From neglected space to thriving place: Self-storage success is all about community, communication, and constant growth. In this episode, Stacy Rossetti interviews her student, Jennifer, who recently purchased a self-storage facility using owner financing. Jennifer shares her incredible journey of turning a once-neglected storage facility into a thriving business, all while keeping a close eye on community needs and sustainability. She shares how she harnessed the power of StorageNerds to make data-driven decisions that transformed her property into a revenue-generating asset. Throughout the conversation, Jennifer emphasizes the importance of relationships, communication, managing tenant expectations, maximizing your facility’s potential, and staying adaptable in the ever-evolving self-storage industry. Tune in now and get ready to unlock the doors to self-storage success.

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Student Showcase: Jennifer Gets Her First Facility Through Owner Financing

I appreciate you coming on. I’ll be here if you want to go through and do your thing. Let’s start out with what you were thinking about when you wanted to join StorageNerds. What was your vision of a facility?

When we purchased this, it was during or the end of COVID. We wanted to run a business, but we were afraid. A lot of businesses got shut down in COVID, had different restrictions, and so forth. Some businesses were run out of business during COVID. What we wanted to do was to find something that did well in the good times and also could survive, if not do well in the bad times. That’s where we came up with storage.

I found Stacy on Facebook and she’s always available for a call. She set up a call with me where I could learn more about StorageNerds. We signed up in January 2022 with StorageNerds. Stacy has these online classes that you can take by yourself online. We did all of those and we got to the point where we’re ready to start looking for a storage facility.

Stacy has different ways of doing that. You have driving for storage where you drive around and you look and you see. You can look on your Google Maps for storage. If you are in a tertiary market, beware that not all the storage units are Google-approved. You won’t find them on there, but you can find them looking at the map which looks like a picture of a storage unit. You can find it that way. The combination of that and driving for storage is how we found our storage facility.

Where do you live so everybody knows?

We are in Northeastern Tennessee, very close to Virginia and North Carolina. It’s very much a tertiary market. We were not able to find anything right around where we lived our facilities were about an hour away. What we did was drive and we found that.

I remember when I talked to you, you were like, “I want something within 30 minutes.”

You want to have some distance between you and your tenants. It worked out okay for us from that perspective.

I remember within 30 minutes you found 9 facilities. You started out that way then you worked your way out.

I called all of them. They said no. One of the things that you’re offered in StorageNerds is a lot of techniques and tools to try to talk to a person. Stacy has sample conversations that you can listen to recorded on how to speak to someone when you want to approach them about buying your facility. I called people and I can’t tell you how important relationship is. I have a lady now that I still call every now and then, “Do you want to sell?” She’s like, “No, but I have your letter.”

Another tool you get on StorageNerds is the magic letter. What it does is it shows people, “If you’re going to pay cash, this is the amount. If you’re going to owner finance and maybe put 25% down.” Over the course of time, they’re going to get more than your $400,000 cash offer because they’re going to get that analyzed the amortization. They’re going to get more money and you show them that letter. This lady says, “I still have your letter.”

A relationship is very important. When I called the owner of the current facility that we have at the time, the owner had owned it for years. It was in his family. I said, “Would you be interested in selling?” He said, “Absolutely not. I get calls all the time. It would have to be a ridiculous amount of money.” That was an opportunity. The door was open that much with that statement I said, “How much?” Thanks to Stacy’s Deal Analyzer, I ran that number and it ended up that it is quite workable.

I said to him, “How about if my husband and I come and visit you at your facility and learn about it, see about it, no commitments or anything? Can we just come?” He said, “You could.” We got there. We were there for two hours. We talked about storage for maybe fifteen minutes. The rest of the time was him telling his story, chatting, and getting to sense whether he felt comfortable with us or not. By the end of it, I said, “Could I send you an offer letter? No commitment.” “You could.” I sent that letter. This is Stacy’s magic letter.

The reason it’s magical is that you can see how, “If I extend this owner financing loan out for ten years, I’m going to get a ton more money than the original offer number.” They see that and like it. This man saw that and he said, “I took this letter to my three best friends.” They said I should sell. As it turned out, he was having some health problems.

With that letter, he was able to see, “Over the course of time, if I don’t make it, my wife could be earning an income and she doesn’t have to care for this facility.” That was a big help. We only got there because we were able to be patient with him and work on the relationship. That’s why he sold to us. He said, “I get offers all the time and I turn them down.”

That’s because everybody’s sending over a cash offer. They sent over an offer. That’s it like, “I’ll pay $400,000.” That’s why you have to spell it out because owners don’t know until you explain it to them.

We had the choices. We ended up paying $400,000 for it. It had 69 doors.

You were very good on the phone. Give some tips on the phones. I had a coaching call with one of the other students. She’s like, “It’s nerve-wracking calling owners.” Give some tips on how you manage calling the owners and talking to them because you did this very well.

I would call and ask him, “How are you? I’m looking to purchase a storage facility and yours looks like a nice one. I’m wondering if you’d be open to receiving an offer letter.” I’m complimenting them. Theirs looks like a nice one, even if it didn’t. I see it looks nice because, for me, it’s a diamond in the rough. I tell them that it looks like a nice one then I say, “Would you be open to receiving an offer letter?” I’m not saying that, “I want something from you.” I’m asking them if they’re willing to receive something like, “I have something to give you. Would you accept that?” It’s a lot easier to accept something than to have to give something.

It was just a letter. You could look at it, throw it in the trash, or do whatever you want to do with it. That is the key. If they say, “I could receive a letter,” the next question I ask them is, “Would you be willing over the course of time, if I check in with you because maybe you don’t want to sell it right now, but maybe something happens and that changes? Can I contact you over the course of time?” They say yes. I did have trouble at first getting anyone. It’s a good investment.

A lot of people want this investment and you almost have to find someone who is maybe near retirement or this guy having health problems. He didn’t know he wanted to sell, but he looked at that letter and said, “I want my wife to have income over time.” That is the key. Letting that anxiety go aside and looking at it like you’re not asking something of someone. You might be gifting them with something. They just don’t know it yet.

You’re creating a win-win situation. Just so everybody has an idea, when you talk to the owners, what information are you gathering from them so that you can go back and try to figure out if you want to buy this facility?

What I want to know from them is what is the income this is producing. Money is a scary question to ask at first. That’s not the first question. The first question is, “It looks like a nice facility. About how many doors do you have?” I’ll ask them, “I want to give you the very best offer as I can. I want to know what’s the breakdown of those doors. What do you charge per door?” That’s an easier question for them to answer than, “What’s your income?” Anybody can call and rent and they know what’s it. I’m asking questions that people would know, then those are the main questions that I ask. From that, I can plug those numbers. I have enough information to plug into the deal analyzer with that.

When we bought the storage facility, this was a mobile home and we didn’t know it, but the lady living there was a drug dealer. There was traffic in there all the time. I can’t imagine if I was renting there, I would feel very uncomfortable with that. The other thing you want to do is if there’s any touchy situation, you want to make sure that the previous owner handles that before you buy it. That’s part of the deal.

 

What we said was, “We want you to evict her. Before we purchase this, she’s got to be evicted.” That was done. She was gone. The trailer was hauled out. This is the owner’s RV and we said he could keep that there a little bit. This is a shipping container. Our perspective was we wanted everything to look uniform in our facility. We didn’t want to rent some stuff out of a shipping container. This is a concrete block building then these are regular storage units. This here, the property was a gas station and this was the C store in here. There are some units in there. We did not want that. That had to go as well. That’s what we set up in the deal.

How much did it cost to get the trailer out?

He ended up selling the trailer to someone and they took care of the cost of getting that trailer moved.

That was included?

Yes. This is the entrance and someone had a truck there for sale. They used to have yard sales here on Saturday. We ended that. You can see this sign is a little bit bigger than a realtor sign. It’s a very tiny puny little sign. They still had the sign up here that it was a market. One of the doors is busted out. It was these glass doors and the door was broken out.

Is that indoor climate control or what did you end up doing with that?

It’s not climate control. It’s indoor.

We have a warehouse that we do indoor storage for.

These people have a second layer of security. We put a rolling door right here in place of those.

You took that door out and then put a rolling door there.

This is his pricing. His theory was, “Keep the prices low. You’ll always be full.” The problem with that is that if you don’t check around your market, maybe you don’t know that everybody else is always full too. There’s an opportunity to increase the prices, which we did. You can see they’re making checks and money orders. They get an envelope out of here. They put it in here and you can see how secure that feels. That’s what people were accustomed to doing. This is how he kept track of his units. Units 1 through 6 are 5x10s and so forth.

If you don't check around your market, maybe you don't know that everybody else is always full, too. Share on X

That’s what he gave you when you wanted to know what the unit mix was.

That’s what he keeps. This is how he kept track of the payments. Everything was paper. One of the things you learn from Stacy is you get a whole nice vendor list. The vendor list included storage, which is a software system. You don’t have to be doing this paper like this.

Remember you deciding on which software to use because you talked to a lot of them.

Every state you’re in will have a storage association for that state. The first thing we did was go to the annual Tennessee State Self-Storage Association meeting. That’s a great time to get to meet all the vendors of every different thing. We settled on storage because it had a lot more capability than some of the others. It had space to grow, which was what we wanted to do. We wanted to grow this facility and then we hoped to own more facilities.

This is how the owner kept track of his payments due. Here’s the person’s name and their units. He owed this particular guy for three months. It’s not paid. That was allowed. This one here, I don’t know what his address or phone number is. If I auctioned him, which we ended up doing, how would I end up contacting him legally? I don’t know.

This number here, this is the last time he paid. This is when his next payment is due, then he would write in cash or check, what he paid. It was a big mess when we took over getting the data. One of the things I said to him was, “Before we purchase this, I want to get all of the names and phone numbers at least and addresses if you can.” He was having health troubles. We didn’t get all of that. I had to put a sign on this door saying, “Include your address and phone number with your payment.” At the same time as we bought this, we were also getting storage set up it does take one month for them to get them set up.

Were people giving names, phone numbers, and addresses when they put the checks in?

Yes. We had a sign, “If you haven’t done it yet, put it on here.” They would. That’s how I slowly kept track of everyone. The security system was not set up. That was something we added. Here’s another room. This sign was one that we got. He didn’t have that, but you can see how cruddy that looks.

Talk about the financing. What did you end up purchasing it for and getting it financed for?

We gave him an offer letter, which included $400,000 cash as a possibility, 25% down, and then a 10-year note.

What about the interest rate?

Three percent.

After that, I was like, “You should do 3%.”

What happened was we joined StorageNerds in January 2022. We had an agreement for sale in April of that year. Stacy says, “You can buy one in three months if you work hard you can.” In April, it was still going up a little bit, but I said 3%. I thought he could always say no or he could always come back with a different offer. He liked how that letter looked and those numbers at the bottom. He went with it.

It was a ten-year balloon. Was the mortgage amortized over 20 years or is it 10 years over 10 years?

Ten years.

In ten years, you’re going to have this thing paid off. What is the mortgage every month?

Andrew and I have a separation of duties we get everything covered. I’m more dealing with the tenants and things like that. He deals with the vendors and the finance, but we are paying about $3,000 a month.

You have this in 2022.

We ended up closing in July 2022 because his attorney was tied up.

You had it for one year.

We started running it in August 2022.

First of all, talk about the onboarding process. What were you doing before you closed? Did you have to do anything? Were you working on stuff or what were you all doing to close the property?

He was struggling to get hold of the tenants. I asked him ahead of time for the tenant list. We offered him that letter to send out to everyone and he had a lot going on with his health and everything. I called every single person and I said that we’ve purchased this from Matthew. It’s going to happen on such and such a date in everyone that I could contact. I have papers here that have four different numbers and I’m crossing them out. We did research regarding what software that you going to want to do. You want to do that ahead of time.

Did you all work on getting it on Google?

Stacy has these resources and they’re tried and true. She’s done it for years and it’s nice not to have to reinvent the wheel. One of her resources that she has, there’s a person who builds websites for you and he was working on that. He also totally takes care of Google for you. You can Google storage and maybe all the storage facilities will come up or not. This is a process. Google’s not super easy to deal with sometimes. You have to contact Google and tell them that your business exists even though it does and it’s on their map.

Google's not super easy to deal with. Sometimes, you have to contact Google and tell them that your business exists. Share on X

You have to tell them that it exists and you have to show proof. Sometimes you have to take a picture of your mailbox with your building in the background so they know this is a real place. You send that to them and then they send you a postcard. You have to verify that. That does take some time. That’s another thing you want to do ahead of time. It does not cost any money, but it’s a real benefit when your potential tenants are going to search, “I want storage in Erwin, Tennessee. Where can I find that?” If you register with Google, that’s going to come up for you.

That’s one of the first steps we say, “Make sure you get on Google to claim the business.” They updated the Google Business Listing Process. You have to be there and you have to take a video with you walking through the bigger property. They have to be there online and see it. There was a lot of fraud or something. They don’t do postcards anymore. They only do videos. When you get your next facility. You’ll have to do that.

I showed you the before. Let me show you the after. We don’t need an office, but sometimes we’ll meet with vendors here. Our router is in this office. Otherwise, we might rent it out, or someday we could move the router and that could be space that you could use to rent out. We still have the old desk here, but this is that room in the back that was all dirty. This is where we keep our security.

Why do you have the router in the one room and not in the other room? That’s how it was or what?

It’s how it worked out. We should have put everything in the back. That’s what we do.

I put everything into that one room and then maybe use that other room as storage you can rent out.

We could do that in the future. I showed you that other little sign that was like a little realtor sign. This is what we did. These are all new buildings. After we got our business stabilized and got a feel for it, we started running it in August 2022, and then in February 2023, we added 13 more doors. We had a challenge because this building right here was at one time a C store. There were gas pumps.

We were very concerned about disturbing the ground underneath because of those old gas lines. We were looking and we found that Janus has some portable buildings that look like regular buildings. You would not know. These are the Janus portables. There are lots of options on colors and such. Those are about $8,000 to $9,000 a unit. These are the new ones. You can see there’s no foundation underneath those. They’re sitting on the concrete. There are the old ones. You see how well they color-coordinated with the old ones.

You can put those on regular ground or do they have to be on concrete?

No. We got some additional ones. We added four more and put them on gravel.

You had a little space in your area and you’re like, “What did they do?” When you talk to Janus, do they come out, measure, and tell you what it is or how’s the process when you work with them?

I can’t tell you how good they are to deal with. Janus has a person to come out to make sure that their product will work on your facility. It does not have to be like plumb level because they have levelers. They can level it for you but it can’t be on a hill. You want to want to gravel it out or make it as level as you can. This is the inside of those. These are steel beams very close together. It’s very solid. This is called the diamond plate. You can get different flooring. We got the top of the line. It’s very hard and good solid floor.

In this property, there’s an entry off this Fishery Loop Road, there’s an entry off this North Main Avenue and another entry off North Main Avenue. What we ended up seeing was that this was a real thoroughfare. People would pull in here, pull out and go back, pull out there, cut through. All of that was going on. We try to put ourselves in the position of tenants.

You only need one entrance.

We ended up fencing off two of the entrances. We put up our private property and 24-hour surveillance.

How much fence did you put in? You said 0.7 acres.

This is a little over an acre. We put a fence covering the street entrance on both sides.

From one building to the other side or what did you all end up deciding to do?

It is where the driveway was.

You could still walk in the side.

You could walk in, but you can’t drive. There’s a gulch in there. You wouldn’t be driving a car on it.

You decided to do a fence to block those entrances so that people couldn’t be driving through it.

It stops all the people from coming through. These little blocks are what they cut in order to make it level if it’s not 100% level. This looks like a portable thing put there. We wanted uniformity. We wanted it to look like the other buildings. You can purchase a skirt. You see that there. It makes it look like all of our other buildings.

I like the silver one. Is that the main building with the silver in the left corner?

This is the skirting. It is nice. We ended up going with this gray on the outside of that. Our old units were blue with white. In the new units, the backside is gray. The doors are blue and the framing is white.

You got the white and blue and then the gray and blue.

The reason we went with the gray is because of the concrete building. We ended up painting that gray as well. Here’s the old one. It’s the reverse, but we couldn’t get it exactly offered, but that’s what we did.

Each of those costs around $8,000 to $9,000 including the skirting and the putting it up or did it cost extra to put it up?

They put it up for you. This is partially finished. This is the same gray as the side of the storage unit. It ties it in very nicely. I have nothing against our former owner, but his philosophy was that the less he had to spend to get by, the better. We go by the broken window philosophy. If you know what that philosophy is, it says, “If there’s a building with one broken window, chances are there will be other broken windows.” People see, “That’s not very well kept up. I don’t have to keep it up either.”

If there's a building with a broken window, chances are there will be other broken windows. Share on X

People would move out and leave whatever junk either in the unit or out on the ground. I had a guy and he left some broken shelf outside. I called him up. This is how I talked to him, “I noticed that you forgot a shelf behind. If you would like, I’m happy to dispose of that for you at a $50 charge or you may come and pick it up by the weekend. Let me know what your preference is.”

That’s what we do too. If somebody leaves and we tell them, “You have a cleaning fee. Ours is $250.”

I’ve never had someone say, “I’ll pay the fee.” They always come back and get it.

You guys painted this building.

We painted the stripes on the bottom to match the gray and blue. We got a different door. It’s all a matter of training your tenants. As long as I had that old door, even if I’m saying, “Don’t put your payments here,” they’re going to put their payments there. If they’re not able to put their payments, then they’re forced into a new situation. They’re trained into that.

 

When we moved here, there was all junk like poles and all crap, all beside the buildings. That was the standard for them. They operated at that standard. Now we keep that place kept up and if there is one little thing outside someone’s unit, I’m on the phone with them. “What do you want done with this? Do you want to pay to have us remove it for you?” There’s nothing left behind anymore. They understand the new standard and keep it up.

Does anybody ever talk about why is it not fenced in the whole thing?

No.

I like pointing that out because a lot of people think, “I got to fence this thing in,” especially in tertiary markets.

At some point, if we need to, might we fence it in? Yes. Our philosophy was in deciding where to spend our money, what’s a bigger deterrent, a fence that someone could maybe jump over if they wanted to if this was all fenced in, or this sign right here that tells you, “You’re going to be monitored 24/7?” The sign is a bigger deterrent. The fact that we have those cameras set up is a bigger deterrent.

Do you put cameras anymore?

We did. There was no security of any kind. We got Vivint security cameras and it’s Alibi vigilant cameras. One of the things that we liked about these cameras is it’s not some gray grainy thing, but they show you color pictures at night. You can zoom in and get a license plate number off of those. One of the things that I do, and any chance I can, I remind our tenants that we have these cameras. The guy that left the shelf, I said to him, “I saw on the security cameras that you left the shelf behind.” I’m always reminding them that we’re going to know what they are doing.

For people who don’t rent here, these signs are on both of the two fences and also on the entry. You can’t go to the property without seeing that. We just did this. We added 4 more 10x20s back here. We had someone excavate and level it, then we set gravel. My husband put these markers here so that Janus knew where exactly to put the buildings. They’re these buildings here. We did the same. It’s these ones here.

Go back to the overview of your facility. Where are those buildings on the overview? It didn’t look like there was any other room.

It looks like there’s not any room because where we put these is where this mobile home is. There are new buildings here. We put in one new building where this is, then we put in all new buildings here, and then new buildings here.

Every square inch that you could possibly put some buildings in, you are like, “We’re going to find some places.”

Google hasn’t updated their pictures yet. As soon as they do, I want to get the afterpicture of this as well. This is a gulch here. Nobody could even drive in there. There’s a creek in there. That’s a natural barrier. The neighbor has a fence back here and this is all a big gulch here and then here. It’s a natural barrier. People can’t drive a car over here. That’s a gate. There are buildings here. That blocks off that then. If we wanted to complete everything, all we would have to do is make this a gate that has an open and close on it. That’s all we would have to do on that.

It took you about 90 days to find the facility and get it under contract. It took about another 90 days to close it. It took six months to close the facility. Somebody asked, “How did you finance this?” She got it seller-financed. The owner is the bank. The owner is lending the money to them. She put 25% down to $400,000.

The total price offer was $400,000 and we put 25% of that down. We put $100,000 down.

You got 3% interest for 10 years. The owner is the bank. That’s called seller financing. You don’t have to go to a bank and get a loan because somebody’s asking, “Did you get an SBA loan?” No, the owner was the bank on this one.

I prefer that. It streamlines the process. Don’t use a realtor. Drive for storage. Use Google for storage so you don’t have that. Don’t use the bank. You don’t have all that. A lot of people want to avoid capital gains taxes. They’ll want to own finance for that reason alone. In this case, this man wanted to do it to provide income for his wife because he had a bad illness.

You closed on it and the first 90 days, you’re spending, calling everybody, chasing tenants, trying to get them into storage, sign the contract, and give you your payment information. How long did that take to chase tenants and get that organized?

That took a process of maybe three months because if they’re already paid up, they’re not going to the facility to put their money in that. They don’t see my note saying, “Put your address and phone number with your name.” It took a good couple of months to do that. This is a very rural area. I know you ripped that Band-Aid off but we didn’t rip the Band-Aid off. Some of these people do not have credit or debit cards.

I don’t know how you do life that way, but that’s how it was. Some of them are older and they’ve been renting here. Our longest one is twenty years. It’s a small community. What we ended up doing was we said, “You can’t pay at the door anymore. We want you to be on storEDGE, but if you cannot do that, you will need to pay at the bank.” The bank knows us very well. We have an account there. They say, “I’m so-and-so. I’m paying for unit 59. Here’s my payment.” They put it in our account. It’s not a bad deal. On storEDGE, I’m paying credit card fees for that. They can pay at the bank but they’re not paying at that door.

Do a lot of people go to the bank and pay at the bank?

We have a good number of them that do. Now with our new tenants, we make anyone new sign up. Now that’s not granted. They do have to do it through storEDGE because even with the bank, you do have extra work. We’ll get a notice from the bank and it’ll say, “$285 was deposited and another $95.” We don’t know who deposited those right away. There’s like a lag time. Sometimes I’ll get a notice. I’ll get a message from a tenant and they’ll say, “I paid at the bank.” I’m like, “You have to understand when you choose to pay at the bank and not on storEDGE, there is going to be a delay sometimes the system doesn’t know you’ve paid so you’ll get a late notice.” There’s that in there.

 

One of the things we wanted to do was to get to know the community. It wasn’t the community we lived in. From talking to Matt for those two hours, we learned that it is a very rural area with people maybe stuck in their ways of thinking in some ways. We did not want to upset the community, “These new people came from out of town.” We wanted a good name in the community. We have that now. The mail lady is like, “You guys are the talk of the town. Everyone’s looking at what you’re doing here. You’re doing a great job.”

It’s what happens in Erwin, Tennessee. They’re building out this storage facility.

In one of the resources on StorageNerds, there are a number of different feasibility study experts on there. We chose one of them. We had a feasibility study because storEDGE is doing great. It’s wonderful, but in some areas, you could max it out. You could build more units and you could be empty.

You got a feasibility study before you added all these units. Did you use Catherine?

We did.

Did she give you a thumbs-up?

She gave us a thumbs-up on this. We had to combine like we want to add more and we might want to buy another one in the same area so that when we drive to our storage, we’re only driving an hour and we can hit both of them. She could do all different sorts of stuff for you. Some people might want to do that before they purchase a facility if they can’t get an idea from the owner of how many are vacant.

If you can get an idea of how many are vacant, there’s still the question of why are they vacant like maybe they wouldn’t have to be. Maybe the place is trashy that people are moving out. They don’t want to be there because they don’t feel safe. Maybe they are vacant because they’re wrongly priced. That’s one of the things that Catherine does for you. She figures all that out.

Now that you are stabilizing the property and you are doing well, how much time and effort does this thing take on a weekly basis?

We have hired someone to take care of the lawn so we don’t have to do that. It’s a bit over an acre and we did not want to be mowing that lawn. In this, it takes weed-whacking in that gulch there. We don’t want to do that. We hired someone to do that. We do a hybrid as far as managing because we have storEDGE, which is automatic. We have the yard guy, which is hands-off. We physically go there probably about once a week, unless we’re out of town, walk the facility, and make sure, “Is anybody leaving any junk out?” If we realize someone needs to be overlocked, we’ll go and we will do the overlocking. We do the inspection of a unit when a person moves out.

You guys are the boots-on-the-ground people and the call center. You’re answering the calls and doing the boots-on-the-ground. You are managing this yourself.

We don’t have a lot of turnover. We haven’t, since we bought it. There are some people, “I’m building a house in town. I need a place to store my things because I sold my house.”

What’s your income now versus what it was when you bought it?

We had 69 doors when we bought it. Maybe his income was about $60,000. With the doors we’ve added, we’re on track for $95,000 or $100,000. Here’s the thing. Some of that income is from late people, I hate to tell you. Find out what are your state laws regarding late charges and max that out. In the state of Tennessee, you’re allowed to charge 20% of the unit or $20, whatever is more. In our case, it’s $20. I have a person who says to me, “I can’t pay on the 1st of the month. I have to pay on the 15th of the month because that’s when I get my check.” She needs a lesson in budgeting. I’ll take her $20 every month. If that’s what she wants to do, okay.

You still charge a late fee then.

We charge those late fees because the message we’re sending is this, it’s twofold, “We are going to provide you the absolute cleanest, best facility. We are also going to provide an environment where at that same level, you pay on time.” We have high standards all around, “We provide a high standard for you you provide that back to us.”

You guys are managing it very well. You’re increasing the rent. You’re adding a new building. From the moment that you’ve joined StorageNerds all the way until now, you’re doing exactly what you should be doing.

I would not have been able to do this without StorageNerds. I have a family member and she said, “I thought it was crazy. Why are you paying this money to join this StorageNerds thing? You bought a storage facility. What’s the big deal? Just run it.” After a while, she’s like, “I can see why you did that and why you went that way.” It’s been worth it for us. It’s been a cornucopia of information for us that we’ve been able to use to make our place successful.

Now you’ve done this thing here, what are your plans? Are you going to look for another facility or going to stabilize this? What are you guys thinking?

This is pretty much stabilized at this point. Everything we wanted done is done. We would like to purchase another facility. We’re waiting like, “What happens after the next election? Is it going to impact interest rates?” We’d prefer not to buy with these interest rates as high as they are. There are ways you can do it. Maybe there are owners who will own or finance and they don’t need that high interest rate. Maybe that’s a possibility. We’re holding out to see if we can get lower interest rates.

It’s going to take a couple of years to get back. It’s never going to get as low as what we all got. Around 6% is where it’s going to get to. You have to keep that in mind. You have your list of all these facilities. You should be in contact with all of them on a regular basis. Let them know, “I’m still here. We bought the first one. We got it stabilized. We’re always looking for another one.”

Keep the lines and the communication open.

You are doing a great job in managing the property, finding, funding, and running it. I appreciate you hopping on. If you have any specific questions, you are more than welcome to join the Facebook group, @SuperSimpleSelf-Storage. I can answer those for you there. On top of that, check out StorageNerds like Jennifer. Come check out the program and hang out with us. A reminder, there’s the Facility Owner Mastermind. If you’re an owner, you have to come to these masterminds and listen to all of the other owners. It’s on Tuesdays at 2:00. Make sure you come to those. I appreciate it, everybody. Take care, Jennifer.

Bye. Thank you.

 

Important Links

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