Self-Storage Seminar
Through the generosity of a fellow investor, I was able to attend 3-day a Self-storage seminar for free in Salt Lake City last week.
The seminar was at an actual self-storage facility called King Arthur Self-Storage, where apparently the customer is king!. I was amazed at the quality of the facility. It had grade-A commercial offices built into it and a phenomenally plush conference room. I learnt all about the different aspects of starting a self-storage from raising capital,finding land, hiring good help, installing security systems, commercial lending and marketing it. One thing I didn’t get enough of was the actual numbers, but I’m a number cruncher so I’ll do that myself. I also found out that the self-storage industry has trade-shows and I plan to attend one soon. If you have the land, it costs about 2 million to set up a self-storage complex and you need about $500k cash.
I also met some great investors there and learnt a lot of new things. One of the investors owns 50 businesses [with no debt] and is planning on opening a bank catering towards gocery stores! There was a programmer, a nurse, a builder, an ex-FBI agent, a general contractor and a bunch of other interesting characters. There was also a civil engineer employed by the city of Los Angeles whose Ebay jewellery store did 80-90k in revenue every month! Meeting investors and creating relationships is half the value of these seminars.
If you found this post helpful, consider donating to my coffee fund!![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
- Self Storage Seminar Spent 6 hours this weekend at a self-storage mini-seminar. The speaker, Cory Donaldson was pretty good. He started buying real estate 15 years ago. He bought a duplex, then a four-plex and eventually starting buying small apartment buildings. From there he 1031'ed into mobile home parks and self-storage facilities. He......
- Leaking your Way to the Poorhouse Today's guest post is by Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP® (www.Sidoxia.com), author of How I Managed $20,000,000,000.00 by Age 32 We are living through unprecedented times in our economic history and the urge to give into the all-consuming panic spreading across the airwaves is very tempting. Unfortunately, succumbing to the......
- January's Dividend Income & How The Subprime Mess Has Affected Me. I've been traveling for the past month so this post is a little late. I had already posted my online income which was $778. I finally got a chance to add up my monthly dividend income from my stocks, Canroys, CDs and savings accounts. The grand total for January was......
Related Websites
- Commercial Real Estate - What Asset Types Are Best To Invest In? Apartment Buildings Mini-Storage/Self-Storage Senior Housing Raw Land Entitled Land, Ready-To-Build Office Buildings Mobile Home Parks Campgrounds/RV Parks Car Washes Ground Leases (With a business on the land owning the building it occupies - a common model for fast food franchises) Hotels Golf Courses Entertainment Centers (mini golf, go carts,......
- Acoustic Guitar String Changing pt 1 If it is time for you to change the strings on your guitar, then you need to know what tools and equipment you need and also have an understanding of the process involved. The following guide is designed to help you remove the sixth string so that you can change......
- Publish Your Own Book for Self-Promotion Image by tonyhall via Flickr This is do-able but it’s a tough road to hoe. However, there are two major benefits. First, it gives you a product to sell on your website and at the back of the room when you do any public speaking. Second, it gives you major......
[All content is copyright of Living Off Dividends & Passive Income]
November 10th, 2005 at 7:33 am
I have just started exploring self-storage as a real estate investment. More specifically, self-storage on leasehold land (I’m not sure if that term is used in the USA, but it refers to land that cannot be bought, only leased/rented for an agreed term).
As the building costs are relatively low for storage facilities and the land has no up-front cost, it makes leasehold an inexpensive approach to playing the self-storage game. If the land is in the right location (and that is a reasonably big ‘if’), the returns can be very impressive.
There are some downsides, of course. The biggest ones are the limit to capital growth (as the lease period draws to a close, the value can actually drop) and the drain on cash flow resulting from the lease payments. You also have to be careful of not buying a business – real estate investors like real estate because it is passive. The last thing we want to do is find 200 clients to store their wares.
I am still crunching the numbers, so I can’t say I am going ahead. Ultimately, I need to source suitable (i.e. financially viable) expressions of interest from potential tenants (self storage companies). Perhaps I am procrastinating – this will be only my second commercial real estate deal.
As an aside, the idea of developing storage on leasehold land came to me from the aircraft hangar complex we are building right now. The entire airport is leasehold only and there is a LOT of vacant land non-airside (so you can’t easily move aircraft from non-airside to airside).
Can you tell me more about that self-storage seminar in Salt Lake City. Is there a website?
Also, you may be interested in checking out guides like these: http://www.ebc.com.au/product/product.asp?loc=1,27,12&admin= (I am sure they exist in the States).
Cheers, jp
June 14th, 2007 at 3:14 am
very good site and useful information. Actually I was interested in self-storage after I had a class in college and was looking for information in Internet. And this site explained me a lot. Thank you
June 27th, 2007 at 4:00 am
Thank you for information. I am just curious about competition on this market. I know that self storage becomes more and more popular and competition is very high. Is it possible to open new business with minimum expenses?
June 28th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
starting a new self-storage from scratch has a dis-advantage. it takes about 18-24 months to fill it up.
this means you need to be well capitalized to pay the loan and expenses for nearly 2 years while its getting filled up.
if you have deep pockets, this is a good way to go. or you can buy poorly run existing ones and upgrade them.