Angelo Gordon JV Comes to West Coast For Self-Storage

The sale includes almost 106,000 rentable square feet in the city of Santa Clarita in Los Angeles County

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Lock it in: Angelo Gordon has acquired Santa Clarita Storage, a Class A self-storage property with 105,743 rentable square feet in Santa Clarita, Calif., in Los Angeles County.

World Class Property Company (WCP) sold the property to Angelo Gordon and a joint venture partner, Andover Properties, for $28 million, property records show. The new owners plan to rebrand the property under the name “Storage King USA.”

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WCP developed the property in 2019 at the suburban area north of the San Fernando Valley at 24314 The Old Road. Greg Wells, Mike Mele and Luke Elliott with Cushman & Wakefield (CWK) represented WCP and announced the transaction. 

“Because of its excellent supply/demand characteristics, overall muted new supply pipeline and very difficult entitlement process, Los Angeles remains one of the most sought-after self-storage markets in the U.S.,” Wells said in a press release.

The self-storage industry has seen up and down periods since the onset of the pandemic throughout the country, including periods of rising rents and increasing demand, which led to a lot of new self-storage development as investors looked for more stable alternatives.

On the national stage, the self-storage sector grabbed the spotlight last year after firms like Cascade Investment, run by Bill Gates, and Blackstone’s REIT put in billions of dollars into self-storage. Developers are expected to add 43.6 million square feet of rentable self-storage space to the U.S. this year. Invesco Real Estate recently provided a $116 million loan to ASB Real Estate Investments and The William Warren Group on a portfolio of 10 self-storage properties spread across five states, including in L.A. 

With a total inventory of almost 60 million square feet of stock, the L.A. self storage sector is still “supply-starved,” according to a report by Yardi Matrix, leading to some of the highest street rates in the country. On the last day of 2020, Commercial Observer reported Lendlease acquired a 3.5-acre self-storage site for $92 million. In terms of cost per square foot — about $1,167.62 — it was the priciest in the country during 2020. However, it was the only sale in L.A. during the year, and it will be replaced for a $600 million mixed-use development project.