Ever download one of those clean-up tools that finds all the apps you haven’t used for months, the ones that are clogging your memory and slowing you down? There’s no reason to keep those apps, especially since your app store account remembers them and you can easily re-download them on demand. Now, what if there was an app to find the physical stuff you never use? What if this app could clear out your closet space, store your stuff on “the cloud,” and “re-download” it to your house with a click? If you’re sleepless in Seattle, sweating over the cost of rent, you might be surprised to find that storing your “sometimes” stuff can pay when you have a choice between storage space and more square footage at home.
Is Storage Worth It for Buyers, Owners, and Renters?
It makes sense to think about storage as an alternative to a bigger place only in certain circumstances. If you already own a house or your lease isn’t up for a while, getting a storage unit isn’t going to allow you to downsize or the switching costs would eat up any edge you might gain. But if you’re just about to move, it makes sense to think about storage as part of your strategy for beating the punishing inflation that hot money and Wall Street speculation have brought to our city’s housing market. Then there’s the question of how to make the comparison as apples-to-apples as possible. That’s obviously easier if you’re renting, because storage is also rented, and home-ownership has many other costs you’d have to factor into the equation. It would, of course, be possible to calculate your monthly price per square foot, including taxes and utilities and all that jazz, but then you have to think about how long you plan to stay, how you value the equity you’re building, etc. (For those who want to geek out about this sort of thing, Zillow’s Breakeven Horizon metric is quite interesting.) But because it’s easier to compare renting a place to renting storage, let’s focus on renters.
The Seattle Region’s Rental Market
Seattle renters have every reason to be looking for ways to save. Despite chatter about a housing-market top, only the torrid Amazon canopy of the rental market has really cooled. If we look at the broader Puget Sound metro region using Zillow’s Rent Index, we see that while top-tier rental rates peaked in 2018 and are still in a pullback, bottom-tier rents only paused their punishing rise and have now taken another decisive leg up.
Storage vs. Apartments: Price per Square Foot
The median list price for a square foot of Puget Sound real estate is $277, while that same square foot commands a median rent of $1.52 per month, compared to $2.20 in Seattle proper. (By the way, to clarify terms like “median”: If you line up all the price tags in the market from cheapest to most outrageous, the median is the tag in the middle of the line-up. It’s a better indicator of “normal” than the average, or mean, because it isn’t skewed by a couple of hundred-million-dollar estates belonging to certain bald and/or bespectacled white men and their pals.)
The point, though, is that storage rents a good deal cheaper on a per-square-foot basis. A 5×5 unit goes for between $50 and $100 a month, while a 10×10 runs about $150-$250. The cost per square foot can be easily calculated, but you really want to be looking at cost per cubic foot, since you’re piling stuff to the ceiling as much as possible. Some units have very low ceilings; others are walk-in. Unfortunately, neither companies nor aggregator websites tend to show prices per cubic foot (like those annoying grocery tags that don’t list price per pound, making comparison-shopping tedious). One way to deal with this is to make yourself a spreadsheet with prices and dimensions of a handful of nearby options. Using basic formulas and perhaps a bit of conditional formatting, you can make yourself a handy color-coded heat-map of prices per cubic foot in only five or 10 minutes.
The next data point to feed into your calculations is, of course, the actual apartments you’re comparing. Again, rent per square foot is a nice metric but only useful in context: Is the closet ceiling slanted? Does one building have indoor bike storage while the other doesn’t? Then, there’s location. If you’re renting a studio in central Seattle, you’ll be paying more per square foot than if you have a two-bedroom in White Center. Likewise, you might be able to capture more of a “spread” between the price per square foot of storage in South King County and closet space downtown. But for other combinations, the price per square foot is pretty comparable. You really have to examine your own situation.
Finally, you have to ask yourself what the endgame is for stuff you’re thinking about storing. Are you downsizing now while your kid goes to college? You might want to keep their futon around for if (when?) they move back in after the economy finds no pressing use for their new degree. Or does your velvet, curlicue ottoman just not fit your new, mid-century mod décor? Store it if you must, but put up a listing on Craigslist the same day. Another question to ask yourself: “How often am I going to need to get at this stuff?” While some techy disruptors offer to re-deliver individual items on demand, pushing physical storage closer to archiving your unused apps, this service is not free. If you’re renting storage so you can keep your eBay inventory but shed your walk-in closet, you might want to shoot for halfway between you and the post office! But if you never want to look at your ex’s stuff again (in which case, one would hope that you’re making them pay to store it!), then a secure, less expensive unit in Kent or Renton might be just the ticket.
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