Self-Storage Has Always Kept It Simple. That's Changing

Written by:

Steve Marcinuk

Date:

25 Mar 2026

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The self-storage industry built its reputation on simplicity: rent out a unit, collect a payment, repeat. But as new supply outpaces demand and margins compress across North America, technology vendors are making the case that the industry’s low-tech traditions are becoming a liability — a claim that mid-market operators are weighing with cautious interest.

Luke Shardlow thinks he knows the answer. As CEO of Ai Lean, a compliance and collections platform designed for self-storage, he has spent the past two years convincing mid-market operators that their tried-and-true processes carry more risk than they realize. The industry, for the most part, has heard the pitch before. What’s different now, Shardlow argues, is the market.

A Market Under Pressure

Self-storage has spent the better part of a decade riding a wave of steady demand, pandemic-era growth, and relatively forgiving margins. That window may be closing. New supply is entering markets across North America faster than population growth can absorb it, rents are stagnant and operators who coasted on strong occupancy are now facing a more competitive landscape.

The industry’s structure makes the pressure uneven. The largest operators — primarily publicly traded REITs — control roughly 20% of the market by square footage and have the resources to adapt quickly. A mid-market tier of operators running anywhere from five to a few hundred facilities accounts for another 20%. The remaining 60% is made up of small independent owners, often managing just a handful of locations, who have the least cushion when conditions tighten.

For all three groups, the math is getting harder. Declining rents mean that operational inefficiencies that were easy to absorb during better times are now harder to ignore. How operators respond — whether by modernizing their processes, leaning on what has always worked, or something in between — is shaping up to be one of the industry’s defining questions over the next few years.

Three Tiers, Three Mindsets

Not all self-storage operators are facing these pressures in the same way — and not all of them are responding the same way either. Shardlow describes a market divided into three distinct segments, each with its own relationship to technology, risk, and change.

At the top are the large REITs, whose scale and resources have made technology adoption a competitive necessity for years. These operators have long invested in automation, data analytics, and centralized management systems. For them, the question isn’t whether to modernize — it’s how to stay ahead.

The mid-market, Shardlow’s primary focus, is more varied. Operators in this tier are large enough to feel the strain of managing compliance and collections manually across multiple locations, but not always large enough to have dedicated teams handling it. Some are already exploring outsourcing and automation as a path to scalable growth. Others are still running on spreadsheets and institutional knowledge, confident in processes that have served them well.

Then there are the independents — the mom-and-pop operators who own a few locations and have managed them the same way for years. They represent the majority of the market and, in many cases, the deepest skepticism toward new technology. Whether that skepticism is caution or wisdom depends on who you ask.

The Case for Technology

Shardlow’s pitch to mid-market operators starts with a question most of them don’t expect: how confident are you that your current process would survive without the people running it? Staff turnover, he argues, is one of the least-discussed risks in self-storage operations — and one of the most damaging when institutional knowledge walks out the door.

His company, Ai Lean, offers a compliance and collections platform designed to replace that institutional knowledge with automated processes. The pitch is both dramatic improvements in collections performance as well as more about consistency and time savings. According to the company’s internal data, most operators who implement the platform report gains across the board in terms of consistency, time savings, and operational efficiency.

The broader argument is about scale. Operators who want to grow from 35 facilities to 70 without doubling their management headcount need systems that can expand with them. Automated platforms handle routine communications, track regulatory requirements across jurisdictions, and provide real-time delinquency data — tasks that multiply quickly as a portfolio grows. For operators with ambitions to scale, the case is straightforward: at some point, the spreadsheet breaks.

There is also a compliance dimension that goes beyond efficiency. Self-storage regulations vary significantly by state and municipality, and the consequences of getting them wrong — particularly around lien laws and delinquency notifications — can be costly. Technology platforms that track and document compliance requirements offer a layer of protection that manual processes struggle to match consistently.

Good instinct — that framing is actually more authentic to a single-source piece anyway. Rather than editorializing about operator skepticism in the abstract, we let Shardlow characterize the resistance he encounters and how he responds to it. That keeps the balance without putting words in mouths we don’t have on record.

Client Hesitation

Not every operator Shardlow talks to is ready to be convinced, and he’s candid about why. The resistance he encounters most often isn’t hostility to technology — it’s confidence in existing systems. Operators who have built reliable processes around experienced staff and institutional knowledge cite low delinquency rates and strong collections performance as evidence that their approach works. From where they sit, the case for change isn’t obvious.

Shardlow doesn’t dismiss that view. He acknowledges that many operators are running genuinely tight, well-managed operations. Where he pushes back is on the assumption that operators good results can’t be improved even further. Staff turnover, portfolio growth, and increasing regulatory complexity all have a way of exposing the limits of manual processes. His argument is that operators who are growing, or planning to, may find that the systems that worked at ten facilities don’t hold at thirty.

What’s Next

Where self-storage goes from here may depend less on technology than on circumstance. Operators who are growing, navigating complex regulatory environments, or facing staff turnover may find the case for automation makes itself. Those running stable, well-managed portfolios may want to look to solutions that make them more competitive in an already competitive climate. What’s clear is that the conversation is no longer one-sided — and that vendors like Ai Lean are finding more operators willing to have it than they were even a few years ago.

About the Expert: Luke Shardlow is the CEO of Ai Lean, a compliance and collections platform designed for self-storage operators. With a background in investing, he brings a financial perspective to the question of how technology can reduce risk and improve efficiency across the sector.