Spotlight: SmartStop, the Listed Self-Storage REIT Behind the Strategic Storage Trust Programs

The NYSE-listed REIT still sponsors non-traded REITs and DSTs for the broker-dealer and RIA channel, and uses them to incubate properties it may later buy.

November 5, 2026

SmartStop Self Storage REIT (NYSE: SMA) owns and operates self-storage facilities in the United States and Canada. Through its subsidiary SmartStop REIT Advisors, it also sponsors the Strategic Storage Trust family of non-traded REITs and DST programs, which are sold through independent broker-dealers and RIAs. As of Nov. 4, 2026, the Ladera Ranch, Calif., company reports an owned or managed portfolio of about 475 operating properties in 36 states, the District of Columbia and Canada, totaling more than 36.7 million rentable square feet.

SmartStop began in the same non-traded channel. In a July 2026 shareholder letter, founder, chairman and CEO H. Michael Schwartz writes that the original SmartStop REIT was sold in 2015 for $1.4 billion and returned an average of more than 15% a year, net of fees, over its nearly eight-year life; a 2021 company release names the buyer as Extra Space Storage. The current company was formed in 2013 as Strategic Storage Trust II and became self-managed in June 2019 by acquiring the advisory and property management business of its sponsor, SmartStop Asset Management. It listed on the NYSE in April 2025 with $931.5 million in gross offering proceeds, according to the letter, and has since issued Canadian-dollar senior notes, most recently a CAD $200 million series due 2031.

The managed REIT platform

SmartStop REIT Advisors sponsors Strategic Storage Trust VI, a public non-traded REIT that set a $10.00 estimated share value in March 2026, and Strategic Storage Trust X, a private perpetual-life NAV REIT launched in February 2025. Until Nov. 1 it also sponsored Strategic Storage Growth Trust III, a private REIT with its own DST programs. At Sept. 30, 2026, the three held 52 operating properties and roughly $1.0 billion in assets under management. SmartStop earns asset management, property management and acquisition fees from them and receives substantially all of their tenant protection program revenue.

Schwartz's letter describes the programs as an incubator. As their mostly unstabilized properties lease up, they become candidates to move onto SmartStop's balance sheet. In June 2026 SmartStop bought three facilities in the Spartanburg, S.C., area from DST subsidiaries of SSGT III for about $29.7 million, in a deal approved by governance committees of both boards. Properties have moved in the other direction too. SmartStop bought a facility in Murfreesboro, Tenn., in February 2025 intending to sell it to SST X, which bought it that November as its first property.

On Nov. 1, 2026, SST VI acquired SSGT III in an all-stock merger that valued SSGT III's real estate at about $500 million. The combined REIT owns 37 wholly owned facilities in ten states and three Canadian provinces, plus beneficial interests in three DST programs holding eight properties. SSGT III's advisory agreement ended for a fixed $2.0 million paid in operating partnership units, and SmartStop continues to advise the combined company. SST VI describes itself as the third REIT with more than $1 billion in assets built by the SmartStop management team and its affiliates.

Third-party management

On Oct. 1, 2025, SmartStop acquired Argus Professional Storage Management, which the letter describes as the second-largest independent third-party storage manager in the U.S. The recorded purchase price of $32.1 million includes a maximum $11.0 million earnout measured on 2028 revenues. At Sept. 30, 2026, SmartStop managed about 230 stores for outside owners, who can choose the full SmartStop brand, a SmartStop Legacy option that keeps their own brand on SmartStop's systems, or private-label management with more owner control. All three run on dash, SmartStop's proprietary operating platform, which the letter says makes more than 4 million pricing decisions a month.

Canada and the Deca Initiative

The letter calls SmartStop the largest operator in the Greater Toronto Area, where it runs 35 properties at margins about 400 basis points above its markets without clustering. On Sept. 29, 2026, SmartStop agreed to invest about CAD $74.3 million in Strategic Storage Canada, a fund expected to own 14 properties in early lease-up. The investment carries a 50% general partner interest, an initial limited partnership interest of about 34%, five-year property management contracts and a right of first offer, plus a commitment of up to CAD $228 million more over three years, subject to general partner approval. Pending Competition Act approval, SmartStop expects the deal to make it Canada's third-largest self-storage operator, with 70 properties, and to add Halifax and Quebec City.

The letter groups this activity under The Deca Initiative, a six-part plan aimed at $10 billion in total capitalization. In the third quarter SmartStop also started a program to sell $75 million to $125 million of properties beginning in early 2027, in non-core markets where it owns one or a handful of stores, and to recycle the proceeds into markets dense enough to share on-site staff, marketing and revenue management.