Self Storage Ventures | Kevin

Quick reintroduction: I’m Kevin. Firefighter. 36. Wife, 3 kids (5 and under) I bought my first house at 19 during the worst housing crash in modern history. Ended up buying about 50 more over the next 5 years. Quit two corporate jobs before 25. Moved to Australia for a year to figure out what I actually wanted. Turns out it wasn’t to sit behind a desk and work a 9-5 or to manage a bunch of homes. Today I own 12 self-storage facilities across 4 states (acquiring more each year), run a hard money lending business, and coach people getting into storage. Things I believe that most people in real estate won’t say out loud: * High occupancy can be a trap * Most coaching programs are marketing funnels disguised as education * Real estate isn’t passive. Run from whoever tells you it is. * A $500K storage facility in a small town will outperform a $2M multifamily in a “hot market” 9 times out of 10 * Automation is overrated if your processes are broken - you’re just automating chaos faster * You don’t need to quit your W-2 to build real wealth I post real numbers, real mistakes, real lessons learned, and real operations. No fluff. What’s one question you have about self-storage or real estate investing? Drop it below or DM me - I’ll answer every one.

People will call a self-storage facility risky while putting their entire retirement into an index fund where 42 companies are driving most of the returns. I’m not anti-stock market. I just think we’ve gotten really comfortable calling certain risks “safe.”

Happy Halloween 👻

We re-grade and add compacted gravel every 4-5 years across our ND sites. Runs about 30k but worth maintaining these facilities the right way. Before and after.

Scariest things I've seen this Halloween: A 5% cap rate A seller's "adjusted" NOI A 2021 interest rate assumption A property manager who says "everything is fine" A $2M property generating $40K in cash flow Forget haunted houses. Just open a commercial real estate listing🎃

I was under contract on a storage facility in Hawaii. Direct to seller. Great people. Hidden facility, no website, mom-and-pop, low supply, new residential going in nearby. Every metric lined up. The seller estimated about $50K of work. After I flew out and got real bids, it was close to 200k+ (with high end closer to 400k depending on what I did). Then I caught myself moving numbers around to make it make sense. That's the moment to walk. So I did. I was into it for about 10k I honestly think that $10K saved me a couple hundred thousand. Bending the numbers is how good operators buy bad deals.

Wife's grandmother's house burned down in the Palisades fire. One of the best lots in all of the palisades. And they just sold it. Happy for them - set the record of highest sale price in the palisades for land. But sad it's the end of an era. I remember watching 4th of July fireworks and you could see all the shows from Santa Monica to Torrance from their backyard.

Everyone wants storage in Austin and Phoenix. I buy in towns most investors can’t find on a map. New Q3 data from Cubby showed why. And it’s not the reason you’d think. Start with the hot metros. Storage sq ft per resident: US average: 7.9 Phoenix: 10.1 Houston: 10.9 Dallas: 11.5 The markets everyone wants are the most built out. You’re fighting every REIT and developer in the country for the same tenant. And those REITs are pricing hard. Their online rates fell 8.6% from May to September. 58% of their listings now carry a promo. Now small towns. Real numbers, including the ugly ones. Tertiary & rural, Q3: Occupancy: +0.8 pts (smallest gain) Move-ins: -7.5% Delinquency: 3.7% (highest) Small towns did not win on demand. They won on price. In-place rent growth, Q3: Urban: +0.6% Suburban: +1.7% Tertiary & rural: +4.1% Nearly 7x the urban number. Fewer competitors means you set the rent. Not a REIT’s algorithm. Midwest rural stores ran 84.3% occupancy. Midwest urban stores ran 84.5%. Same occupancy. A fraction of the purchase price. That’s the trade I want. The catch: small towns aren’t automatically safe. Montana and Idaho have 17.5 sq ft of storage per person, more than double the national average. One new facility in a town of 5,000 can wreck your numbers. Check supply per person before you buy. Not after. My filter: Small town. Few competitors. No new supply coming. Room to raise rents on current tenants. Boring markets don’t win on demand. They win on pricing power. What market are you looking at? Let me know in the comments :)

What a free month really costs A free first month isn't an 8% discount. On a 12-month stay: 8.3% 
On the median 6-month stay: 17% 
2 months free on a 6-month stay: 33% Price your promos against how long your tenants actually stay, not a 12-month lease nobody signs.

The only 4 numbers I track for off-market storage deals: Calls made Owners actually reached Meaningful conversations LOIs sent The target is 1+ LOI per week. Not a perfect LOI. Not a perfect deal. One real offer, every week. I don't always hit it. I've gone weeks without sending one, and those are exactly the weeks nothing happens. Deals don't come from bursts of motivation. They come from consistent, imperfect action.

Building businesses is fun. Building a life you don't want to escape from is better.