Guide · updated
Why did my storage unit price go up
A storage rate increase is not a mistake and it is usually not negotiable by argument. It is the end of an introductory price. What the letter does not tell you is what the same company is charging a new customer at the branch down the road this morning — and across 168 US markets that figure varies by a median of 112% inside a single city.
The increase is scheduled, not personal
Almost every self-storage rate starts below what the unit will settle at. The advertised figure is an introductory online rate; the rate the unit reverts to is published alongside it, in advance, on the same page you booked from — and across 4,617 locations it sits at a 1.50× multiple of the introductory one. Nothing about that is hidden; it is simply never put in front of you as a single number. How those two rates relate is a guide of its own, and what a quote leaves out covers the rest of the gap between the figure you were quoted and the amount that leaves your account.
So the useful question is not why the price went up. It is whether the new price is a good one — and that is answerable, because every competing branch publishes its own.
The spread inside one market
Across 168 markets with at least 5 priced locations, the gap between the cheaper and dearer end of a single market's 10×10 runs a median of 112%. That is the tenth to the ninetieth percentile, not the two most extreme branches — the genuinely typical distance, with the outliers on both ends already removed. In 101 of those markets the dearer end is at least double the cheaper end.
The cheapest branch in a market sits a median of 46% below that market's own middle. Not below the dearest — below the median. Half the locations in a typical city are priced above a number that some branch in the same city is already advertising.
- Louisville, KY $63
- Mesa, AZ $78
- Charleston, SC $78
- Whitehall, PA $107
- Gallatin, TN $110
- Brick, NJ $113
- Santa Rosa, CA $164
- Boca Raton, FL $212
What that looks like in one city
Mesa, AZ sits closest to the typical market in this respect, which is why it is the example rather than the widest one. It has 31 locations pricing a 10×10. The cheaper end advertises $50, the middle $78 and the dearer end $106 — a 112% spread, for the same size, from the same company, in the same city. You can see every one of those locations and its price.
What to do with the letter
Three checks, in the order that costs you least:
What this page cannot tell you
Every price here is what a branch advertises to a new customer. This index has never seen an existing customer's bill, cannot see your increase letter, and cannot tell you whether your own rate rose or by how much. It also does not include insurance, administration fees or taxes, and it covers Public Storage only — other operators do not publish per-location pricing in a form that can be read. What it can do is put a public number next to the one you were sent. How these prices are collected sets out the rest.