Catalyst Investment Partners closed on 23 industrial outdoor storage properties this year through two funds in its IOS series. All together, the investor has acquired properties in eight markets in the eastern U.S.

The company further says that the two funds, Catalyst IOS Fund I and II, are seeking over $500M of assets all together, though it didn't say how much more IOS that would represent on top of the properties it bought this year. Catalyst focuses on infill IOS properties with access to ports and highway corridors.

Industrial outdoor storage properties are typically used to store vehicles, equipment and other materials in a secure outdoor facility. As industrial demand spiked since the beginning of 2020, so has demand for IOS, though it isn't clear yet what impact the recent relative softening of the industrial market will have on IOS.

IOS has a number of features that have been attracting investors in recent years. It is, for example, perceived as a property type with fairly low maintenance costs, but also sticky tenants, according to the speakers at Bisnow’s Industrial Outdoor Storage webinar early this year.

IOS can represent a chance for large private equity firms, or anyone else with a hankering for industrial real estate, to diversify their portfolio, they said.

Relatively limited supply of IOS — and supply barriers to new product in urban markets — has also helped spur investor interest, ALM Globest reports, estimating that the market for the sector is roughly $200B.

Some investors have done quite well with IOS. Last last year, JPMorgan Chase and Realterm Logistics paid WPM Commercial founder Price Muir $53.5M for 40 acres of industrial land in metro Atlanta. Muir and his partners had assembled the site, a truck parking location called Transport City, for just under $10M.