Storage Condos in Minnesota

Storage condos in Minnesota exist because at some point a rented unit stops making sense. You are paying every month for space you will never own, in a building you had no say in, holding things worth considerably more than the box they sit in.

The Hide Out Supermax Suites in St. Michael sells deeded storage condos — twenty-two by forty feet, fourteen-foot overhead doors, clear height of twenty-five feet, built from concrete and structural steel. You buy the suite. It is yours.

Owned, Not Rented

A self-storage unit is an expense. Every payment leaves and does not come back, the rate goes up when the operator decides it goes up, and after ten years you have a stack of receipts.

A storage condo is real estate. You hold the deed. You can sell it, borrow against it, pass it on, or keep it and stop thinking about rent entirely.

People do the arithmetic on the monthly number and stop there. Run it out ten or fifteen years instead, and put an owned asset on the other side of the ledger.

What You Are Storing

Nobody buys a storage condo for cardboard boxes. These suites hold collector cars, restored trucks, boats, motorcycles, campers and equipment, and in several cases a workshop and an office besides.

The demising walls between suites are reinforced concrete block. Concrete is noncombustible — it does not burn — and it does not pass your neighbor’s air compressor through to your side. Natural gas radiant in-floor heat comes with the suite, and concrete floors hold that heat evenly. Security is private gated entry with cameras, not a padlock.

Height Is Storage

Square footage is the number everyone quotes. Cubic footage decides how much actually fits.

Clear height at The Hide Out is twenty-five feet. Most buildings in this category advertise sixteen to eighteen feet, which stacks two vehicles. Twenty-five feet stacks three — and to be specific, three trucks are stacked on a lift in one of the smaller suites right now, a four-inch lift kit on top, a standard pickup in the middle, another four-inch lift kit on the bottom.

The eighteen-foot concrete mezzanine, measured from the wall out to its face, is rated at 120 pounds per square foot live load. That is a published number. It is worth asking anywhere else what theirs is rated for, and whether you get one at all.

The Floor Goes In After You Buy

Each suite’s concrete floor and underground plumbing are poured after purchase, to your layout. Nothing has been decided for you.

The practical version: if you would rather put the bathroom and wash tub upstairs on the mezzanine and keep the entire ground floor clear for vehicles, that is available to you. It is not available in a building where the rough-ins are already in the ground.

What Comes With The Suite

100-amp electrical service with one outlet. Natural gas radiant in-floor heat with a gas boiler. Plumbing stub-in and an individual water meter. An eighteen-foot concrete mezzanine rated at 120 lb/sq ft. Concrete floors. Insulated exterior walls. Windows and a fourteen-foot overhead door. A fiber line to the suite. Private gated entry with cameras. Air conditioning is an owner option.

The exterior block is integrally colored, so there is no paint and no siding to redo. The parking lot is full concrete rather than asphalt, which matters after a few Minnesota freeze-thaw cycles.

Compare that list against a finished price somewhere else rather than a starting price, and do your own math.

It Does Not Have To Only Be Storage

Owners here use their suites as offices, as shops, and as somewhere to have people over. This is a commercial building, so a business can own a suite and you can legally run a business out of one — no retail storefront, visits by appointment. A few bought a suite and moved into a smaller townhome, because the space they actually wanted was never the extra bedroom.

Owners also get golf cart access to Fox Hollow Golf Club through a tunnel that runs under the main road, and the indoor pickleball court is open. The site backs onto about ten acres of pond and a wooded hill left undeveloped — the wildlife photographs owners take from their own doorways are not staged.

The sales office is Unit D14, 5000 Odessa Ave NE, St. Michael, MN 55376. Call (855) 843-4433 or get in touch and we will walk you through one.