If You Invested $1,000 in Life Storage in 1995, This Is How Much You Would Have Today

Long-term growth in the short-term storage industry has made this sector attractive to investors for years, and Life Storage (NYSE: LSI) is hardly an exception. The chart below shows how Life Storage -- one of the largest real estate investment trusts (REITs) in the self-storage market -- would have turned a $1,000 investment into $33,470 since its 1995 initial public offering, compared with $12,370 in total return for the S&P 500. You couldn't exactly have bought Life Storage shares back then.