Although the self-storage business was relatively easy to enter, because the business concept was very different from the standard real estate investment, obtaining financing to grow had proven a constant challenge for Barbo. In 1985, Barbo gave a recruiting presentation to the MBA students of the Young Entrepreneurs Club at Harvard Business School. Recalled Barbo, “As soon as they found out I was in the storage business, they were off going in another direction. It was clear that self-storage wasn’t people’s dream career.” Self-storage was a capital-intensive, long-term business, requiring investment for several years before a store would rent up (reach a high enough occupancy rate to generate a stable cash flow). When a store reached an 85% occupancy rate (usually after two years in the United States), Shurgard considered the store stabilized. Grant explained:

Self-storage is the most stable real estate business—as an industry, except for the 1988 recession, we’ve had steady, solid growth. A self-storage facility breaks even [before financing charges] at approximately 35% occupancy. It has a low-risk cost structure and doesn’t require much maintenance. But real estate investors require long-term tenant leases for five years into the future. So when we show them just week-long rental contracts, the investors freak out.

In its first 20 years of existence, from 1972 to 1992, Shurgard funded its growth through 24 separate, limited real estate partnerships, in which 80,000 individuals invested $600 million. Barbo added, “In the 1970s we were building properties with money we raised through private limited partnerships—each deal had its own financing. In the 1980s we followed the lead of our competitor Public Storage and created public partnerships to fund our expansion. We raised money in so many different ways that we came to refer to it as ‘just-in-time financing.’” In the early 1990s, Barbo decided to roll up (consolidate) the limited partnerships into one company, incorporated as a real estate investment trust (REIT).7 Commented Barbo, “At the time, the political climate for roll-ups of limited partnerships in the United States was not favorable. I had to go to Washington, D.C. and repeatedly testify before the Senate before we got approval to do the roll-up.” In 1994, Shurgard was able to consolidate most of its partnerships and went public as a single REIT on NASDAQ. In 1995 Shurgard moved its stock listing (SHU) to the New York Stock Exchange.