Merit Hill Picks Up Another Broward Self-Storage Facility

South Florida is going through a mini-surge of self-storage deals, with Merit Hill Capital picking up its second Broward facility in less than a month.

An affiliate of Brooklyn-based Merit Hill paid $17 million for Pines West Storage Center at 400 Northwest 172nd Avenue in Pembroke Pines, according to records and Vizzda. The buyer secured a $15.1 million mortgage from Citibank, the deed shows.

The deal for the facility with 326 units breaks down to roughly $52,000 per self-storage unit.

The seller, an entity managed by Richard Collum, president of Pembroke Pines-based Collum Management, bought the 5.6-acre property for $1.1 million in 1996, records show. A year later, Collum completed the four-building complex.

Managed by Extra Space Storage, Pines West offers units ranging in size from five-feet-by-four-feet to 10-feet-by-20-feet, according to the self-storage facility’s website. Monthly rents range from $25 to $451.

Less than four weeks ago, Merit Hill, led by CEO Elizabeth Schlesinger, bought a Davie self-storage facility for $17.5 million. The firm owns 234 self-storage properties spanning 15.6 million square feet in 33 states, including Florida, according to the company’s website.

In the past two years, Merit Hill paid $3.9 million for a self-storage complex managed by CubeSmart in Homestead, and $13.6 million for a four-building self-storage site in Royal Palm Beach, records show.

South Florida has experienced a flurry of self-storage trades in recent weeks. This month, San Francisco-based TPG Real Estate Partners and Miami-based Value Store It acquired a three-story self-storage building in Weston for $18.5 million. In November, Saratoga Springs, New York-based Prime Group Holdings paid $35 million for Riverbend Self-Storage, a four-story building with 886 storage units in Fort Lauderdale.

South Florida saw a 30 percent annual boost in new construction of self-storage in the first half of the year, with more than 4 million square feet of development underway, according to RentCafe.

Contact Francisco Alvarado