The file prices one self-storage store from its unit mix to a bid. Six unit sizes and 590 units advertise at £32.65 a square foot; the rent roll, built from cohorts of arrivals rather than read off a lease schedule, actually collects £35.93, a 10.0% gap that is an operating record, not a market fact. The store breaks even at 36.3% occupancy and is asked at £8,431,807, a 6.05% initial yield. Ten years of cash flow, the sale at exit and the debt discount to an internal rate of return of 6.44% against an 8.45% required return, so the price that would earn that return, once acquisition costs are paid, is £7,279,056, 13.7% below the asking price. Every one of those numbers is a formula you can move.
Download the template
One Excel file, no macros, nothing locked. No account, no email address.
Eleven working sheets, in the order the calculation runs, after a Read Me. Inputs are blue type; two of them, the response exponent and the background departure hazard, carry most of the answer and sit on a yellow fill.
2. The tape
Six unit sizes in one building: units, area and the advertised rate, weighted up to a total.
3. Assumptions
Every scalar input in one place, including the two the whole file turns on and the seven debt terms.
4. Survival and stay
The departure hazard month by month, higher just after an increase, and the length of stay it implies.
5. The rent roll
One row per cohort of arrivals, each still paying the rate it moved in on: the rent roll is the sum of the column, not a schedule.
6. Income and costs
Revenue and costs by line, net operating income, and the break-even occupancy where the fixed costs stop being covered.
7. The customer
What one customer is worth over their stay, what one costs to acquire, and what a move-out actually loses.
8. Checks
Fifty-six figures the book prints set against what the model computes, with a verdict on each line.
9. The lease-up curve
Five years of a new store built cohort by cohort, month by month, including the month it first earns money.
10. Ten years and the bid
Ten years of cash flow, the sale at the exit yield, the internal rate of return, and the bid that would earn the required return after acquisition costs.
11. The increase decision
The rent increase that maximizes net operating income, found in closed form, and how flat the answer is around it.
What the worked pro forma returns
Measure
Value
Units
590
Advertised rate
£32.65/sq ft
In-place rate
£35.93/sq ft
Break-even occupancy
36.3%
Asking price, at the initial yield
£8,431,807
Internal rate of return, after acquisition costs
6.44%
Required return
8.45%
The bid that earns the required return
£7,279,056
Discount to the asking price
13.7%
Read the advertised rate and the in-place rate as two different prices, not one price quoted twice. The advertised rate is what the website shows a new customer today; the in-place rate is what the whole store actually collects, averaged over customers who arrived at different times, at different discounts, and have climbed a different number of increases since. The 10.0% gap between them is the reason a rent roll cannot be read off a schedule the way a leased asset’s can. At the asking price the store returns 6.44% against an 8.45% required return, a shortfall wide enough that the bid a buyer can justify sits 13.7% below what is being asked, not a rounding adjustment to it.
How to use it on your own deal
Overwrite sheet 2, the unit tape, with your own unit sizes, counts and advertised rates.
Overwrite sheet 3, the assumptions, starting with the response exponent and the background departure hazard: they decide more of the answer than anything else in the file.
Check sheet 6 before anything downstream. If the break-even occupancy sits above what the store actually runs, the rest of the file is describing a loss, however the ten-year cash flow looks.
Read sheet 10 for the bid, not the asking price on sheet 6: the bid is what the required return on sheet 3 actually justifies, after acquisition costs.
Keep the Checks sheet: once you change inputs it stops matching the book, which is expected. Use its structure for your own tie-outs.
Questions people ask about it
Is this self-storage financial model really free?
Yes. It is a companion file to a book. There is no sign-up, no email address and no paid version.
Does it use macros or circular references?
No macros and no circular reference: each cohort’s rent is a function of the months since it moved in, and the rent roll is the sum of those cohorts, not a loop that feeds on itself. The file recalculates in Excel, LibreOffice or Google Sheets without iterative calculation.
Why build a rent roll from cohorts instead of a lease schedule?
Self-storage has no leases: a customer can leave with a month’s notice, so there is no schedule to read a rent roll off. The model instead tracks each month’s arrivals as a cohort that decays against a departure hazard and carries whatever increases it has been given, and sums the surviving cohorts to get the rent roll, the occupancy and the in-place rate.
Can I use it for a real acquisition?
You can reuse the structure. The store, its unit mix and every figure in it are fictional, and nothing here is investment advice.
The rest of the files
This template is one of the companion files for Self-Storage Real Estate: the full set adds the Lease-Up Tracker and the Rate Increase Planner it links to, a bid sheet, the same four workbooks with every input emptied, forty self-marking questions, three unworked cases and thirteen printable working documents. Free, like this one.