By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) - Blackstone Group Inc (N:BX) has reached an agreement to buy Simply Self Storage from Canada's Brookfield Asset Management Inc (TO:BAMa) for about $1.2 billion, a spokeswoman for the asset manager said late on Sunday.
Blackstone's non-traded real-estate investment trust, known as BREIT, is acquiring the 8 million-square-foot portfolio of self-storage facilities, the spokeswoman said, confirming an earlier report from the Wall Street Journal.
Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Brookfield was exploring a sale of the real estate company.
The Canadian company acquired Simply Self Storage for $830 million in 2016 when it had 90 locations.
The self-storage facilities provider now operates more than 120 locations across 23 U.S. states, including Texas, Florida, New York and California, according to its website.
BREIT, which was launched in 2017 and has a net asset value of $19 billion, plans to continue to buy smaller assets in the fragmented industry and run them under the Simply brand, Tyler Henritze, head of acquisitions in the Americas for Blackstone's real-estate group, was quoted as saying by the Journal earlier on Sunday.
Self storage has remained resilient through economic cycles, evident more so during the COVID-19 pandemic as people no longer tied to office locations have moved out of cities or gone to stay with relatives, Henritze said.