Easing the space squeeze
As prices in the U.S.'s inflated housing market have climbed higher and higher, some builders have struggled to hold down costs by constructing homes and apartments that are smaller and smaller. Closets are shrinking, attics are disappearing, basements are becoming ground-level concrete slabs. The result for more and more families is one of the oddest new shortages of all: storage space.
Now the homeowner's headache is becoming the entrepreneur's opportunity. While the housing market remains flattened by mortgage rates that are approaching 17% in many parts of the country, business is booming for a hybrid real estate product known...