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We have reached the time of year when we reflect on the lessons learned in 2024 and set our sights on 2025. Without question, 2024 proved to be a very challenging year. There was real anxiety related to soft market fundamentals, rising interest rates which made most investment reports irrelevant, and pricing discovery on every deal. In many ways, 2024 was not that much different than 2023.  What we do know is that the investment market has continued to evolve and the overall outlook for 2025 is cautiously optimistic.  Over the last 3-6 months the Fed has started to cut interest rates and provided insights into potential future interest rate cuts for the coming year. However, the impact of the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts on the self-storage industry will be minimal at best and will not have an immediate impact on cost of capital to self-storage investors or property valuations.  But it will have an impact on consumer confidence and market sentiment while also having a trickle-down effect to self-storage customers.  We have also started to see improvement in leasing velocity and rental rates seem to be stabilizing according to Yardi, but it is too early to tell if the market has bottomed.