Extra Space Storage Methodology for Living & Moving Guides 

A goal of the Extra Space Storage blog is to provide thoroughly researched posts to help relevant audiences in various life stages make the most informed decision about when to visit somewhere or where to move—whether it’s a new area in town, another state, or across the country. The Extra Space Storage team strives to provide accurate and up-to-date information in our area guides, including various factors people would need to know when moving or visiting a locale—such as cost of living, crime rates, job market, local things to do, restaurants, education, and more.

How We Source Our Data & Research

All of our blog posts are objective—statistics are featured more prominently in content that highlights the best cities and neighborhoods across different regions for different demographics with various priorities.

These blog posts include:

• Best Places: Guides to the best neighborhoods and surrounding areas aimed to help readers learn the best places to buy or rent in a certain metropolitan area.
• Best Cities: Guides to the best cities in the U.S. based on a certain demographic or interest (e.g. young professionals, retirees, outdoor recreation, etc.) aimed to help readers determine the best place to live or visit.
• Best Neighborhoods: Guides to the best neighborhoods within a city based on a specific demographic or need (e.g. safe and affordable, young professionals, families, etc.) aimed to help readers choose where to live.
• Buying vs. Renting: Guides outlining a city’s buying and rental market aimed to help readers determine if they should purchase or rent a home.

We obtain our data from the following sources:

• 1st Tier: Our team primarily uses AreaVibes, which sources its information from the United States Census Bureau, Council for Community & Economic Research, USA.gov (part of the U.S. General Services Administration), and FBI uniform crime reports, in addition to sources like OpenStreetMap, Environics Analytics, and more.
• 2nd Tier: Redfin and RentCafe are used if data from our first tier is unavailable, inaccurate, or outdated.

Subjective Considerations 

Our team rigorously combs through local blogs, news articles, government webpages, interactive forums, and trusted local expertise to obtain information that supplements our content. By seeking solutions to readers’ concerns or issues, we align our research and writing process to create content that matters to them.

Community Research

Our team will conduct comprehensive topical research on cities, neighborhoods, and suburbs to learn more about the details of an area. In addition to topic research, we will carry out an in-depth competitive analysis to ensure our content covers a broad range of ideas that readers would find helpful. Typically, we use primary sources like government-collected statistics, news articles, and relevant local sources like Zillow or Weather Spark. For more local insights, we review several online sources like local social media groups, local blogs, and online reviews to get a sense of the local sentiment of an area. Additionally, our research team uses personal, lived experience in addition to information from trusted sources like AreaVibes, Niche, Yelp, Reddit, Quora, and more to further our understanding of how a place is regarded by local residents or real people—rather than regurgitating information deduced by statistics.

How We Choose Locations for Our Posts

Extra Space Storage serves the United States, so our blog post locations are markets or areas near our storage locations to best serve residents living and working there, and people looking to visit the area.

Once we’ve determined the blog post’s market, the content strategy and editing teams craft posts based on several questions a person might have when researching a new city or neighborhood—like safe areas to live, which areas are best for renting versus putting down roots, affordable places to live near, work, and more. Ultimately, the question(s) we answer for our audience guide our content and help determine which cities, neighborhoods, or suburbs are published on a blog post—in addition to several additional factors.

How We Choose Neighborhoods 

Our data and community research—with our readers’ goals top of mind—are evaluated against several factors to help us determine which neighborhoods best meet a person’s needs. During times in which we’re limited by what our objective data resources can provide, we may sacrifice accurate area boundaries, though never sacrifice quality or accuracy in content.

Here are the most important factors we consider for our most frequent local post types.

1. Audience-Based Living & Moving Guides

• Best Neighborhoods for Singles & Young Professionals:
• Affordability
• Nightlife
• Accessibility (i.e., to jobs, things to do, etc.)
• Best Neighborhoods for Families:
• Family-Friendliness
• Location
• Outdoor Recreation
• Best Neighborhoods for Retirees:
• Affordability
• Accessibility
• Outdoor Recreation

2. Values-Based Living & City Guides

• Safe, Affordable Neighborhoods:
• Crime Rate
• Affordability
• Jobs
• Best Places to Buy a Home:
• Percentage of owner-occupied homes
• Location
• Accessibility
• Best Places to Rent a Home:
• Percentage of renter-occupied homes
• Accessibility
• Affordability
• Should You Buy or Rent a Home?:
• Percentage of owner-occupied homes
• Percentage of renter-occupied homes
• Affordability

How We Choose Cities

For broader blog posts with larger scopes—like our Most Affordable Places to Live posts or Best Cities for Vacations series—we use a unique set of factors to help readers make the most data-informed decisions. Similarly to how we choose neighborhoods for our moving guides, we choose cities for our moving and lifestyle guides by considering things to do, affordability, weather, outdoor recreation, and more. Additionally, we focus on markets that have Extra Space Storage facilities present.

Our Writing & Editing Process to Ensure Quality Content

Writer and digital content specialist Mike Beutler is the primary author of the Extra Space Storage blog—in addition to overseeing a highly trained team of content strategists and editors. This professional and experienced team of digital content creators first sources objective data and information about what a potential new resident or visitor would want to know about an area, then conducts community research before sourcing real images and videos from real people living in the featured areas. Each post is then passed between collaborators for meticulous edits, careful revisions, and strategic review until the content meets our quality standards for online audiences—and aligns with goals that readers have or questions readers are seeking dependable answers to.

Our Commitment to Readers

Extra Space Storage strives to create accurate moving and living guides that address the needs of our readers. Our content will use primary sources (both local expertise and data resources) to provide insights about the best places to live, eat, work, go to school, and be entertained in each given neighborhood, suburb, city, state, or region. In addition to always providing high-quality, factual, and engaging content, our blog posts will be regularly updated, maintain a consistent brand voice, and note whether the content is sponsored.

Regular Content Updates

The Extra Space Storage team is committed to regularly updating our posts approximately every two years with new, relevant information to ensure our blog continues to be a trustworthy resource for our readers. During these updates, we switch out locations if they no longer meet our criteria-informed metrics for area inclusions that already qualify for the purpose of the post. Our team also checks and fixes broken links on a monthly basis and regularly replaces outdated local recommendations to ensure our content stays fresh and helpful to our readers.

Optimistic Tone for Enjoyable Content

Our team pledges to maintain a factually accurate blog written in a positive tone for enjoyable but helpful reading purposes. Extra Space Storage is truthful about topics in an area and describes such areas in a positive way that empowers readers to overcome challenges and seek creative solutions. For example, some neighborhoods, suburbs, or cities have not-so-desirable features like harsh winters or bad traffic, which residents and potential visitors can mitigate by taking advantage of solutions given in our helpful content.

Non-Sponsored Content

While our blog doesn’t have recurring sponsors, our content is written for places in the U.S. where our customers are likely to work and live. Using the range of local resources given above, the Extra Space Storage team will describe local and regional businesses only to provide our audience with an authentic idea of what is available in those featured areas—not for any kind of sponsorship. Extra Space Storage will occasionally work with influencers who are experts in their field, however, and always note when we do this.

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