If you’re buying or selling self-storage facilities, having the right tools can make all the difference. In this video, Stacy Rossetti showcases the top apps for finding self-storage facilities for sale in your area. Our experts provide an in-depth review of each app, highlighting their unique features and benefits for real estate professionals. These apps allow you to search for self-storage facilities by location, price, and other key metrics, providing you with the data you need to make informed investment decisions. Tune in to find out what these must-have apps are for finding self-storage facilities!

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How To Find Self-Storage Facilities Virtually

In this episode, we’re going to talk about finding facilities but what I was going to do is go over some of the apps that I’ve been using to find facilities so that you can have an idea of what those are. I teach finding, funding and running. On the first week of the month, it’s an overview of how to get into self-storage. The second week is finding, funding and then running is how we do that. There’s a plan for the madness. If you are serious about buying a storage facility, then what you need to be doing is to come here on a weekly basis.

The truth is that you cannot learn how to invest in self-storage in one session. I can’t keep teaching every Monday how to get started in self-storage investing because it’s the same thing over and over again. Years ago, I started teaching on Monday nights and essentially every Monday night is a brand new topic. You have to come again because you will get an idea of all the nuances of self-storage investing. I can’t teach you everything but if you do commit to coming on Monday nights, then you’ll learn the overview of how it works.

What I tell my students is of all investing in self-storage, finding a good deal is the hardest part of the whole deal. This is where pretty much I would say 80% of you all are going to be giving up because it takes a lot of time and effort to find a storage facility that fits into the parameters of what you’re looking for. The truth is that we all have different parameters. We all have different ways of looking and different types of deals that we’re looking at.

Finding facilities is the hardest part of the whole thing. Everybody in their mind thinks that money is the hardest part. During the next years, it’s not going to be challenging. Those who are creative win because interest rates are super high. When you have a high-interest rate, you have to offer a low purchase price. Sellers don’t want to sell you a facility with a low purchase price. They came out of the last few years where everybody was paying top dollar and they got a super low-interest rate.

It’s 6 one way and 1/2 the other. You got either high-interest rates and a low purchase price or low-interest rates and a high purchase price. You know what I’m talking about. In the funding part, you have to learn how to be creative. For our mastermind, we had Mark Helm come and talk. I don’t know if you know Mark Helm but he’s the father of storage in the United States. He’s been doing storage longer than any of us newbies have been doing it. His very first deal was also very creative. That set him on the path to thinking outside the box.

Remember, I talked about this last time. There’s a box in storage and that box is, “I have to go to a bank and get a loan.” Eighty percent of you are thinking this. The truth is that in real estate investing, you do not have to go to a bank and get a loan. Going to a bank and getting a loan most of the time is the cheapest money but not in 2023. It was a little bit more expensive.

The truth is even when you’re creative, a lot of the time, you pay high-interest rates. I’ve always ever paid high-interest rates. I’ve never paid a low-interest rate. I had one of my investors who lent me money for 3% but that’s because we’ve been doing it for 10 years. He was like, “Stacy, we’ve been doing this for ten years. Take this money. You can have it at 3%.”

Typically, I’m 8%, 9% or 10% interest for all the stuff that I borrow. That means that I have to buy stuff at $0.50 on the dollar to afford stuff. I’m buying my 16th storage facility and it’s $0.50 on the dollar. If I can do it, then you can do it. For me to find 16 storage facilities that are 50% off, I have to do a lot of work. I make it look easy but it’s not easy. I call this stage one, which is finding storage facilities and then getting them under contract. Stage one is the hardest part of the entire process.

It is a numbers game. You can’t just talk to five owners or look at a couple of deals and think you’re going to find a storage facility. We call hundreds of thousands of owners on a weekly basis to find the deals that we purchase. I wish I had enough money to buy all the deals that I found but I don’t have that much money. When you start getting into calling owners and talking to owners, then you are going to find deals. It’s that it’s a numbers game.

I have this student, Sarah. She’s the first person I called. We’re getting it under contract. Most of the time, it’s going to take a lot of time. The rule is for every 50 owners, 1 is going to want to sell. I didn’t say for every 50 calls. I said 1 for every 50 owners. That’s about what we’re seeing. That means how many calls do you have to make to find an owner that wants to sell?

 

Remember, there are two different types of owners in the industry. First, there are owners whom I call, which are cold-calling owners that have not been thinking about selling at all. When you cold call an owner, you’re randomly calling this person. They don’t have numbers, their P&L and their books ready. This is a different strategy than going and hiring a realtor to find you a facility or going onto Crexi and finding you a facility because those types of owners want to sell.

Realtors are only going to find owners that are listed. Realtors don’t go off and find off-market properties. Every once in a while, you hear about this but this has not happened ever. For them to get paid, they have to put the deal under contract. That means that you’re getting it from a realtor and they’re going to have to get paid.

Realtors are only going to find owners that are listed. Realtors don't go off and find off-market properties. Click To Tweet

There are two different types of owners. Remember, there are the ones that you’re calling and they weren’t even thinking about selling. There are the ones that are listed either on MLS, Crexi, LoopNet and all the different types of outlets out there for commercial property. That is what we’re looking for when I say finding facilities.

I have a couple of apps here. What I do to find storage, if you have not followed me, is I go onto Google. We look either on Google listings or virtually drive for storage. When I first started, I drove for storage. I feel like one of the best ways to find storage, honestly, is to get out there and drive because driving for storage equals market research. I’ve driven the entire state of Georgia and have seen probably every storage facility in Georgia. I’m almost there with the North part of Florida.

I’ve gotten out, driven and looked in Panhandle Florida and then also North of Orlando. I have even gone South of Orlando. I’ve done a lot of it too. Everywhere I go, I drive for storage. I lived in an RV on and off for six years and traveled. We’ve done a lot of driving for storage and stuff. This is what I like. I would love to be able to get out there, drive for storage and talk to the owners. That’s my thing. I’ve been driving for storage since day one of investing in self-storage.

Number one, how do you find storage facilities? Honestly, the best way is to get out there and drive for storage. A lot of people say, “It’s too much.” The truth is that driving for storage equals market research. If you’re interested in an area to invest in and buy storage, you should get out there, drive around and look at all the storage facilities. What types of facilities are there? Is it a primary market? Is it a secondary market? Is it a tertiary market?

Educate yourself on what the market looks like. Is there climate control, boat and RV parking? If you do decide to drive for storage, find a storage facility where you can say, “This is my style. This is what I’m looking for,” whatever it is like if it’s climate control, RV or a little tiny facility. The best part about driving for storage is that the phone number is on the sign. You can call and talk to the owner.

If it’s a bigger facility, you’ll have a manager. Twenty percent of the time with small facilities, the office manager will answer. Typically, you’ll have the owner answer the phone at most of the facilities. 30% of all facilities in the industry are owned by REITs and 70% are owned by mom-and-pops like us. A lot of times, you’re going to get owners to answer the phone.

There are two issues. One issue is owners will not answer the phone. That’s the one thing with storage facilities. People do not answer the phones. If they’re full, they don’t answer the phone. They’re like, “Why would I answer the phone? I’m full.” They don’t want to do a waitlist or anything like that. If they don’t answer the phone, then you know to put it on a list and follow up.

When they do answer the phone, then essentially, you’re going to introduce yourself and say, “My name is Stacy. The truth is that I’m calling all the owners in the area to see if you’re interested in getting an offer. I want to buy my very first storage facility so I figured I would call and introduce myself. This is the area where I want to buy the storage facility. I live in this area or this is where my family lives so I decided to look in this area.”

When you talk to owners, you have to be as authentic and personable as possible. You got to connect. It’s on the phone. Pretty much out of the facilities that we own, I found that probably half of those, I was driving past the facility. I called the facility up and said, “I’m driving past your facility. I’m calling everybody in the area. I was wondering if you’d be interested in getting an offer on your facility.” That is how I got my facilities under contract.

This works very well in tertiary markets. When I say tertiary market, I mean country. The secondary market is a big town that’s in the middle of nowhere. The primary market is the major cities and the suburbs and stuff. Driving for storage works very well in tertiary markets. That’s my favorite way, honestly, to find storage facilities, driving for storage. If you’ve been following me, you know that.

Driving for storage works very well in tertiary markets to find storage facilities. Click To Tweet

Driving for storage equals market research. If you want to get into the game, I highly recommend that you drive around, educate yourself about the area and then try to talk to a couple of owners. The truth is 70% of the owners in storage are just like us. They’re regular people. Thirty percent are going to be bigger players and you’re going to find those in large secondary markets and then suburbs and primary markets. Most of us want to get our foot in the door so we’re going to be in smaller primary markets and tertiary markets. That is where you truly can call owners, talk to them and see if they’re interested in getting an offer.

Google Maps

You never want to ask anybody if they want to sell. You want to ask them if they would be interested in getting an offer. That’s number one, driving for storage. Number two is virtually driving for storage. What I mean by that is Google Maps. Essentially you’re going to pull up Google Maps and the first thing that you should do is do Storage Near Me. That way, you can get an idea of who the players are around you. Is it big names like CubeSmart, Extra Space or Public Storage or do you live in a smaller area where you’re seeing B and B Storage and AAA? There’s a lot of AAA Storage because back in the day, you wanted to be the first one in the yellow book.

You do A & A Storage and AAA Storage. If you see AAA Storage or A & A Storage, you’d know that one facility has been around for a long time. Even if they have regular names like B and B Storage. We also got G & G Storage that we’re working on. We got a lot of Store Aways and Store Your Junks and stuff. That’s some older names. A lot of the newer names are getting a little bit savvier. You’re getting some smarter names but back in the day, it was a lot of AAAs.

You’re going to look at Google Maps. The thing with Google Maps that I tell everybody is that getting onto Google Maps requires a lot of work. If you ever put a business on Google Maps, then essentially, you know that it takes a lot of time and effort. If you’re going to set up a business, you’re going to go onto Google. I can’t remember what they call it. Every couple of years, they change the name. It’s Google My Business, Google Profile Listings or something.

Google Maps is the fastest-growing search engine in the country and it’s growing very fast even across the world. Think about it. If you need something, you go on to Google Maps. That’s what I do too. The truth is that to get onto Google Maps, you have to go through the process of the Google Business Profile Listings process. Getting through that process supposedly is easy but it’s not easy.

 

To be verified and be a business on Google Maps is quite an obstacle. It could take several months to do. Every once in a while, we’ll get a business that immediately gets put onto Google but then sometimes, it takes months. Our Blairsville facility took months to get us on Google Maps. They wanted us to go there, video the place and show the sign. You had to be there present to say, “Yes, this is my business.” Sometimes they’ll send you a postcard with some codes on it. You get in, set your profile up and get them to mail you a postcard. They mail you the postcard with the code on it and then you have to go back in, put the code in and then set the rest of the stuff up. It’s a lot of work.

A lot of storage facilities are not on Google Maps. Who would have thought? I call those the hidden market. My virtual assistants look for properties that are not on Google Maps. How do you do that? You do that by virtually driving for storage. It sucks. It takes a long time. My virtual assistants have gotten so good at it. What my virtual assistants do essentially is they’ll spend a couple of hours until they can’t stand it anymore, virtually driving for storage. They’ll then build their list and put the list on the sheet. They’ll also go into Google Maps.

Going onto Google Maps and putting storage in this area or many warehouses and then searching all the different names, all that pops up and then you put it onto your list but finding those that are not on Google Maps is tedious work. You want to spend some time building those lists up and the way that you do that is by virtually driving for storage. You go onto satellite imagery through Google Maps and go into a town.

Let’s say you pull up some town and you’re a small town in your area. It has maybe anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 people in it, let’s say. You can type in the word storage. You’ll see all these storage facilities popping up and then you’ll put them onto your list. There’s going to be a handful of storage facilities in that town that are not on Google Maps. Your job is to find those because those that are not on Google Maps are the ones that you want to contact.

A lot of times too, you’ll find an abandoned storage facility as well. We’ve bought abandoned storage facilities and we found them either driving for storage or virtually driving for storage. You get the best deals when you find an abandoned storage facility. We bought one that was $150,000 and it is worth $600,000 in 2023. You could find some good deals. You get on there. It’s super tedious work but if you’re detail-oriented, then you need to get into Google Maps and search through these towns. Even these little tiny towns, in between the bigger towns, have storage in them and most of the time, those are not on Google Maps.

If there are a couple of hundred people, there’ll be a storage facility. We own a storage facility in a town of 400. It’s called Warm Springs, Georgia if you know that area. We bought storage. It’s 60 units and I bought it driving for storage. I called the owner and talked to her. She’s like, “My husband died. I don’t want this thing.” I was like, “Can I buy it?” It’s 60 units and I picked it up for $100,000. It was one of the first ones that I bought. That thing is probably worth around $400,000 in 2023. It’s not quite $0.80 a square foot but it’s pretty close to $0.80 a square foot. We try to push our price per square foot to be $0.80 a square foot.

$0.80 or higher is where we’re at in the Southeast. Some areas are a little bit lower but some areas are super low and you need to be careful about those areas. Over time, the price is going to be around $0.80 a square foot. We have a facility in Warm Springs, Georgia. You could search for it. The name of our company is Miss Lillian’s Self-Storage and then Mission Self-Storage. We have eleven facilities under Miss Lillian’s and then we have two under Mission. We’re about to buy another one under Mission. We’re closing up. We have another one under Mission that we’re closing. We’re picking up the one in Tennessee as well. You could Google us if you want to.

Warm Springs is a little tiny storage facility. It took us a good maybe a year or so to fill it. It was all filled with the owner’s junk. All their family members have been using it and that’s it. It’s a small town so you have to know that it’s going to take a little while to fill it up. The truth is we haven’t been to that facility probably in a year. We have a lawn maintenance guy that lives right around the corner. He mows that thing and then changes the lock for us on the gate every month. That’s it.

Every once in a while, our boots-on-the-ground person will go out there and take a look at it, make sure it’s okay and stuff. We paid $100,000 and we’ll probably sell that thing for at least $400,000 when we’re going to sell it. That’s pretty good. We’re not even going out there and doing anything. It’s been full for a while. We’re not doing anything. It doesn’t take a lot of work. We found that that’s a tertiary market.

Everybody always asks me, “Can you buy facilities in small markets?” The truth is, “How much money do you have? If you don’t have a lot of money, then you should be looking at a tertiary market.” When I first started, I didn’t have any money. I got a facility. I borrowed $100,000 from somebody, paid 9% interest for it and got it filled up. My mortgage is maybe $900 a month or something like that. We’re making $3,000 to $4,000 on it so it’s doing pretty well.

You’re not going to make a lot of money or cashflow on it but in the end, you’ll be able to sell it and make some money on the backend too. Driving for storage, virtually looking for a property on Google Maps. I’ve done a lot of videos on that on YouTube. Make sure you go to my YouTube channel and type in Google Maps, Stacy Rosetti or something like that. If you want to see me virtually driving for storage, watch those videos.

LandGlide

Some apps. I wanted to tell you about LandGlide. When I am virtually driving for storage, this is my process. My process is LandGlide and Google Maps together. LandGlide costs $10 a month. There are a couple of different apps out there. One of them is Parceled, Regrid and then LandGlide. I’m sure there are some other ones I don’t even know about. Those are the three that we talk about in our coaching program a lot. Parceled is free and Regrid is also free.

Parcel And Regrid

Why do I pay $10 a month? It’s because LandGlide gives you everything that you need to know about that property in a snapshot. You don’t have to go around searching for anything. Whereas Parceled and Regrid do like, “Do you need that information? You should upgrade to the pro version.” That’s how they do it. They give you a little bit of information and if you want more information, you have to upgrade to pro.

I don’t want to mess around with that so I pay $10 a month. When I’m out driving for storage, I have Google Maps and LandGlide up. A lot of the time, my husband drives. I’ve gotten so good at driving for storage that essentially, I will be going down some back roads sitting there. What I like about LandGlide is that it gives you the borders of the property but also tells you who the owner is and gives you all the information.

There’s also a desktop version of LandGlide included in your monthly payment. I also think for Regrid you could do that. I’m not sure about Parceled. If anybody knows, you could tell me. You could come out and see all different kinds of parcels and stuff like the boundaries. Those are all the boundaries of the houses or properties.

Publix

I live in Tallahassee. I was driving down Manheim to go up to the store. I’m looking for a piece of land that I can buy that’s going to be at least a minimum of 5 acres, if not more. I’ve been looking around for this. I turned into this property and it was this vacant property. I was like, “This would be perfect. I want to buy this thing.” All I had to do was come onto LandGlide. When I was right there, let’s say you have the GPS button. I touched the GPS and it took me right to that property. It tells you who the owner is and how to get in contact with them.

It doesn’t give you a phone number or email but it does give you their contact information, address and stuff. I use it not only for storage but also for real estate. Every property in the country is on LandGlide and all the information that you want to know about the property is there. Parceled and Regrid are the same. All my virtual assistants use Regrid. I don’t want to pay $10 a month for everybody to use that. They pull up as much information as they can. If we happen to need any more information about the property, we’ll either look on LandGlide or Crexi. Crexi does have an app but I don’t get onto the app because the app is too difficult to work through.

Crexi

For Crexi, I use it on a desktop. Crexi is used to also pull up the information on the property. Crexi costs a lot of money. It costs $150 a month or something. LandGlide is only $10 a month. Let’s say I’m going into an area and saying Storage Near Me. I’m looking at all the storage facilities on Google Maps and then I’m starting to virtually drive for storage. As we’re driving around, we’re like, “There’s a storage facility here. Let me look on Google Maps and see if I can find the property or on LandGlide.” You can also use LandGlide as a Google Maps version. What I do is use LandGlide and Google Maps together.

This is how I virtually drive for storage. You could see who the owner is right there and the information for the owner like the address. What I’ll do is screenshot that. Essentially, when you’re right in front of the facility and then you screenshot it, it keeps that location in your screenshot. If you need to go back, you can always look back as well too. I do a lot of screenshotting in Google Maps or LandGlide. What I also do is open up the tab. You can click on the bottom and then it comes in and it starts giving you all the information. I will screenshot this as well and all this information.

As I’m driving around, a lot is going on. I’m driving for storage. I’m not jamming out to Bon Jovi. I’m chilling, trying to focus and being aware. I’m driving around and searching on Google for Google Maps. I have LandGlide up. I’m looking for storage facilities. That way, I’m looking for the owner’s information, searching for storage facilities on Google Maps and virtually trying to find storage facilities that are hidden and already there on Google Maps.

As I’m doing that, I’m taking screenshots. Once I get to the storage facility, I’m taking pictures of the facility so that I can remember the facility. The truth is every storage facility looks the same, honestly. There’s no difference in any storage facility. The first 100 I remembered. There are 16,000 storage facilities we have in our database. We take pictures. We have our LandGlide screenshots. With Google Maps, sometimes we take screenshots there if we need locations and stuff. We have pictures from Google Photos. Those are the three things that I have when I’m driving for storage or looking for storage facilities.

What I do is start a Google Photos folder. We back up all of our stuff to Google. Whatever you want to back it up to or whatever system that you want to use, use that. We create a folder. Let’s say it’s driving for storage in Tallahassee. That’s what we call it. All those pictures go into that folder. I’m immediately putting all those pictures into the folder so I don’t do that later, come back and look at it or something like that. Once you stop doing this, you forget.

As I’m putting them into this Google Photos folder, I’m calling it Driving for Storage Tallahassee. When I come back home after I’ve done my half a day or full day of driving, I’m looking at my apps or on LandGlide. What I’m doing then is coming back and putting all that information into our contact sheet that we keep. We keep it either on a spreadsheet or use some software to keep track of our contacts.

The key is your goal is not to get out there, drive and make a whole, “I took 100 pictures of storage facilities and I got so much stuff,” and then they sit on your phone. Your goal is to get those onto your contact sheet. The truth is that the key is in the follow-up. The key is in calling those people and keeping track of whom you’re talking to. Did you send them a letter? Did you call them? Did you leave a voicemail? Did you text them? Whatever it is that you’re doing, you got to keep track of that. The key is in the follow-up. You have to have this system where you’re building these lists. You don’t have to go driving for storage if you don’t want to but I do.

The key is in the follow-up. The key is calling those people and keeping track of who you're talking to. Click To Tweet

Even if you’re building a list from Google Maps or virtually driving for storage, you want to have that list that you’re building. You can go out and buy a list of storage facilities. I’ve done it. I’ve bought several states and spent a lot of money because it’s quite a bit of money to buy these lists. I spent thousands of dollars. The truth is that those lists are only so good. I feel like Google Maps has the most up-to-date information. Even when a business comes and goes, if somebody else buys it, they claim that Google Business Listing and then take over and that’s the new name of the company. Google Maps, a lot of times, is very relevant. I hardly ever find non-relevant stuff on Google Maps.

There are some. There is stuff that’s been sitting there and it doesn’t belong to anybody anymore but a lot of times, it’s up to date. They may not have a website, a phone number or everything filled out because they haven’t figured out how to do that. If I was going to buy a facility that was a facility on Google Maps, which is exactly what we’re doing, one of the very first things that we do when we buy the facility is claim that listing, bring it over to us and own it. We may not use that listing but we want to own that listing and maybe start a new one.

If it has a whole bunch of reviews on it, that’s awesome so we’ll keep that listing. If it’s bad reviews, we’re not going to use it but at least we own that one. What happens is if you don’t own it and get rid of it, when you put your new one up, there’ll be two. Have you ever seen any businesses where there are two Google listings in the same spot? That’s because somebody started a new one and didn’t claim the old one.

I got to jump off and go to my fund pitch. At least I gave you some tips on finding facilities. Remember that you have access to my course. Go to StacyRossetti.com. I will take you through step by step, hold your hand and show you everything that you need to know and you can get it done not in 90 days. Coming here over the course of 90 days, you’ll get a better idea. With the course, you’ll be done in a couple of days or weeks. It depends on how long you want to take. There are between 75 and 100 videos on the course and they’re all right there. It takes you to step by step. That’s available to you. You have to go to StacyRossetti.com to find that.

Also, don’t forget too that you have access to my deal analyzer. When I talk to people, what they say is, “I don’t know if it’s a good deal. I found a facility but is it a good deal?” All you need is my deal analyzer. Plug the numbers in and it will tell you if it’s a good deal or not. Red is not good and green is good. It will help you come up with some offers for the property. Please check that out as well too on the website because those are available to you. Having those together with this is almost having a coach. Check those out, please.

I’m going to go hop onto my fund. If you want to be a passive investor and you have money and you don’t want to do all the work but I’m telling you that it’s hard to do, you should lend your money out to me. Hop on to StacyRossetti.com/fund. I’m going to go over my fund, which is the Self-Storage Fund of America and pitch it. I will see you next time. Take care.

 

Important Links

• Crexi
• G & G Storage
• Miss Lillian’s Self-Storage
• Mission Self-Storage
• YouTube – Stacy Rossetti – Self-Storage Investing
• LandGlide
• Parceled
• Regrid
• StacyRossetti.com/fund