ft |
| Joint-venture stores | 313 (NSA JV, ~$3.3B, 20% PSA) | 409 · 32.0M sq ft |
| Loan book | $173.3M at 7.6% | $1,445M at 7.7% |
| Tenant reinsurance NOI (Q2) | $53.9M · 78.2% margin | $75.8M · 81.4% margin |
| 2026 acquisitions | $1.3B+ YTD ex-NSA/Canada | $103.2M YTD · $300M guide |
| M&A in the quarter | NSA (1,100 stores) + PS Canada ($1.2B) | none |
| Development pipeline | $692M · 47 projects · 4.0M sq ft | 1 JV completion ($15.1M) |
Extra Space's model shows up in the ancillary line: tenant reinsurance revenue of $93.1 million in the quarter at an 81.4% margin — 35% more revenue than Public Storage generates from the same product, on a fraction of the owned footage, because it insures the managed and joint-venture stores too. Add $34.9 million of management fees and a $1.45 billion loan book at 7.7%. That is a real, capital-light earnings engine.
Public Storage's model shows up on the balance sheet.
This is not a criticism of Extra Space — 5.1x is conservative for a REIT and its coverage is comfortable at 4.3x fixed charges. But cost of capital is the strategy in this business. At a roughly 5% blended cost of capital buying lease-up assets that stabilise at high-6% to low-7% yields, Public Storage described a 100-plus basis point spread it is willing to accept near-term FFO dilution to capture. Extra Space, at a higher cost of capital, said asset pricing "remains elevated" with cap rates in the "high 4s to high 5s," and is choosing relationship deals, bridge loans and management contracts instead — pipelines it controls rather than a market it would have to outbid.
11Anomalies
Eight things in the documents that deserve a second look
43 stores, 3.13M sq ft: revenue $16.5M against expenses $18.1M for NOI of -$1.6M in the quarter and -$3.6M year to date, versus -$1.6M a year ago — a 122% deterioration. The only segment in either company moving decisively the wrong way. Unmentioned on the call. Cause unverified
Revenue grew 19% to $17.1M; NOI fell to $456 thousand from $716 thousand. They are deliberately spending to build it — 463 facilities contracted against Extra Space's 1,964 — but it is a cost centre today, not a fee engine. A nine-to-one platform gap Extra Space rarely gets credit for.
Net income per share rose 44.9% to $2.55 while Core FFO per share fell 2.6% to $4.17 and missed consensus. The delta is a $17.2M FX gain on euro-denominated debt (against a $146.1M loss a year ago), $58.9M year to date. Anyone reporting "earnings up 45%" is reporting a translation. Verified in the income statement
Ending occupancy 94.2% versus 94.4%; average 94.0% versus 94.1%. In a quarter universally reported as a beat, the operating metric most people assume drove it declined. All of the revenue growth was rate, other income and expense control.
Pipeline grown to $692M across 47 projects, 4.0M sq ft, $432M still to fund over 18–24 months, targeting an 8% stabilised yield. National starts are down 29% year over year. Deliberately building into the supply trough — the one genuinely contrarian capital call in the sector this quarter.
+5.9% in Q2 against +2.4% year to date, with the quarterly figure climbing $101.9M (Q4 2025) → $106.1M (Q1) → $111.4M (Q2). Sequential escalation of that shape usually means reassessments landing — the line most likely to keep surprising to the upside in Texas and Florida in 2027. Jurisdiction unverified
The 468 stores in "Other MSAs" — a third of its same-store square footage — grew NOI 4.6% and delivered 23.8% of the entire same-store NOI gain, more than any single named market. Concentrated where supply never arrived: St. Louis +17.5%, Indianapolis +11.5%, Richmond +10.7%, Charleston +4.9%, Norfolk +4.9%.
The largest single-market expense increase in the portfolio, turning +2.7% revenue into -1.1% NOI in a market where Extra Space grew NOI 10.2%. On 23 facilities the dollars are small, but the percentage is an outlier and nothing in the disclosure accounts for it. Cause unverified
12What would change my mind
The four things that would break this thesis
- Public Storage's move-in rate goes negative again in Q3. The entire roll-down-exhaustion argument rests on street rates having turned. One quarter is a data point; two is a trend. If the September print rolls back below zero, the crossover moves out past 2027 and Public Storage's guidance raise was premature.
- Extra Space's occupancy keeps falling while its rate flattens. Extra Space traded 20 basis points of occupancy for 2.3% of rate this quarter and came out ahead. That trade only works while rate is rising. If occupancy slides another 50–100 basis points without a rate offset, the "held rate" story becomes "lost customers."
- The 2027 supply forecast gets revised up again. Yardi's Q1 2026 vintage said 51.1M sq ft for 2026; the Q2 vintage said 54.0M. That is a 6% upward revision in one quarter, and the under-construction pipeline rose to 52.96M NRSF in Q1 before falling back. If the 2027 and 2028 numbers move the same direction, the supply-driven inflection gets pushed out and the whole "2027 is the year" call goes with it.
- The consumer cracks in a way storage has not seen. Both companies said explicitly they have not seen it — no change in customer health, no elevated vacates, length of stay 1.5 months longer. But headline CPI is 3.5%, gasoline is above $4, and Conference Board confidence has fallen three months running. Storage has historically held up in downturns because life transitions create demand. If this cycle is different — if the "ran out of space at home" customer turns out to be discretionary in a way the moving customer never was — the length-of-stay tailwind reverses and takes the revenue recovery with it.
13Methodology
How this was built
Primary documents. Every operating figure comes from one of two documents read in full: the Public Storage Q2 2026 Earnings Release and Financial Supplement (32 pages, filed July 29, 2026) and the Extra Space Storage Q2 2026 Supplemental Financial Information (33 pages, filed July 28, 2026). Page references are given for every table. National Storage Affiliates figures come from the operating update Public Storage published at page 31 of its supplement, prepared by NSA before the July 22 merger closed.
Management commentary. Both earnings calls — Extra Space on July 29, Public Storage on July 30 — were read in full. Quotations are attributed by name and title. Two figures attributed to Public Storage management in this piece (the $110–130 million NSA synergy range and the 78%-versus-70% margin comparison) appear in the July 29 earnings release rather than on the call, and are cited as such.
The 21-market head-to-head. Public Storage discloses 25 named markets plus an "all other" bucket; Extra Space discloses its top 30 MSAs plus "other." I mapped them by hand, kept only pairs where the geography is genuinely comparable, and dropped the rest rather than forcing a match. Every disclosed market on both sides is either in the chart or named in a caption. Nothing was sampled.
Independent verification. Where a company's own disclosure is the only evidence for a claim, I sought a second source before publishing it. The St. Louis finding is confirmed against Tract IQ facility, pipeline and street-rate data pulled July 30, 2026. Macro figures come from the Federal Reserve, Treasury, Census, BLS, EIA, NAR, NAHB and Freddie Mac directly rather than from aggregators. Supply and street-rate figures come from Yardi Matrix, with the vintage of each release stated because Yardi revises its series as its tracked universe grows.
What is not here. No valuation work, no cap-rate model, no price target, no recommendation. This is an operating analysis of two public disclosures. Section 14 lists everything I could not verify.
14What I did not verify
Required disclosure
- Public Storage's transcript is effectively single-sourced. The call ended roughly four hours before I pulled it. I ran an independent verification pass confirming 16 of 18 specific claims with direct quotes; the other two come from the earnings release. The S&P Capital IQ transcript is paywalled and could not serve as a genuinely independent second source. If a specific quote is critical, pull the replay — available through August 13.
- Historical supply deliveries are not comparable across vintages, which is why no pre-2026 delivery figures appear in this piece. The detail is in the note under the supply chart. The widely-repeated claim that 2018 and 2019 each exceeded 70 million square feet is not supported by the same publisher's contemporaneous reporting (55.2M and 51.9M) and should be treated as unverified.
- Market-to-market mapping is approximate. The 19-of-21 finding is robust to any reasonable remapping, but individual market gaps carry definitional noise.
- Rent metrics are not perfectly comparable. PSA's realized rent per occupied square foot excludes late charges and administrative fees and is net of promotional discounts; EXR's net rent is net of discounts, bad debt and refunds. EXR's move-in and move-out rates exclude 73 LA County stores; PSA's do not. Directional conclusions hold; do not quote the levels to the cent as like-for-like.
- Two expense line pairs are not like-for-like and are flagged in the section 9 table. Do not compute a "utilities gap" or an "overhead gap" from them.
- Tract IQ geography is a 25-mile radius, not the REITs' MSA definitions, and its facility counts are its own. A genuine independent second source on direction and ranking — not a like-for-like replacement for either supplement.
- Extra Space's R&M decline and PSA's San Diego expense spike have no disclosed cause. Both flagged in place.
- Macro figures without a primary source: exact Treasury yields for July 28–30 (Treasury's series was retrievable only through July 17; two secondary sources give 4.69% on July 24 and 4.641% on July 27); a late-July SOFR print (most recent confirmed 3.62% on July 16); spot WTI and Brent against EIA primary data (EIA's daily series errored — figures from Fortune and TradingEconomics); live CME FedWatch probabilities. Jerome Powell's current status at the Board is unverified — the May 22 press release announcing Warsh's oath does not mention him.
- U.S. household mobility data is stale. The most recent Census CPS geographic-mobility table is 2023, released December 2024. The widely-cited "11% mover rate, a fifty-year low" is a third-party analysis (Point2Homes via HousingWire, October 2025), not a Census release. For any demand thesis leaning on mobility, this is the weakest link in the chain.
- Yardi Matrix figures are secondary-sourced. The full reports are gated; the $16.48 national advertised rate, the monthly pipeline series and the monthly rate series come from Multi-Housing News, CRE Daily and Yardi's own blog summaries citing the underlying reports. Radius+ national data was not accessible at all. National inventory, facility count and square-feet-per-capita figures conflict materially across StorageCafe (2.12B sq ft, 7.4 per capita), StorTrack (2.6B, 67,400 facilities, 7.8 per capita) and the 2024 Self-Storage Almanac (2.1B, 52,301 facilities, 6.32 per capita) — none is used as a load-bearing figure here.
- No valuation work. I did not model either company's cap rate, NAV, or implied share-price reaction, and I did not verify the reported share-price moves on the day.
- Chart palette. Public Storage orange is the company's own #F58220. Extra Space's literal logo green (#8DC63F) fails contrast on this background at 1.81:1 and is indistinguishable from orange for deuteranopic readers, so the green is deepened to #33691E — same hue family, 17.2 ΔE separation from the orange under simulated colour-vision deficiency.
- Full disposition. All 32 pages of the PSA supplement, all 33 pages of the EXR supplement, both earnings calls, and all 21 overlapping markets plus PSA's 4 and EXR's 10 non-overlapping disclosed markets are accounted for above or in a caption.
Chris Berg is Business Development Director at Abernathey Development and the creator of StorageDemandScore.com, a market-scoring platform that underwrites self-storage demand and supply at the submarket level. He hosts The Self-Storage Report. A former Stanford football player, he writes about how institutional-grade underwriting actually gets done — with primary sources, every time.
No securities are offered or solicited in this piece. Nothing here is investment, legal or tax advice. All figures are drawn from company filings and third-party data as cited and were current as of July 30, 2026.