Merit Hill Capital Pays $18M For Davie Self-Storage Facility
Merit Hill Capital CEO Elizabeth Schlesinger and the self-storage facility at 5370 South University Drive in Davie (Merit Hill Capital, Google Maps)
Merit Hill Capital scooped up a self-storage facility in Broward County for $17.5 million.
An affiliate of Merit Hill, a Brooklyn-based real estate firm focused on self-storage properties, acquired the 72,401-square-foot building at 5370 South University Drive in Davie, according to records.
The seller, an affiliate of Pasadena, Calif.-based real estate investment firm Everest Properties, paid $4.8 million for the 4.5-acre site in 1999, records show. The building with 20 self-storage units was completed in 1989.
The deal breaks down to $242 a square foot.
The facility’s units range from as small as 5 feet by 10 feet to 20 feet by 45 feet, according to RentCafe. Monthly rents are $52 to $525.
Merit Hill, led by founder and CEO Elizabeth Schlesinger, owns 234 self-storage properties spanning 15.6 million square feet in 33 states, including Florida, according to the company’s website.
In 2020, Merit Hill paid $3.9 million for a CubeSmart-managed self-storage complex in Homestead, records show. Last year, the company acquired a four-building self-storage property in Royal Palm Beach for $13.6 million.
South Florida ranked fifth in the nation in new self-storage construction between January and June, according to RentCafe. The tri-county region experienced a 30 percent annual boost in new construction in the first half of the year, with more than 4 million square feet of self-storage development underway.
Self-storage monthly rents have also jumped significantly in South Florida. The average monthly rent for a 10-foot-by-10-foot unit was $168 in the third quarter, up 17 percent compared to the same period of last year, RentCafe found.
This month, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.-based Prime Group Holdings paid $35 million for a recently completed self-storage facility in Fort Lauderdale. And last month, San Antonio-based Lynd unveiled plans to build a $30 million self-storage building near Dadeland Mall in Kendall, an unincorporated area in southwest Miami-Dade County.
