Tamara Fischer, president and CEO of National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE: NSA), participated in a video interview in conjunction with Nareit’s REITweek: Virtual Investor Conference (held June 2-4).
Fischer explained that the company’s Participating Regional Operators (PRO) structure was designed to protect the downside for shareholders in periods of economic uncertainty.
NSA’s PRO relationships have allowed it to capitalize on its acquisition strategy and to leverage those relationships to close a greater number of transactions than its peers, Fischer explained.
Broad geographic diversity and exposure to tertiary and secondary markets is also a benefit to NSA, according to Fischer. She added that because of its positioning, NSA faces less pressure from new supply.
Fischer also discussed NSA’s multi-faceted growth strategy, which includes: the addition of new PROs; the acquisition of assets in the PRO captive pipeline; third party acquisitions; and acquisitions through NSA’s two joint ventures.
“We do believe we have significant opportunity to continue to grow through acquisitions,” Fischer said. In addition, Fischer said she anticipates “some meaningful opportunities” in the next 12-24 months with respect to assets that were recently developed and may not be meeting developers’ proforma expectations.
More broadly, Fischer said that while self-storage has a proven recession resilience, it’s not recession-proof. “We know we’ll be affected by it in the near term and probably over the next 12 months. On the whole, we’re still very bullish about the asset class, we think it will outperform other asset classes, generally speaking, and we believe NSA will outperform in its own sector,” she added.