Investing in self-storage facilities is booming, but navigating the market in today’s economy takes a seasoned pro – and that’s exactly who Stacy Rossetti chats with in this episode! Dive deep into the world of self-storage investing with Bree Hartman, founder of Self Storage School, as they candidly discuss the current state of the market. Bree shares her journey from field biologist to fitness entrepreneur to self-storage mogul, revealing how she built a thriving portfolio of 100,000 square feet of storage in Louisiana and a new deal in Arizona. Join these two dynamic women as they unpack the strategies for finding deals, securing financing, and managing facilities, all while juggling motherhood and business ownership. This is a no-nonsense, real talk session about the self-storage niche, perfect for anyone looking to break into commercial real estate or level up their investment game.
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review & share! https://stacyrossetti.com
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
The Stock Market Is Down But Storage Investing Is Strong With Bree Hartman
I am here with Bree Hartman and we are going to be talking about the storage market and like what is happening in the economy and is storage still a great idea to be investing in. We’re going to hear Bree’s story, we’re going to talk a little bit about mine and then just get into like what we’re feeling, what the vibe is in the industry right no. Especially for us because there’s two women in this industry trying to make it. I think I’ll be a very good session. Bree, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself and you can get started.
Biology To Self-Storage Ownership & Balancing Parenthood
I’m so excited to be here and doing this. My name is Bree Hartman. I’m from Sacramento, California. I am the owner of Storage House Group. We currently own about 100,000 square feet of storage in Louisiana. We also have a deal in Arizona. I think just getting into storage, just real quickly, I was a field biologist, I was telling you, with my lizard.
For seven years, I worked for Fish and Game and then it transitioned into actually starting a business. I started a fitness business, went through COVID for 2020 to 2024 and then sold that business. I got pregnant and you know when you get pregnant and start thinking about having a family, you have this vision of, “I’m a solopreneur. I’m working 60-plus hours a week and I want more. I want something different.”
That really propelled me to getting one accidental rentals, bought another house and then made it a rental. I thought, “$400 a month of cashflow. Yes, this is amazing.” I thought that was going to be the vehicle. I quickly did the math. I was like, “I’m going to need twenty houses to actually have that passive income.” As I was painting actually all the doors and all the walls in that house, I heard a podcast about self-storage and when they said no toilets, no tenants, no employees, less issues, I was like, “This is the asset class I want to really explore.” That’s how I got into self-storage. Having this vision and I think even for you, Stacy, wanting to live life differently and then being like, “How can I go about doing that? What is a great vehicle?”
I love that storage is a commercial real estate and it’s a business. That really coupled myself wanting to do just business right. That’s a little bit about my story and the transitions from just going from a solopreneur owning business to now I am wanting to be a mom and a business woman and then going into commercial real estate from one accidental rental. I think there’s a lot of people that think that they have to have all this money to jump into storage. I want to hear about your story too and I feel like you have something very similar in the sense of wanting more and having this bigger vision with life.
We actually have the same vision too, the same story because I actually got pregnant as well. When I got pregnant, I was flipping homes and at that time I had about fifteen homes I was flipping at the same time. In my mind, I was thinking, “There’s just no way that I’m going to be able to manage all these homes and then also have this baby,” because I was just like running around like a crazy person.
Especially if you’re renovating homes, you just know that it’s just a ridiculous amount of work. That’s what started my looking into passive income. I wanted to be able to stay home with Lillian and just hang out with her as much as I possibly could and then maybe work like I do work now, which is just sit here and manage everybody.
That’s how I started looking into other real estate investment types of niches and we looked at all kinds of niches. I did commercial, I also had multifamily, we had all different stuff, but in the end, thank God I got into storage. The very first facility that we bought, it wasn’t that big. It was maybe 125 units. It wasn’t a huge, big facility .it had more parking than it did storage units. I really got a taste of not only doing parking but also storage at the same time. That is what got me into it.
After I figured out that you could manage everything with very little effort, then it started really getting me more interested in this niche and stuff. I’m the type of person that buy very rough, ugly looking storage facilities and then we grit our teeth and clean them up and get them all stabilized and stuff. We don’t buy super huge facilities like you. I think you guys buy bigger ones. Do you guys get third-party management or what do you all do?
Yeah, we do actually a couple of both. The larger ones, we to do the third-party so that we can spend more time with acquisitions and then the other ones, we get to do self-management. I think there’s definitely a lot of different options.
When you become a mother, all of a sudden, everything in your mind changes and it’s always about the baby instead. That’s my thought process is. How can I take care of this baby but also maybe work and build a business up and stuff too? Storage really helping with that. To be honest, storage is a means to an end. This is not something I want to do forever and ever. When I think of storage facilities, I think of it’s a product like this is the product that I’m using in order to build wealth for myself and my family. That’s where I’m at right now in my journey. We have a lot of facilities now and we’ve coached and taught a lot of people.
I’m to the point where I’m getting to the end here now. What I love about storage is meeting people in this industry that you can actually work with, that can you connect with and stuff. That’s one thing that I’ve done over the last 5 to 10 years. I all meet all these different people, now I’m just pairing on these deals, syndicating deals, co-sponsoring deals. I started out a little tiny facility. I was 100 units
I love that, Stacy. Especially being moms, being parents and wanting this bigger vision of life, I see you taking Lillian in your RV and going all throughout the US and stopping by the storage facility. I think it’s so awesome that you can become a parent and a business owner and it’s thinking enough what’s the end result. Reverse engineering. Do you want that passive income that brings you cashflow and then also builds your net wealth, which it’s that storage. From there, how do you actually reverse engineer that so that you can still have that life balance and living life options?
I think being able to right manage 10 to 15 facilities from your home is incredible. That’s what attracted storage for me. I was like, “I can automate all these different systems with operations from my home and I only have to have a boots on the ground 1099 that works 10 to 15 hours a week on each of these facilities versus having to employ someone you know full-time. I feel right now even the job market is hard to keep someone that’s actually good. At mcdonald’s, are you kidding me? Trying to employ all those people and these franchises.
Comparing Third-Party Vs. Self-Management Of Storage Facilities
You do third-party management and then you also manage your own. Do you hire own boots on the ground people and manage them as well?
Yeah. What do I like better? That’s a good question. I love the third-party approach, especially if you can get a facility that can support the cashflow and still allow you to reap the benefits. That’s because you’re still the GP, you’re still the owner of it and you’re managing someone else making sure they’re hitting their kpis but not the day-to-day person that’s going to have to put out the fires.
I do love that in that aspect because they’re third-party boutique from these different facilities, but they’re able to get marketing dollars cheaper. They’re able to do the bookkeeping cheaper, they’re able to do some of the advertising and stay on top of AI and all these technology features that are going to help us decrease expenses as business owners. I love that part of it.
On the flip side, are they going to treat your facility as fast as you would? I don’t think so. You have to have this perspective that it will take maybe 6 to 12 months longer than when you first start because that is the timeframe it can take when you get third-party management going and get revving their engines.
When you own it and operate it yourself, you can just get in there real fast and then get that cashflow going and then also learn from your mistakes and then keep moving. I think it’s a question of do you want to continue and spread out, buy back your time so that you can own 10 to 15 of these facilities in doing acquisitions or do you want to become an operator and own just a couple of them?
I think with the third-party management, what you’re saying is that a lot of these, they have so many different companies that they can stay on top of the technologies. What you’re saying is they can be better with books or better at AI or something that. Whereas I’m not even thinking about AI because I’m just trying to manage all the boots on the ground people that I have. That’s good. There are so many different ways to do it. I’m the type of person, too, because I borrow all my money from private lenders and stuff and they’re also just as slow as I am.
When you start syndicating deals out and you get investors in and then you have a timeline on that fund or something, then you have to put the pedal to the metal. As I’ve done all these different types of deals, I am not a syndication type of person. I’m slow and steady wins the race and I have private lenders and did they even extend the notes out because they don’t even want their money back?
That’s what I was going to tell you. I got an email from one of my investors and he just wrote me, “I just want to thank you for being a great investment partner. With all the crazy up and downs going on in my stocks and bonds, it’s nice to have money invested with you that has a solid predictable return. We’re going on twelve years together. Thank you for everything.”
Building Long-Term Trust With Private Lenders For Sustainable Growth
Just stop right there because that is huge. To pull back the curtains here, when you go to grow, buying your third or your fourth using private money and then having people that know, like, and trust you for years and that have gotten a return. Especially right now just with the stock market being shaky as well as syndications who did not plan accordingly, good operators are going to rise above and beyond.
Those are the people that you’re going to continue giving cashflow to them and showing them how good you are in bad times. The people that stay with you, that’s the whole goal. Private money lenders, we give them money and then we return the money to them after 3 to 5 years or 7 years and then they go do it again. Why wouldn’t they? Why would they not want to go do it again? That just shows volumes of who you are and how good you are as a steward.
The one thing I love about this investor too is we started out many years ago and we’ve had a couple of notes that come due and he’s always like, “Just extend it out another five years.” We just extended one of our notes, it was a five-year note, and I was like, “Do you want me to roll that money into something else or do you want me to pay you back? Do you want me to sell it?” He’s like, “No, let’s just extend the note out again.” I’m very slow and steady too. When we buy our facilities, it does take us a long time to get stuff done because we know it’s just private money, whatever. We’ll just do whatever. We’re very slow.
It’s interesting because the twofold. I think there’s three avenues that you can go. You can go buy it yourself. You might be by your first two properties yourself with maybe other partnerships and JV partnerships to spread out the equity and the risk and then you can run out of funds. You have to go either to the private money sector or you’re going to become a syndicator.
Good operators will excel, and they are the ones you'll continue to provide cash flow to, demonstrating their value even in challenging times. Share on XWhat is important in that middle section is that we still own, we are the majority, the GP of these deals. A lot of these syndications that are having a lot of trouble right now have to feed the beast, which means that, yes, they are deploying money but they are sometimes buying acquisitions at too high of prices in these past couple of years and they’re can get in trouble.
The loan has too high of an interest rate or something. I have one student that has a loan on a property that was a variable rate and he’s stressed out a little bit but he’ll be fine. Just as long as the note is okay, if the terms are okay or the interest rate is okay. That’s the thing. I think it’s really important. I pay 10% interest on my private lenders. I was like, “I pay more than everybody else right now.”
I think that’s because having the skillset of finding good storage deals no matter what market we’re in right now. I love talking about this. Even I talk about this with my storage school students. Finding good storage deals where people aren’t looking right and can you buy it for the right price? Can you structure it with seller financing to reduce a little bit of that risk? From there, how can you add value to it? Is there enough runway on that backbone to increase?
Price is important. I think there is a secret sauce to this that even the brokers sometimes don’t even know. It’s the building of the relationships, the negotiation, that follow up, the follow through and then also being we aren’t syndicators, we’re there just like them, mom and pop owners that want to buy storage facilities and continue the legacy. I think that is such an important skill and if you have that skillset, you’re only going to continue to come to the table with more properties and more opportunities for you.
Finding Niche Deals In Today’s Storage Market
Also, because of the market, and he mentioned this in that letter, in that email. He said, “With all of the crazy ups and downs in the stock market and my bond investments, I’m so glad that I’ve invested with you because I know exactly what you’re be making.” What that means is that I have private loans for my facilities with interest rates anywhere from 6% to 10% depending on the deal. He’s given me as low as 3% and as high as 12%. Overall, about 6% to 10%.
He’s been investing with me for many years and he’s made $1 million off of me. The point is that I found these types of investors, and they are out there, so you have to make sure that when you get into commercial real estate or you get into storage investing, it’s super-duper expensive to be able to buy storage facilities and there’s a lot of different ways to buy.
Everybody always thinks there’s 1 way or 2 ways. Go to a bank and get a loan. Ultimately, for a lot of the deals, you can find people that are interested in alternative investing. I call it alternative wealth building, alternative investing, which is people that are open to just working directly with you. The same concept as going directly to an owner and the owner. You go to the owner and you ask them if they would to sell their property to you. You can also go directly to people and ask them if they’ll just lend the money to you.
That’s what I did. I just want to make sure that that’s out there because right now, there are a lot of people with the bonds going up and down and the stock market’s going up and down and they’re freaking out because they don’t know what’s happening to all their money. People are pulling money out but they have to place that money, they have to move that money and they have to still make money on it.
Hopefully, you understand that in this commercial world that you’re trying to get into or you’re in, acquisitions, finding facilities that are really good, finding good deals is one step, but also finding money is another step. Those two go hand in hand. I’m very successful because of those two qualities. The topic is what’s happening in the market nowadays.
Those two things, finding really good deals, finding owners that want to work with you or finding money, finding people that want to give you money this year, this next year. That is what you should be focusing on. There are so many good opportunities, you make a lot of money in the downturns anyway. You just have to have your awareness and your ears open and you’d be talking to people, talking to all kinds of people right now. That’s my personal opinion. What are you feeling?
Absolutely. I know the question is why is storage still working and where are the opportunities? I’m just going to give this as an example. We’re working to put an LOI and a PSA in with a seller in Arizona. This storage owner, same thing, the relationship is from a cold call and we’ve been working with him for probably eight months just seeing where he is at.
This is a great facility where it’s about 35,000 square feet with an additional acre for RV and boat. What’s fascinating, it’s on the outskirts of growth. It’s not in these main towns where people are there’s public storage and all these routes are coming out. It’s on the outskirts where it has not been the name popping out at anyone.
I always to say tell my students, “We’re not looking for the markets that are popular and hot now. We’re looking where growth is going, where houses are being built and these are the areas that are going to need storage no matter what.” Why we like this deal, it’s going to be seller financing because he has an awful P&L, which we all know. Just haven’t maintained.
He actually has a very fascinating story. He’s a welder, bought this facility for his wife when they did not have kids just to have her have a job and feel like she can support the family. What’s interesting is the gross potential revenue is $21,000 gross and they’re only bringing in $10,000. The money on the table here is because they are not collecting. They know everyone in the town, you know they’re trying to do favors.
The worst thing for storage is when storage is sitting and not collecting payments. That is a really nice value add, instantly being able to buy a facility seller financing and then turn it around and add value by increasing rates to market and then also by improving the operations and the auctions so that people are collecting and that it’s producing at its peak.
I just wanted to give an example of if people want to sell. A question with this market right now is people are like, “Why is 2025 a good time to buy?” I am very bullish. I think this is actually one of the best times to buy. I know people have been talking about this for the past few years, but I actually am seeing this is a really great window from now to the next 24 months, maybe 3 years, where interest rates are high right now in comparison to the past years.
People are willing to do seller financing. The rates have been stagnant for the past 24 or 3 months, haven’t really moved and now, Baby Boomers are like, “I want to sell. I’ve been waiting and this might be the time to sell off right now.” What I’ve been seeing in the acquisition space is more opportunities, people raising their hands saying, “The market is shaky, the stock market is shaky.” Business owners are also going to be hurt in this economic recession. A lot of these Baby Boomers are like, “Should I go now? Is this a really good time to exit?” What are your thoughts on it?
Navigating Interest Rates & Making Offers With Sellers
Honestly, anytime is good to sell. Anytime is good to buy. Really, there’s no good or bad times. Whenever you can do it is when you should be doing it. That’s my personal opinion. Seven percent interest, honestly, that is not bad. It’s not bad at all. People think it’s bad but it’s really not that bad. It’s only bad because you’ve been in a time when you saw it in a time that it’s never happened before.
On average, 7%, 8%, 9% is totally normal. I think you just have to make sure that the numbers work fine. That’s the main thing. Just make sure the numbers work good. What that means is you have to find owners that are willing to work with you based on what, on the numbers that work good. A lot of people are still struggling with that on the sell side. It will change.
Me too, I’m going to be selling my facilities. I want to obviously make as much money as I possibly can, but I also know that this is the world that we’re in now. It’s going to be 7%, it’s going to be 8% so if you want to sell, you have to sell it so that they can at least make a little bit money on the back end too. We call owners every day, all day. That is what we do. You just have to find not really the right owner. It’s just the timing of the owner. It’s the mindset, the time.
Sometimes, it takes a little bit longer. We talked to one owner and he was like, “I’m selling all my properties, I’m leaving the country. The world’s going crazy,” and stuff. Four years ago, that person would never even have thought that. It’s just a timing thing. You just have to catch them right at the right time. What I really to do, and we’ve discussed this, is I like to just come up with a whole bunch of different offers because you just really don’t know what they’re thinking.
They may think that they want cash, but they may need $10,000 a month. That’s what they need. You just have to be really good at coming up with a whole bunch of different offers as well because you just don’t know what their end game is. For me too, I am thinking about selling my facilities and if somebody just came along made me a couple of offers, I’d be like, “Yeah, let’s discuss it,” but nobody does that.
I love this. I think this is so important. I know you talked about it with your students and one of my students, I was like, “Give him a call.” He’s like, “I called him last week and I don’t want to bother him.” I’m like, “No, we need to show him that you’re interested. Show him that you have thought about an offer and put it out there for him,” because a thought or an offer in your head is only a wish. If it’s on paper, that means that is your golden ticket. It’s either a verbal offer, a paper offer, an email. It doesn’t need to be professionally written up. It can just be like, “I would like to give you money. Do you want to do the dance?”
It’s like, “Do you want to date me?” Pretty much. Just wishy-washy talk about it. I had a student in Texas. He is a firefighter and he lived an hour and a half away and so he was like, “Should I call him?” “Absolutely call him.” We called him on one of the office hours and then he went and met him for lunch. Actually going and taking the time, like you, Stacy. You go and meet these owners, you build the relationship and then after that lunch he was like, “Yeah, I’ll sell you the facility.” Instead of $150,000 in cash, he’s like, “I’ll sell it to you for $125,000 because I like you.” It’s because they see themselves maybe fifteen years before with a young family trying to get into storage.
If you are nervous, I guess the best thing you talk about is driving for dollars and picking up the phone. It’s smiling, it’s enthusiasm. It’s like, “Would you ever consider an offer on your facility?” Let them talk. They do say no. That’s okay. Being able to be like, “Tell me how you bought this facility. I’d love to hear your story and how you purchased and how is it doing.” Now that opens it up to that conversation with them to build that know, like, and trust.
You said you’ve been working on your deal for eight months.
Sometimes, the first facility can be the hardest because you're still learning all these foundations. Share on XEight months and that’s normal. Eight months to two years and that’s what I think is different from residential to commercial and some people get really frustrated and they give up too fast because their instant gratification used to closing a house in 15 to 30 days and flipping it and getting that cash in their pocket. Storage is different. If you want to deal, you need to be able to work that pipeline in that flywheel so that you can build the relationships so that you can then close on that deal.
That might happen 6 months, 12 months, 18 months. That’s why we’re always calling. We’re talking to leads, we’re negotiating, we’re putting offers on the table so that you can buy your facility because if you’re not, you are never going to buy one. I think being around the people that it’s what is working such as your community and my school and then we do it together might help. Stacy, if I see one in her area, I’m like, “Stacy, take a look at this deal.” I love that. That’s the best part about storage.
Slow and steady wins the race. One of my students is like, “I’m going to buy three storage facilities. That’s my goal for this year.” I’m thinking to myself, “I can’t even do that and I know what I’m doing.” I’m like, “Why don’t we just focus on the first one? That’s it. Get one.” I remember that that student ended up buying three storage facilities in one year and then after that she told me, she’s like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know why I was thinking this,” because it’s a lot of work. She said, “Storage is completely different from residential.” It just takes a long time to do anything. Honestly, that’s the perfect type of real estate for me because I know everybody thinks that I’m super fast, I’m doing a lot of stuff. The truth is I am slow. I take forever to do things.
I love it. I think the best part about storage, and then we’ll talk about the things that aren’t going so well in the market. I think that’s a fascinating topic too. I think one of my favorite parts about storage is that it’s not immediate. It’s not an emergency. If someone comes and can’t get into the gate, heaven forbid there was a lightning storm or something happened, the power went out for 4, 5, 6 hours, maybe 12 until the technician can come, it’s not their home. It’s not their immediate home that they have to get into. It’s their items and stuff. Yes, it’s important. It can also wait. That’s one of my favorite because I have a lot of colleagues that are jumping into the hotel industry right now.
Boutique hotels. I get it. Airbnb, it’s beautiful, you get to make this beautification. The seasonality. I think it’s 68% expense profile. There’s a lot of levers to push and I’m I don’t want that stress in my life. I want to design a simple life by design that I can own 10 to 15 of these facilities and also have peace of mind that I don’t have to worry about someone drunk on my property in a hotel or vice versa.
There are some things that we worry about but I think there’s just a lot more caveats in other asset classes right now. Why I love storage is because of the simplicity and the automations that you can create. I want to transition gears and say we’ve got a lot of things that are working for 2025. What are some things, Stacy, to look out for that you are seeing right now in the market and just with students?
Realities Of Storage Ownership: Maintenance & Incidents
My husband right now, we’re vertically integrated so we don’t have any third-party management. My husband, he’s CapEx. That’s his job. It’s CapEx or renovations and stuff. We live in Florida and he’s driving up to Atlanta because the cameras aren’t working. That’s one thing that’s super frustrating about storage facilities. There’s always something going that broke on it. It’s either the gates or the cameras or something.
It’s really not a lot of tenant issues. You tell me what you see but for us, it’s hardly ever tenant issues. It’s always the cameras are not working or the gates are not working and that’s the one thing that he’s driving around, he’s fixing that stuff. That’s what he is doing. That’s one something that I think people don’t talk about in the storage industry. What sucks about owning storage facilities? I’ll tell you what sucks, gates and cameras. They suck.
Yes, absolutely. Trying to get Wi-Fi in these middle of nowhere places.
People are like, “I want to buy a storage facility that’s fenced in, has a gate and has cameras.” That’s sounds great and stuff until it breaks, and then it’s like you’ve got to find somebody. There’s not a lot of people to even fix gates. If I was going to start another company up, it’d be a gate repair company because I feel there’s never enough gate repair people out.
I don’t want to do this but anybody reading, this is the great job opportunity. Cameras as well too. If those things break, we just buy solar cameras off of Amazon and stuff. We don’t do anything super crazy. If those break, you have to drive over there and you have to either try to fix it, which is probably impossible, or replace it.
A lot of times, he is replacing a camera that we put up 6 months ago or 8 months ago. He’s replacing that camera is what he is doing. Now the camera itself, they only make $50 or $100 or something like this. Ultimately, that’s something that he does a lot. The repairs on an annual basis, now we have a lot of facilities so it’s a lot of repairs you know because fifteen facilities is a lot. Ultimately, that’s the one thing that is always keeping us busy. It is very quiet with tenants calling. It is very quiet with getting people to move in, move out. He’s sitting here and managing all the marketing and doing that stuff, it is very easy.
Him having to drive up and manage all these repairs, that is really what’s hard. That’s probably where a third-party management company comes in. If you don’t want to be doing that, buy a big enough facility. Bree where you can hire somebody to come in and manage that stuff. My husband is the type of person, if you don’t know Pete and you see videos of him on my youtube page and stuff, if you don’t know him, he is the person that can fix anything.
The self-storage industry will continue to grow because people need storage and enjoy buying things online. Share on XHe just has that mentality that’s like, “I’m not going to hire somebody to do that. I can go over there and fix it. It’d be way cheaper.” That’s why he’s driving around and fixing all of our stuff all the time because he just has that mentality now. He saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars but ultimately, the stress of our lives is when something breaks at a facility.
I would say I’d echo that. You think about some of the worst things and I’ll just name a couple, but I would say we had someone living in one of our units for a month and a half and this was a facility that we did not have cameras on yet. We found out because of a customer review. The thing is storage is a business and it’s commercial. To have a great customer base and to have good reviews is really important. You have to do that now in this age.
We found out through a bad review and he was as harassing a couple other of the tenants. Yeah, having to go about that process of going through a little bit of the courts. Our boots on the ground was really good about going every day. Making it really hard, banging pots, doing the things. A month and a half later, he moved or left. Sadly, I didn’t know this, but he went down to the storage facility down the road and did the exact same thing.
I had no idea. Next time, I will be calling all my neighbors and letting them know to blacklist this person. That was one of those things that you just don’t think about. One last thing is I think when you buy a storage facility, this is really important, is making sure that you get all the utilities. Even if they say they only have 1, they might have 2.
We had four different climate-controlled buildings and we only got one. We thought we only have one utility. There was four different accounts that they had set up because they had built it over time. Just always ask, “Do you have more than one?” Day one, we only had one going and so these are the lessons that you learn. We get to talk about it for our students to be like, “Don’t make the same mistakes that I did and be better.” I think that those are the couples that for us has been a little bit a hard deal.
Over the past few years, we’ve had a couple people, I think maybe 2 or 3 people live in our facilities as well too. Not really too bad. It’s more of a thing now than it was before. We bought a fire damaged facility. It’s a very big facility. It’s 25,000 square feet and there was somebody living in the storage unit and the owner didn’t live really close and didn’t really take care of it. It was severely mismanaged anyways. There was somebody living in the unit and started a fire and then half of the storage facility down. What he did is he collected the insurance money and then he sold the facility to us. Now we got a 25,000 square foot facility for $300,000.
We did put a couple of hundred thousand into fixing it and stuff. It’s a beautiful storage facility now. We had that. Actually, when we bought that facility, there was another person living in the facility. It was a female and it looked she had been there for a while. My husband, he was the one that’s going there and trying to figure out assessing the property, figuring out what to do because we actually bought that one almost site on sale. We went to go look at it and we said, “Yeah, we could fix it. It’s not a big deal.” It wasn’t a big thing for us because it was $300,000 and we’re like, “We could do that.”
It’s $25,000, come on. For 25,000 square feet, $300,000 is nothing. We could figure this one out. He went over there and there was a woman living in the unit and the only reason he knew is because there was a little dog running there running around. She had a little tiny dog with her. He went over and introduced himself and he was like, “We just bought this property. Are you living here?” She’s like, “Yeah, I’m having a hard time right now.” He is like, “You can’t live here. You’re not allowed to live here.” “I need a couple of days to figure it out.” He’s like, “Okay, if you’re going to stay here for the next couple of days, your job is to pick all this trash up.”
She went around and she picked up all the trash and it took her a week to find another place to live. She was like, “They have just been letting me live here for free. I’ll pick up all this trash for you.” That’s how Pete is. He always tries to work with them and stuff. He went down to a woman’s shelter and tried to help her get a room and stuff. In the end, she went to go see was a friend or something. Ultimately, we had that one time as well. Yes, it was a fire damaged facility and there were also people living in this facility too. It was double whammy.
Essential Tips For First-Time Self-Storage Investors
To wrap this up and put that nice little bow on it is the best bonus tips if someone wants to buy their first facility, I think that’s the question that we get all the time. Sometimes, the first facility can be the hardest because you’re learning all these foundations and you’re putting it together and it doesn’t feel great because it’s so new to you. That is why it’s so important to have mentors. One hand up to a mentor, one hand down so that you don’t have to go and do these mistakes yourself. In this market, what is working for a beginner? What would you say? I know that’s a long question but just two things. Two things that you would say to someone that’s just starting out.
I think right now for me, a really big thing is mindset because the market is so nuts right now. I’m telling you, every day I wake up and I’m just like, “What happened today?” That’s really my mindset and I’m just like, “What in the world is going on?” Maybe it’s America, maybe it’s in the world. Everything’s just going crazy right now. I don’t think I’ve ever really felt more stressed out about the economy than I have now. Luckily, I own a lot of storage facilities and I’m going to tell you that our storage facilities are doing fine. There are people downsizing, moving in, moving out. Almost 2,000 storage facilities, one person moved out. Isn’t that crazy?
We had 16 new move-ins and 1 move out. I was like, “Yeah, that’s a good net right there.” Storage is going to be strong no matter what. Just as long as you’re very good at learning how to manage properly your facilities and being on top of that and making your facilities a priority, having and owning a storage facility, it’s good for your wealth and stuff and it’s good for your stress. For me, especially. I want you to understand that investors me or Bree, we know that in a downturn or an upturn, it doesn’t matter what type of a market it is, no matter what, we will be able to make money just as long as we understand a few concepts. We’ve talked about a that a little bit, finding a really good property, talking to owners and really coming up with a really good property with some spread in it, those are out there for sure.
Also, talking to people that are moving their money around right now. I’m going to say most of the United States is doing that right now. Really talking to people and seeing what they’re thinking about, where they want to place their money. That is a really important key factor for me. If I was starting out and I was new, I would be gearing up mentally to be able to talk to owners so I could put really good offers in. Several offers.
Also, educating and understanding and talking to people that are moving their money around and seeing they could be interested in working with you or partnering with you. For me, ultimately those two things right now are the most important things that you could be focusing on outside of just making sure that your mindset knows that no matter what you will be able to do fine if you just keep moving forward and try to just squeeze out all that craziness that’s going on in the world.
Strategic Focus For Beginners: Mindset And Investor Conversations
You summed it up beautifully. I would just echo Stacy and say I think the skillset of finding good deals and building relationships, she nailed it. The two bottlenecks that she just talked about, it’s very true. In economy times, it’s hard to find good deals or where’s the money. Where’s the money coming from so that I can invest it?
Those are two. They’re inverse-related most of the time. When the money’s easy, the deals are hard because they’re highly competitive and the prices are high. Having your pulse on both of those is really important. I think with that is just joining communities what we have our mentorships where you’ve got someone that’s already done it and so you can have accountability but have learn the mistakes and then what is working now and finding deals.
What is working right now? A lot of times, I hear people saying it’s oversaturated and all these things and they’re not looking in the right places. These techniques are a skillset and if you learn that skillset, you bring a piece of that storage deal to a partnership in a group and say, “Stacy, I found this deal. Do you want to go in on it?
I’ll be the operator on the deal but you have the money, let’s partner together and you get to shave off a little bit of equity with no money into that deal.” That is a beautiful situation to be in, in order to grow your net worth. Especially if you’re coming from nothing, which I know both of us did. We started from scratch. I think that is hugely important. Building relationships. Relationship capital is so important.
Stressing the importance of joining the communities, going to conferences, going to the self-storage associations that you live in locally at the state level or even going to ISS in Vegas. Putting yourself around these relationship people that have either brokers that can bring you deals or they’re also vendors to know what you’re going to use for your tech stack and operations. I think preparing yourself for that is important.
You nailed it perfectly. I think the self-storage industry is only going to go up. People need to store stuff. They love buying things on Amazon. I heard a thing about Amazon centers. They can’t build them fast enough and people are trying to house Amazon packages locally in storage facilities. Right now, it’s a fantastic time. I think it’s just in an upmarket. It is always needed when people move in the four Ds and it’s going to only get more and more useful as new growth happens on the outskirts and houses start to be developed. A really good outlook I think for 2025 and into the future. Definitely having a pulse on this asset class as it’s still mom and pop situated right now.
We have an Amazon center that got built in Tallahassee and it’s funny because it’s right over here where I live on the outskirts of Tallahassee. In the process right now, there’s this massive, huge subdivision that’s being built right across from it. On top of that, it’s built right on the 10. It’s also right off of where one of those when you have a highway that crosses over but there’s no on or off ramps, it just crosses over the highway. They’ve approved to build the on and off ramps right there because you know there’s just so much from that Amazon that’s happening. It’s a whole thing.
People love stuff.
Real fast before we leave, I want you to introduce your school and stuff so everybody knows how to find you and stuff and just tell everybody what it is.
Yeah, absolutely. I’m founder of the Self-Storage School and so if you guys want or interested in finding or buying your first facility, definitely reach out. The website is SelfStorageSchool.com and then also, just come by, say hi on Instagram. I’d love to say hi to you. I’m there. I love checking in and seeing people and their faces and their families. Start following me at @Bree.TheInvestor and love to say hi.
I’m really excited to work with Bree because she does coaching and stuff, taking a little chill pill, so if you guys need any coaching at all, Bree is the person. I have StorageNerds Academy and this is DIY. If you want a DIY, check it out. If you want coaching, Bree’s the person and we’re going to be working together in the future and stuff. I’m really excited about that.
I just want to just reiterate one last time that you do not have to be an island. That’s the one thing between me and Bree. If you need help, we are here to help. I’m not a real big social media person so go to Bree for that. Ultimately, we’re here. We’ve got trainings, we’ve got all kinds of stuff for you. If you want to get started, please check us out, the Self-Storage School or StorageNerds and we will hope to see you guys in the next episode. Thank you, Bree.
Thank you. This is great. I can’t wait.
All right, we’ll see you soon. Take care.
Important Links
