Colliers' De Jong Self Storage Team has launched a dedicated buy-side representation service for investors acquiring self storage assets, expanding the team's long-standing listing and advisory work. The move matters because it addresses a persistent inefficiency in the self storage investment market: buyers often lack the tools and resources to efficiently identify and evaluate available properties.
Led by Executive Vice President and Founding Principal Tom de Jong, SIOR, the team says about half of its transactions this year have represented buyers rather than sellers. That shift reflects growing demand for buyer-focused advisory in a sector where listings are scattered across LoopNet, Crexi, List Self Storage, individual broker websites, and dozens of other sources.
The new service brings on Colin Phelan, who spent the past 10 years at a family office acquiring self-storage properties, where he was directly involved in underwriting, financial analysis, and acquisitions. Phelan and Dylan de Jong are building systems that compile available self-storage listings from across the market and categorize them by market, price, and other criteria. The team is currently tracking 453 active listings.
"If a buyer calls and says, 'I'm looking to get into the self storage space, and I'd like to spend up to $5 million,' we can send them 50-plus listings right away," said de Jong. "Depending on the requirement, that could be anywhere from 20 to 100 opportunities."
The team pools listings in one place, pre-screens each opportunity, runs a quick analysis and underwriting, and recommends which properties fit the buyer's buy box. "We're focused on building tools that help buyers be much more efficient," said de Jong. "There are a hundred different places you can go to find listings. We pool all of that based on our years of experience, so buyers see the full universe of what's available. Then we do the screening, so they don't have to go through each listing to find the good and the bad."
"You could call us your outsourced acquisitions team," de Jong added.
According to the team, most self storage buyers go unrepresented, seeing only what is actively marketed and underwriting off numbers the seller has built. The buy-side service covers deal sourcing, operator-level underwriting, and support through closing, including debt and equity coordination and post-close operational setup.
The launch signals a broader shift in commercial real estate brokerage toward more specialized, data-driven advisory services. By centralizing listing data and providing underwriting support, the De Jong team aims to give buyers a more comprehensive view of the market and reduce the information asymmetry that has long favored sellers. The De Jong Self Storage Team at Colliers provides full-lifecycle brokerage and advisory for self storage owners, developers, and investors nationwide, from site selection and development through stabilized asset sales and buy-side representation. Led by Tom de Jong alongside his son Dylan de Jong and Colin Phelan, the team has closed more than $2 billion in self-storage transactions across 32 states.
