Over the last few weeks you have probably heard about the Self-Storage Aggregator issue that has been burning through our industry.  First I would like to acknowledge Randy Smith for the solid white paper he wrote on the issue.  You can review this white paper at http://www.nostorageaggregators.com.   I would also like to say that he isn’t wrong about the threat.  Quoting one of my industry colleagues “he’s probably about 3-5 years early”, which is great because as a society we tend to let small problems become larger problems before we address them.   I have used a few different aggregators in my self-storage operations and have mixed feelings about them. The aggregator issue is not the cause of our industry’s problem but just a symptom of a larger problem that looms in the self-storage industry.