📦 10 storage markets zoning can't touch

👋 Hello, Best Ever readers!

In today’s newsletter, self-storage markets emerge, office demand hits a post-COVID high, retail shrinks to fit, a Senate bill freezes billions in build-to-rent investment, and much more.

Today’s edition is presented by Accounting First Group. While most investors are focused on real estate and credit, Accounting First Group is executing a private equity roll-up — acquiring accounting firms at 4–6x EBITDA and targeting exits at 12–14x EBITDA. The initial $1.9M tranche is partially filled and closing soon. Learn more.

📩 Join us on May 7 at 1pm ET for a free training with securities attorney Seth Bradley as he walks you through the exact system for building a compliant, scalable Fund of Funds in under 60 days. Register here.

Let’s CRE!

🗞️ NO-FLUFF NEWS
CRE HEADLINES

🏢 Office Inflection: U.S. office demand has reached its highest level since before COVID in Q1 2026 — up 18% QoQ and 13% YoY — led by finance, legal, and tech tenants even as office-using employment declined 0.5% YoY.

🏗️ Supply Retreat: Just 75,205 apartment units delivered in Q1 2026 — the lightest quarterly volume in four years — as the South saw its first sub-40,000-unit quarter in 16 quarters and the construction wave continues to unwind.

🤖 Automation Demands More Space: Contrary to assumptions, warehouse automation have expanded industrial footprints rather than shrinking them — higher clear heights, wider column spacing, and power access requirements are driving sustained demand for new Class A construction over retrofitted older stock.

🛍️ Retail Thinks Smaller: Tenants are downsizing to smaller footprints in prime locations, while landlords subdivide big-box vacancies and experiential, wellness, and fast-casual concepts absorb the spaces traditional retailers left behind.

🏘️ BTR Freeze: A Senate bill's seven-year forced-sale provision has frozen at least $3.4 billion in build-to-rent investment across 14 firms — representing roughly 10,000 units — even before becoming law, as lenders and investors exit the sector entirely.

🏆 TOP STORY
WHILE SOME CITIES BAN STORAGE, THESE MARKETS BUILD

In a recent newsletter, we highlighted cities that have moved to ban self-storage development, pushing operators toward adaptive reuse as the only path to new supply. But while that debate plays out in some markets, a different story is unfolding elsewhere — in secondary metros where in-migration is accelerating, demand is durable, and the development pipeline is still open.

Yardi Matrix's annual ranking of the top 10 emerging self-storage markets for 2026 maps exactly where that opportunity is concentrating. Florida markets dominate the list again, but the common thread running through all 10 isn't geography — it's population movement landing in places where storage infrastructure is still catching up to demand.

• No. 1–2, Florida Leads: Jacksonville claims the top spot after rising from second in 2025, supported by a healthy labor market and a pipeline representing 15.4% of existing inventory — 11 facilities under construction and 20 more planned. Sarasota-Cape Coral holds second, with the largest storage footprint on the list at 22.8 million net rentable SF and a development pipeline equal to 30.8% of existing stock. Both metros sit above the national average of 7.8 net rentable SF per capita, yet construction activity remains robust.

• Nos. 3–5, Southeast and Sun Belt Momentum: Savannah-Hilton Head rises to third on the strength of port-driven economic growth — the Port of Savannah handled 5.7 million TEUs in 2025, up 2.6% YoY — with a pipeline at 21.5% of existing inventory. North Central Florida drops to fourth despite Ocala topping U-Haul's 2025 Growth Index for the third time, while Nashville climbs to fifth with a tight 2.9% unemployment rate and annualized rent growth of 0.8% — outperforming the national 0.3% gain.

• Nos. 6–10, Secondary Markets Finding Their Footing: Boise, Eugene, Charleston, Reno, and the Appalachian region round out the list — each driven by in-migration and affordability rather than gateway market scale. Boise carries the highest per-capita supply at 16.0 net rentable SF per person, more than double the national average, yet development continues at a measured pace. Appalachian leads the group on rent growth at 3.6% YoY, the strongest increase on the entire list. Charleston outperforms on rent growth as well at 2.6% YoY, backed by a No. 7 ranking on U-Haul's 2025 Growth Index.

Nationally, advertised street rates rose 0.3% YoY as of December 2025 — a meaningful improvement over the 2.3% decline recorded in December 2024. With 54.2 million net rentable SF under construction and 43.6 million SF projected to deliver by year-end, supply is active. But in these 10 markets, demand has shown it can keep pace.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The self-storage markets worth watching in 2026 aren't the ones with the lowest supply — they're the ones where population movement is consistent enough to absorb it. In-migration remains the most reliable demand signal in this sector, and the markets on this list have it in volume.

🤝 TOGETHER WITH ACCOUNTING FIRST GROUP
ACCESS A PRIVATE EQUITY ROLL-UP STRATEGY

While most investors focus on real estate and credit, private equity firms have long generated outsized returns by consolidating fragmented industries.

Now, that strategy is opening to individual investors.

Accounting First Group is acquiring accounting firms at 4–6x EBITDA, integrating them into a single platform, and targeting exits at 12–14x EBITDA.

With two acquisitions completed and 8–10 more planned, the platform is already in motion.

Key Highlights:

• ~3x modeled equity multiple

• Cash flow ramping to 30%+ as the platform scales

• Diversified exposure across multiple operating businesses

⏰ Initial $1.9M tranche is partially filled and expected to close soon. Get the investor deck here, and click below to schedule a call with their team to walk through the opportunity and answer any questions.

💰 CRE BY THE NUMBERS
CAP RATE PROJECTIONS, CLASS B STRENGTH, AND MORE

🏦 Mid-7% 

Cap rates are projected to drift into the mid- to high-7% range by 2037, according to Hines Research, following a ratcheting path consistent with the 1966–1981 inflationary period — when cap rates rose more than 500 bps over 15 years. Investors who mistook early rate cuts for durable reversals during that era were repeatedly disappointed as inflation reasserted itself.

📈 +5.2M SF 

Four-quarter rolling office absorption reached +5.2M SF in Q1 — the highest level since early 2020 — as demand strengthened consistently across a broader set of markets. Sublease availability fell 25% from its Q1 2024 peak to 101M SF, and the construction pipeline dropped to just 0.3% of total U.S. office inventory, the lowest level on record this century.

🏠 60% 

Nearly 60% of first-time homebuyers now rely on parental assistance for down payments, according to Yardi Matrix, effectively closing off the ownership ladder for renters without that support. The dynamic is reinforcing Class B multifamily's position as the market's most durable segment, with renewal trade-outs holding firm even as new-lease rates soften across Sun Belt markets.

▶️ BEST EVER WEBINARS
BUILD A COMPLIANT FUND OF FUNDS

Most capital raisers hit the same wall. The legal structure, investor portal, deal page, and sponsor relationships all exist — but piecing them together on your own means months of guesswork, five-figure attorney bills, and deals falling through the cracks.

On Thursday, May 7 at 1pm ET, securities attorney and Tribevest CLO Seth Bradley walks you through the exact system for building a compliant, scalable Fund of Funds from the ground up — in under 90 days.

You'll learn:

• The one structure that replaces risky co-GP arrangements

• How Fund of Funds economics actually work

• How to access institutional sponsors with live deals

Free to attend. Register now 👇

🎙️ THE BEST EVER CRE SHOW
WHY THE CO-GP MODEL IS QUIETLY DYING

The co-GP model that powered a decade of capital raising in private real estate is quietly being dismantled — not by the market, but by regulators who've decided they've seen enough.

On a recent episode of the Best Ever CRE Show, securities attorney and RaiseLaw founding partner Seth Bradley broke down why the structures most capital raisers have relied on are legally indefensible, and what a compliant business actually looks like.

• The Core Problem: Paying someone a percentage of capital raised and calling them a co-GP doesn't make it legal. The law doesn't care about titles — it cares about what people actually do. If compensation is tied to how much capital someone raises, that's broker-dealer activity, and it requires a license most operators don't have.

• The Three Buckets: Every person involved in a capital raise fits into one of three categories — active participant, passive investor, or third party. The compliance failures happen when people operate in one bucket while claiming to be in another. A co-GP who does nothing but raise capital isn't an active participant. They're an unlicensed broker.

• The Replacement Model: The fund-to-funds structure solves the compensation and licensing problem cleanly. The fund manager raises capital for their own fund, which then invests as a single passive investor into target deals. The lead sponsor gets one clean check. The fund manager owns the investor relationships. Nobody is getting paid to raise capital for someone else.

The shift is already underway. Lead sponsors are pulling back from co-GP arrangements, sophisticated LPs are asking harder questions about who's actually running the deal, and the operators still relying on the old model are carrying legal exposure they may not fully appreciate.

🎙️ Listen to Seth’s full episode here.