Selling Self Storage: FSBO vs. Using a Broker (An Honest Comparison)
Key Takeaways
- Selling your self storage facility without a broker (FSBO) can work — but only under specific circumstances.
- FSBO sellers typically leave 10–20% on the table compared to a broker-run competitive process.
- A broker’s commission (3–6%) is often more than offset by higher sale prices driven by competitive bidding and institutional buyer access.
- FSBO makes sense for deals under $1M where you already have a buyer lined up. For anything above $2M, the math strongly favors using a broker.
- The “right” answer depends on your deal size, complexity, and how much time you’re willing to invest.
We’re going to give you something rare in the brokerage world: an honest comparison.
Most broker websites will tell you that selling on your own is a catastrophic mistake. Most FSBO advocates will tell you that brokers are overpaid middlemen. The truth — as it usually does — lives somewhere in the middle.
We’ve been on both sides of this equation. We’ve represented sellers who came to us after failed FSBO attempts, and we’ve seen owners successfully sell on their own. Here’s what we’ve learned about when each approach works, when it doesn’t, and how to make the right call for your situation.
What FSBO Actually Means in Self Storage
“For Sale By Owner” in self storage isn’t quite the same as sticking a sign in your front yard. You’re selling a commercial real estate asset — often worth millions of dollars — that generates income, has complex financials, and attracts sophisticated buyers.
FSBO in self storage typically means you’re handling every aspect of the transaction yourself: determining your asking price, finding buyers, negotiating terms, managing due diligence, and navigating the legal complexities of closing.
Some owners interpret FSBO as simply listing on LoopNet or reaching out to a buyer they already know. Others try to run a full marketing process themselves. The complexity — and the risk — varies enormously depending on which approach you take.
The Honest Case for FSBO
Let’s start with the reasons selling on your own can make sense. We mean this genuinely — there are scenarios where hiring a broker isn’t the best use of your money.
You Save the Commission
This is the obvious one. Self storage broker commissions typically range from 3% to 6% of the sale price, with most falling in the 4–5% range. On a $4 million sale, that’s $160,000 to $240,000 you keep in your pocket.
That’s real money. Anyone who dismisses it isn’t being honest with you.
You Maintain Full Control
When you sell on your own, every decision is yours. You choose who to talk to, when to respond, what terms to accept. There’s no intermediary interpreting your priorities or managing the process on your behalf.
For experienced business owners who are used to running negotiations, this control can be valuable. You know your facility better than anyone, and you may feel confident representing it directly.
It Works When You Already Have a Buyer
Here’s the scenario where FSBO makes the most sense: you already know who’s buying your facility.
Maybe a neighboring operator has expressed interest. Maybe a tenant with deep pockets has been asking about acquisition for years. Maybe a family member or business partner is taking over.
When you have a willing, qualified buyer and a relatively simple transaction, paying a broker 5% to facilitate a deal that was going to happen anyway is hard to justify.
Smaller, Simpler Deals Favor FSBO
If you own a single facility worth under $1 million with straightforward financials and no significant complexities — no environmental issues, no lease disputes, no deferred maintenance — the transaction is simpler. The universe of potential buyers is smaller, and the stakes are lower. A competent real estate attorney can handle most of what you’d need.
The Honest Case Against FSBO
Now for the other side. These aren’t scare tactics — they’re patterns we’ve observed across hundreds of self storage transactions.
Your Buyer Pool Shrinks Dramatically
This is the single biggest issue with FSBO, and most owners underestimate it.
When you sell on your own, you’re limited to buyers you can find and reach directly. In practice, that means local operators, LoopNet browsers, and maybe a few contacts in your network.
What you’re missing: the institutional buyers. The REITs, private equity funds, family offices, and regional consolidators who pay the highest prices for self storage assets. These buyers don’t browse LoopNet. They work through broker relationships. They have acquisition teams that review hundreds of offerings and respond to brokers they trust.
The difference isn’t marginal. In many cases, FSBO sellers never even know these buyers exist — or that they would have paid significantly more.
No Competitive Bidding Means Lower Prices
A broker-run sale process is designed to create competition among qualified buyers. Multiple parties tour the facility, submit offers, and compete for the deal. This competitive tension drives prices up — often substantially.
When you sell FSBO, you’re typically negotiating with one buyer at a time. That buyer knows they’re your only option (or one of very few), and they price accordingly. There’s no urgency, no fear of losing the deal, and no competitive pressure to sharpen their offer.
The result: FSBO sellers consistently underprice their facilities by 10–20% compared to what a competitive process would have achieved. On a $4 million facility, that’s $400,000 to $800,000 left on the table.
Pricing Mistakes Are Expensive
Most self storage owners have a general idea of what their facility is worth, but “general idea” and “accurate market valuation” are very different things.
Common pricing mistakes in FSBO sales:
- Underpricing based on outdated cap rates. The market has shifted significantly in recent years. A cap rate assumption that was reasonable in 2022 might cost you hundreds of thousands in 2026.
- Overpricing based on emotional attachment. You built this business. You know what it’s worth to you. But the market doesn’t care about sweat equity — it prices based on income, location, and growth potential.
- Ignoring value-add potential. Sophisticated buyers will pay for upside they can capture. If you don’t know how to present and price that upside, you’re leaving money on the table.
- Misunderstanding what buyers actually pay for. NOI is the foundation, but buyers also evaluate management platform potential, expansion opportunities, rate optimization, and market dynamics. FSBO sellers often price on NOI alone.
The Time Investment Is Enormous
Selling a self storage facility isn’t a side project. A typical transaction takes 4–8 months and involves preparing marketing materials, fielding inquiries, conducting tours, negotiating offers, managing due diligence, and coordinating with attorneys, accountants, and lenders.
During this entire process, you’re also running your facility. Every hour you spend on the sale is an hour you’re not spending on operations, and vice versa.
We’ve seen FSBO sales drag on for 12–18 months because the owner simply didn’t have the bandwidth to manage the process effectively.
Emotional Negotiation Kills Deals
Here’s something nobody talks about: when you’ve owned and operated a facility for 10, 15, 20 years, you’re emotionally attached to it. That’s natural. It’s also a liability in negotiation.
Buyers will criticize your facility during due diligence. They’ll point out deferred maintenance, question your revenue numbers, and ask for price reductions. When a broker handles these conversations, they’re business discussions. When you handle them personally, they feel like personal attacks.
We’ve watched FSBO deals fall apart because the seller got offended by a reasonable due diligence request. A broker provides an essential emotional buffer that keeps deals on track.
Legal Exposure Is Real
Commercial real estate transactions involve significant legal complexity: purchase and sale agreements, representations and warranties, environmental disclosures, tenant notification requirements, and more. Mistakes in any of these areas can create liability that far exceeds any commission you saved.
An experienced broker doesn’t replace your attorney, but they ensure the process is structured correctly from the start, reducing the risk of costly legal issues down the road.
The Case for Using a Broker
Beyond addressing the FSBO disadvantages above, a good self storage broker brings several distinct advantages.
Access to Institutional Capital
The biggest buyers in self storage — public REITs like Public Storage and Extra Space, private equity firms like Carlyle and Brookfield, and large regional operators — acquire primarily through broker relationships. These buyers have dedicated acquisition teams that review offerings from trusted brokers.
A good broker doesn’t just list your property. They know which specific buyers are actively acquiring in your market, what they’re paying, and what deal structures they prefer. They can pick up the phone and have a conversation with a decision-maker at Extra Space Storage in a way that no FSBO seller can.
Competitive Process Drives Price Up
This is where the math gets interesting.
A broker-managed sale process is engineered to maximize competitive tension. The typical approach looks like this:
- Confidential marketing to a curated list of qualified buyers
- Multiple facility tours and management presentations
- A structured offer deadline (call for offers)
- Best and final round among top bidders
- Selection based on price, terms, and certainty of close
This process consistently produces higher prices than bilateral (one-on-one) negotiations. In our experience, the competitive premium ranges from 10% to 20% compared to what the same facility would have sold for in an off-market or FSBO transaction.
They Handle Complexity
Self storage transactions can involve complex issues: environmental concerns, lease assumptions, property tax reassessments, zoning restrictions, expansion entitlements, and management transition planning. An experienced broker has navigated these issues dozens of times and knows how to address them without derailing the deal.
Confidentiality Management
When you sell FSBO, word gets out. Your employees, tenants, competitors, and vendors will eventually learn that you’re selling. This can create operational disruptions: key employees start looking for other jobs, tenants wonder about rate increases, competitors smell blood.
A broker manages the sale confidentially. Potential buyers sign NDAs before receiving any information. Marketing is targeted, not public. Your employees and tenants don’t know the facility is for sale until you’re ready to tell them.
The Honest Case Against Using a Broker
We’d be contradicting the title of this article if we didn’t acknowledge the downsides of hiring a broker.
The Commission Is a Real Cost
A 5% commission on a $4 million sale is $200,000. That’s not nothing. For smaller deals, the commission can feel disproportionate to the service provided, and in some cases, it is.
You Give Up Some Control
When you hire a broker, you’re trusting someone else to represent your most valuable asset. A good broker will keep you informed and involved in every major decision. But you’re no longer calling every shot — and for owners who are used to being in charge, that adjustment can be uncomfortable.
Choosing the Wrong Broker Is Worse Than No Broker
Not all brokers are created equal. A generalist commercial real estate broker who occasionally sells a storage facility is very different from a specialist who does this every day.
The wrong broker can underprice your facility, market it to the wrong buyers, mismanage the process, and ultimately cost you more than you would have lost selling on your own. If you’re going to use a broker, choose one who specializes in self storage and has a verifiable track record.
Let’s Do the Math
Here’s where most FSBO-vs-broker comparisons fall apart — they focus on the commission without considering the net outcome. Let’s run the real numbers.
Scenario: A stabilized self storage facility worth approximately $4 million.
FSBO Sale:
- You find a buyer through your network or LoopNet
- After negotiation (with no competitive pressure), you agree on $3.6 million
- No commission paid
- Your net proceeds: $3,600,000
Broker-Managed Sale:
- Broker runs a competitive process, generating multiple offers
- Competitive tension drives the final price to $4.2 million (a conservative 15% premium)
- 5% broker commission: $210,000
- Your net proceeds: $3,990,000
The difference: $390,000 more in your pocket with a broker — even after paying the commission.
This isn’t hypothetical. We see this pattern consistently. The broker’s competitive process creates value that far exceeds the cost of the commission.
Does it work out this way every single time? No. If your FSBO buyer happens to be an aggressive institutional acquirer willing to pay full market price, you’ll come out ahead without a broker. But that scenario is the exception, not the rule.
When FSBO Makes Sense: A Decision Framework
Based on everything above, here’s our honest recommendation for when selling on your own is a reasonable choice:
- Deal size under $1 million. The commission savings are more significant relative to the deal size, and the buyer pool for smaller facilities is less institutional.
- You already have a qualified, willing buyer. If someone has been trying to buy your facility for years and you’ve agreed on general terms, a broker may not add enough value to justify the cost.
- Simple transaction with no complications. Single facility, clean financials, no environmental issues, no expansion complexity.
- You have commercial real estate transaction experience. If you’ve bought and sold multiple commercial properties, you understand the process and the pitfalls.
When You Need a Broker
Conversely, here’s when we strongly recommend using a specialist self storage broker:
- Deal size above $2 million. The institutional buyer pool becomes critical at this level, and the competitive premium more than covers the commission.
- You want access to institutional buyers. REITs, PE funds, and large operators pay the highest prices. You can’t reach them without a broker.
- Complex deal structure. Portfolio sales, value-add stories, expansion opportunities, environmental issues — complexity favors professional representation.
- You want a competitive process. If maximizing price is your priority, a structured competitive sale is the most reliable way to achieve it.
- Confidentiality matters. If you don’t want employees, tenants, or competitors to know you’re selling, a broker’s confidential marketing process is essential.
- You don’t have the time. Running a sale process while operating your facility is a full-time-plus commitment.
The Bottom Line
Selling FSBO isn’t always a mistake. Using a broker isn’t always the right call. The answer depends on your specific situation: your deal size, your buyer relationships, the complexity of your transaction, and your own experience and bandwidth.
What we can tell you with confidence is this: for the majority of self storage sales — particularly those above $2 million — the math strongly favors using a specialist broker. The competitive premium generated by a well-run sale process consistently exceeds the commission cost, often by a significant margin.
The owners who regret their decision most aren’t the ones who paid a commission. They’re the ones who sold FSBO and later discovered they left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.
Not sure which path is right for your facility? Let’s talk — no obligation, no pressure. We’ll give you an honest assessment of whether a broker makes sense for your specific situation, and if FSBO is the better call, we’ll tell you that too.
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