How to Use Occupancy Metrics to Grow Your Self-Storage Facility

Occupancy is one of the most frequently cited metrics in self storage, but quoting a single percentage doesn't tell you much about how your business is actually performing. That's because occupancy can be measured in different ways, and each approach tells you something different.

Unless you know what you're looking at, you could be making decisions based on a partial picture.

If you want your facility to grow, not just operate, you need to look under the hood.

Using Metrics as Feedback

Most operators don’t need to be told to track metrics, they’re already keeping an eye on reports, checking their software, reviewing trends. The challenge isn’t a lack of numbers, there is plenty of noise to drown out the signal. It’s knowing what those numbers are actually telling you, and what you can do to drive them.

When we talk about a data-driven mindset, we’re not talking about spreadsheets for the sake of it. We’re talking about using data as feedback, signals that describe the current state, how things are changing, and give you ideas for what to change in your business that will improve those metrics.

That’s what we mean by popping the hood. When talking about occupancy, break it out more to get more nuance to drive better decisions. To grow, you need to understand what’s driving your occupancy. And to do that, you need to look deeper.

Breaking occupancy into its components is one of the clearest ways to do just that.

Unit Occupancy: What Percentage of Units Are Filled?

Unit occupancy tells you what percentage of your available units are rented. It’s easy to track and widely used, and for good reason. When you want a quick pulse check on how much activity your leasing is generating, this number gives you a simple view.

It’s especially useful for spotting rental momentum. A dip could suggest a lead or conversion problem. A rise may show that pricing, promotions, or seasonal demand are doing their job.

Use unit occupancy to:

• Track general leasing activity

• Monitor trends in move-ins and move-outs

• Compare performance across locations or unit types

But while unit occupancy is helpful, it doesn’t factor in unit size or rent rate. You could be full of 5x5s and still missing revenue potential. And since your valuation is likely tied to square footage, unit occupancy only gets you partway to understanding how your facility is performing.

That’s where physical occupancy, measured by square feet, steps in.

Physical Occupancy: How Much Rentable Space Is in Use?

Physical occupancy, sometimes referred to as square-foot occupancy, measures how many of your rentable square feet are currently occupied. It brings unit size into the picture, so you’re not just asking, "how many units are full?" but rather, "how much space is actually in use?"

This helps you understand whether you’re maximizing the footprint of your facility. If unit occupancy is high but physical occupancy lags, you’re likely filling smaller units while larger, higher-value ones sit empty.

This also takes into account the space that is being used for administrative purposes to help run the business.

Use physical occupancy to:

• Evaluate space utilization

• Compare actual usage to facility capacity

• Detect whether unit mix aligns with market demand

Economic Occupancy: The Revenue Reality Check

Economic occupancy tells you how much of your facility’s revenue potential you’re actually capturing. It’s the percentage of your potential rental income (at full-market rate) that’s currently being collected.

Note: Be careful when calculating economic occupancy. Accurately estimating your “full market rate” requires market research and a clear understanding of rate expectations by unit type. If you're guessing at that baseline, the economic occupancy number may give a false sense of underperformance, or overperformance.

Economic occupancy accounts for discounts, promotions, legacy tenants paying below-market rates, and delinquencies. That makes it the clearest signal of how your business is actually performing financially—not just how full it looks.

Use economic occupancy to:

• Monitor real revenue performance

• Understand the impact of pricing strategies and concessions

• Spot leaks in collections or revenue management

What it won’t tell you alone:

• Whether the issue is lack of demand or pricing misalignment

• Which unit types are underperforming in your market

• How conversion issues might be limiting your rent roll

Example: If you're at 85% unit occupancy but only bringing in 65% of your potential revenue, it means your economic occupancy is lagging behind your unit occupancy. Whether that’s a problem or an intentional strategy depends on your current business goals and context.

All types of occupancy should be interpreted alongside your strategy, and dependent on whether you're in lease-up mode, running promotions, or targeting stabilized revenue.

Putting the Three Together: A Diagnostic Snapshot

Each type of occupancy tells you something different. When you look at them together, you start to get a multidimensional view of what’s happening at your facility.

Let’s say you see something like this:

• Unit occupancy: 90%

• Physical occupancy: 80%

• Economic occupancy: 65%

This gives you a place to explore growth. For example, that could mean you’re filling lots of smaller units, maybe with discounts or promotions, while bigger units sit empty and revenue potential is underutilized. What ideas could you come up with to improve your facility performance now?

On the other hand, if:

• Unit occupancy: 65%

• Physical occupancy: 90%

• Economic occupancy: 88%

You might be doing a great job maximizing space and revenue with fewer, larger units. Or you may simply have fewer units total, but they’re the right size and price for your market.

The key takeaway? These numbers aren’t good or bad on their own. They’re tools. Use them to look under the hood, diagnose what’s actually happening, and start asking better questions about how to grow.

Track and Compare Your Own Metrics

Ready to put this into practice? We’ve created a simple spreadsheet where you can input raw numbers, units, square footage, and revenue—and automatically calculate all three occupancy types. You can use it to track trends over time or compare across locations.

Want input from our team? You’ll also have the option to share your data with us for personalized insights. We’ll help you interpret what the numbers mean and identify opportunities to improve. Just fill out the form at the bottom of this page and we'd be glad to support you.

📈 Want help deciding how often to track each occupancy type, and what decisions each one supports? Stay tuned for our upcoming article on When to Measure What, where we break down timing, frequency, and actionable thresholds. Read it here →

[Download the Occupancy Tracker →]

Conclusion: A Better Way to Grow

Occupancy is more than just a number. When you break it into its components, unit, physical, and economic—you get more than data points. You get insight. And insight drives curiosity and ideas that can help you to reach your goals. 

So many reports are full of noise and the signal is buried and often even when the signal is clear, it's hard to know what actions to take in response.  You can use metrics like these as part of a feedback loop: set a goal, try something, measure the impact, and refine. That’s how real growth happens.

And your website should fit right into that loop. At The Self Storage Website Company, we believe your site shouldn’t just look good, it should drive a key business metric. That means measuring where users come from, why, how they engage, where they drop off, what converts, and what doesn't. It means designing your digital presence to support your goals, not just your brand colors.

If you're building an empire in self storage, your metrics should work for you. This is one of the places to start. Use them to look under the hood, diagnose what’s actually happening, and start asking better questions about how to grow.