Ep 223: Michael Tate - Why Global Capital Loves Self-Storage
From Inside the Rope with David Clark by David Clark
May 28, 2026 · 47 min
About this episode
Michael Tate discusses the psychology and investment potential of the self-storage industry.
Have you ever stopped to consider the psychology behind the clutter in your garage? Or how that consumer vulnerability has quietly morphed into one of the most resilient, high-yield asset classes of the last three decades? For many sophisticated investors, alternative real estate feels like a minefield of over-hyped trends and cyclical volatility. When equity markets get choppy, finding a true counter-cyclical haven with reliable cash flow can feel nearly impossible. In this episode of Inside the Rope , host David Clark sits down with Michael Tate , the co-founder and former joint Managing Director of Storage King . Over a 30-year career, Tate took a highly fragmented, "mum-and-dad" caretaker industry and helped institutionalize it into a multi-billion-dollar asset class that caught the attention of global private equity powerhouses like BlackRock and Brookfield. Tate shares the fascinating behavioral economics driving the industry - from Richard Thaler’s "endowment effect" to the sheer psychology of loss aversion. He explains how selling "the deferment of loss" creates an incredibly diversified, single-digit risk profile that thrives whether the…
People in this episode
Host: David Clark
Guest: Michael Tate
Topics covered
- self-storage
- investment
- behavioral economics
- real estate
- asset classes
- consumer psychology
Keywords
- self-storage
- investment
- behavioral economics
- asset class
- consumer psychology
- loss aversion
- endowment effect
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Storage King, BlackRock, Brookfield
More episodes of Inside the Rope with David Clark
- Ep 224: Kim Morison - The Ultimate Uncorrelated Asset - Water · June 8, 2026 · 43 min
- Ep 222: Anurag Agarwal - The Asset Class That Moves the World: Inside Global Transportation Investing · May 11, 2026 · 1h 3m
- Ep 221: Tim Ivers - Navigating the Liquidity Crunch in Private Markets · April 28, 2026 · 52 min
- Ep 220: David Jenkins - Dot-Com on Steroids Reality Check for the AI Era · April 13, 2026 · 52 min
- Ep 219: Qiao Ma - Is SaaS Dead? The Structural Shift in Growth Investing · March 30, 2026 · 1h 4m
- Ep 218: Chris Aylward - Property Cycles, Leverage, and Skyscrapers to Funds · March 16, 2026 · 56 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Inside the Rope with David Clark podcast page.