Report: Pasco County locality leads nation in self-storage growth

If you need somewhere to store your things, Pasco County’s Wesley Chapel is the place to go.

According to report from RentCafe, in the past 10 years the county locality has seen its storage capacity skyrocket 672%, jumping from 76,000 square feet to 587,000 square feet.

That leap lands it as No. 1 on the top 10 list cities for storage growth in the country between 2014 and 2024. (Wesley Chapel is not officially a city but considered an unincorporated census designated space.)

Two other Florida localities made the top 10 as well, according to the apartment and self-storage search website. Wildwood, outside of The Villages, was No. 2, with a 443% increase to 715,000 square feet of storage space. And Middleburg, a suburb of Jacksonville, was No. 7, with a 319% increase to 485,000 square feet of storage space.

The rest of the list was spread out across the country with cities in Texas, Wisconsin, Maine, Massachusetts and California all seeing triple digit increases.

In Wesley Chapel, the growth in storage space — like its growth in housing and retail — is being driven by more people moving to the area. The report found that the central Pasco locality saw its population increase 53% between 2014 and 2023.

It seems, the report’s authors write, that “every new household comes a wave of belongings, and self-storage has stepped in to help manage this overflow.”

The report notes one other factor in its findings on Wesley Chapel: The growth in storage space is unlikely to slow down anytime soon.

The area currently offers about 4.6 square feet of self-storage per capita, which remains well below the national benchmark, “suggesting there’s still plenty of room for further expansion.” 

(A RentCafe spokesperson did not respond to a question about what the national benchmark is.)