Finding the right self-storage facilities to buy can be a daunting task, requiring not only thorough research but also a consideration of various factors. How do you even begin? In this episode, Stacy Rossetti shares her favorite method for finding storage facilities to buy. Hint: it has become the fastest-growing search engine in the country. Stacy’s method for finding storage facilities to buy is a comprehensive and well-informed approach. She takes into account the different types of storage facilities available, the factors that make a good investment, and how to negotiate a good price. She shares all this key information along with tips on evaluating a potential investment in this conversation. So tune in and take advantage of this valuable resource that can guide you in investing in a storage facility.
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Stacy Rossetti’s Go-To Approach For Finding Storage Facilities To Buy
What we’re going to do is I wanted to work on Google Maps. What I want to do is show you how to find storage facilities on Google Maps. We all know Google Maps. Google Maps is the fastest-growing search engine in the country. The truth is if you own a business and you don’t have your business on Google Maps, you’re missing out on free marketing.
Finding Storage Facilities Across Markets
I live in Tallahassee. We’re going to search for storage in Tallahassee. When we look at Tallahassee, its population is around 250,000 to 300,000 people in the greater Tallahassee area. That would be considered a primary market. If you’re above a couple of hundred thousand, then you’re considered a primary market. I live in a primary market, then go from Tallahassee to Jacksonville on the 10th. Jacksonville is a primary market. Even Tallahassee is considered a primary market.
When you’re on Google Maps, you can see Monticello, Madison, Live Oak, and Lake City. Play around with Google Maps. Look in and out and see how it works. When you’re way out, you’re only going to be seeing major cities. These are all the major cities of the United States, so New Orlean, Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Tampa. Tallahassee doesn’t even pop up. We all know these are primary markets.
As you slowly zoom in, more cities start popping up. You’ve got Naples, Fort Myers, Sarasota, Kissimmee, Daytona, Pensacola, and Panama City. Here’s Tallahassee. Tallahassee is a little bit darker. Mobile is a little bit darker. Birmingham, Montgomery, Jackson, Chipola, and then you’ve got Tuscaloosa here. It’s pulling up but it’s not dark.
I would consider these areas still primary market if it’s pulling up at the same levels, maybe these smaller ones. Daytona, St. Augustine, and Kissimmee, even though the population of these towns like St. Augustine’s population is 15,000, the metro area of the whole area is still going to be primary market. It’s right on the water.
Tuscaloosa is 100,000. That’s a primary market. When you’re looking through St. Augustine, Daytona, all from Jacksonville down to Miami along the beach, it’s all primary market, then Pensacola, Gulf Shores, and Panama City. It’s an expensive area. This is all primary market. There’s one way that you can tell if an area is a primary market. Let’s say we zoom in to Tuscaloosa.
What we could do is do storage. I’ve never looked at Tuscaloosa. When you look at Tuscaloosa, the question is what kind of storage facilities are in this town? Are there any bigger players? Are there any Monster, Life Storage, or CubeSmart? Here’s one CubeSmart. Honestly, of all the players in storage, CubeSmart is one of the players that come into smaller primary markets, which I call sub-primary.
Tuscaloosa would be like a sub-primary market, Jacksonville, or whatever. Birmingham and Mobile are big players. This is like a Tallahassee. It’s a sub-primary market and these are good areas. These are great areas to invest in but the truth is these facilities in these types of areas are going to be expensive. It can be bigger players. Let’s look at D&D. D&D doesn’t have a thing here. Let’s look at Metro Mini Storage. Let’s see what this looks like.
It’s probably not even in the right place. It’s indoor. This is probably indoor storage. I feel like I’ve been here but every storage facility looks the same to me. I can’t tell where it’s at. I bet you it’s indoor climate control. We’ve got All American Storage right here. Let’s look at this one. I see this big huge storage facility. This is indoor climate control and outdoor. It’s all gated.
If you have a business, you want to be looking at pictures of what people tag you into because you can always come in and clean all that up. You don’t want some random thing being tagged. As storage facility owners, we have to do this on a regular basis. Here’s another one. Affordable Mini Storage is a small one but it’s got a car wash in it. By clicking around and looking at all these storage facilities, it gives you an idea of what the market looks like here too.
There are some smaller players here but there are also some bigger players here. Tuscaloosa, I would consider it a sub-primary to a secondary market. I consider this a sub-primary but for me, trying to get into bigger player areas, I can afford now a $1.5 to a $3 million deal. This would be the perfect area to be looking for these types of deals. There are 100,000 people in this area.
There are probably more people in the metro area, but 100,000 just in Tuscaloosa. It’s right outside of Birmingham. This might be a good secondary to a sub-primary location to be investing in. When you’re zooming into Google, you’re playing around with zooming in and out of Google to give you an idea of what this market looks like. If we stay here in Alabama, we could see Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile. We all know they are the major players. Tuscaloosa pops up. Tuscaloosa is getting all up in there.
Just zooming in and out of Google gives you an idea of what a market looks like. Share on XWe can zoom in a little bit more and we could see Oxford, Tupelo, Meridian, and Starkville. These are probably going to be secondary markets, Auburn and Dothan. I had a guy that owned six storage facilities in Dothan. He wanted to sell them to me for $29 million. Think about that. Even though it’s a little tiny secondary town of maybe 100,000, prices are still expensive. Dothan is 75,000 people and he wanted to sell me six storage facilities for $29 million. I wonder if he ever sold them.
These towns right here, Dothan, Meridian, Hattiesburg, Laurel, Monroe, and Rustin are all secondary market towns. We have primary, secondary, and tertiary markets. The secondary market’s going to be maybe 50,000 to 200,000 or something like this, or 150,000. It’s that middle area. These are going to be still expensive areas. For nice facilities in this area, it’s going to cost money. For instance, I was looking in Tallahassee. I was like, “I want to buy some storage facilities in Tallahassee.” The cheapest facility I could find in Tallahassee is $4 million.
It’s probably the same way with all these other ones like Dothan and Albany. In the same respect, in some of these secondary markets, you might be able to find maybe that mom-and-pop that’s never sold. Maybe that one family is like, “No, I want to send or give it to my kids when I’m younger.” The kids get it and they’re like, “Screw this. I don’t want this anymore or something.” You don’t want to discredit that.
If you can afford more expensive facilities, you don’t want to discredit these secondary market cities in your state. As you zoom in, you’ll be able to see Albany. Albany is growing. Dothan is growing. As I zoom in, you can see very good secondary markets, then you’re starting to get into what I call tertiary markets. These are populations of 50,000 or less. It is a nice size city. It’s not too small. Let’s say Greenville or Tuskegee. Tuskegee has 8,000 people in it.
You could play around with the population. I’m looking at the population all the time for storage facilities. I’m looking at the population to see what it is, then I’m looking to see where this is. Montgomery and Columbia are probably not too far away from each other. Auburn and Tuskegee are right in the middle. Auburn is 78,000 people. That’s a good size town. Let’s check out Auburn. Auburn-Opelika. Isn’t that where some famous football is playing? I’m not a sportsperson at all. I feel like Auburn and Spain are famous for something though.
This will be a very good area to invest in because you see Montgomery to Columbia then between, you’ve got some good-sized towns in the middle. You got Tuskegee, Tallassee, Sylacauga, Auburn, and Opelika. This would be a very good area to be investing in like, “I’m going to build out my portfolio and I’m going to be somewhere in this little area right here.” That’s what I’m thinking. You don’t have to have all the same city or whatever.
This is a good little triangle right here. Auburn is Opelika. Opelika has got 30,000. Between Auburn and Opelika, there are 100,000 people here. There’s probably even way more. It is a very good area. You want to say, “Is this considered a secondary market or primary market?” All you have to do is search storage, then Auburn, Alabama.
You start looking at the facilities like Life Storage in Auburn. Life Storage and Extra Space are in Auburn. When Life Storage and Extra Space are up in your area and stuff, that would be considered a primary market. I would say primarily to sub-primary. I don’t think Extra Space and Life Storage get into secondary markets. They want to have a lot of people. They want to have a high population. They’re not even in Tallahassee.
Think about that. There are 250,000 to 300,000 people that live in Tallahassee. Life Storage and Extra Space are not even in that city, but they’re here in this area. In this area, there’s a higher demand for storage. It’s going to be more expensive. I can imagine this area is probably going to be more expensive to even buy than Tallahassee because there’s so much primary market competition here.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because, most of the time when people think of storage, this is what they’re thinking about like, “I can go buy a storage facility twenty minutes away from me that I can manage.” The truth is if you’re living in a primary market or a secondary market, these facilities are expensive. Probably the land is a little bit more expensive and even buildings in them are a little bit more expensive. It’s just expensive.
We want to be focusing on standalone secondary markets and tertiary markets. Unless you can come up with $1 million cash to buy a property, I bet you these properties are quite expensive. Even me looking in Google Maps and trying to familiarize myself with the storage market, I’m getting better ideas. I’m like, “Maybe there’s way too much competition in this area and it’s going to be more expensive. This is not the area that I want to be in. Where should I be in my state? What area should I be focusing on in my state? Is it where I live or is it going to be somewhere else?”
Every week, I talk to people that are interested in getting into Storage Nerds. They all have in their mind that they want to buy something near a primary market. The truth is unless you have a lot of money, it’s not going to happen. What happens is that you’re looking at the wrong markets. What happens is that you get frustrated with storage. You get frustrated that you’re not buying anything, then you give up.
The truth is if you are looking in the right market and understanding the storage market, then you’ll be able to find something that’s within the price range that you can afford. That is my advice and that’s why I’m bringing this up. The primary, secondary, and tertiary market is super important when you’re first starting out to understand the concept and get out there and start looking.
Being in a primary market is super expensive right now. Everybody wants to be in storage. Back when I started seven years ago, nobody gave a crap about storage. Now everybody wants to be in it, so all the prices are expensive. I got an email from somebody that’s like, “I’m going to hold off until the end of the year to buy something because the market is crazy and expensive, and I can’t find stuff.”
The truth is I’m finding deals all the time. The reason why I’m finding the deals is because I am looking in the right markets. I am looking in the markets where I can find and afford the facility. That’s why I’m buying so many facilities. If you’re looking in the wrong market, it’s just going to get you upset. That’s my soapbox and I’m sticking to it.
Virtually Driving For Storage Across Little Tiny Towns
We’ve looked in Auburn. We already know that there’s way too much competition. Extra Storage loves Auburn. Life Storage loves Auburn. It’s going to be more expensive for the storage facility here. I would not be looking in here unless you can spend a couple of million dollars on storage. I can’t afford that but maybe I can afford this area. Let’s try to do storage in Notasulga. Now we’re talking.
Now we’ve got FSC buildings, which is probably a company that builds storage facilities, which is very good to know. You’ve got Tallassee storage, which is that other town right here. This one has 7,000 or 8,000. Notasulga, 916 people, perfect. Now we’re talking. It sounds like it’s not a lot, but the thing is that you are in an area where there are a lot of people that live in this area. Going from Montgomery to Columbus, then Opelika and Auburn, and these little tiny towns, there are a lot of people living in this area.
You say, “I can’t afford Auburn because it’s too expensive.” I can’t afford Montgomery or Columbus, because those are bigger cities. Let me look at these little tiny towns in between this area. That is how I’m coming to this area. That’s why I’m coming here. We have to Tallassee Mini Storage, West Tallassee. Look at that, that’s a good look at the storage facility. It’s all gravel and looking good. The owner has taken care of it. It’s got a big sign there.
These are very good areas for you to be looking at to get started. Simply Storage Acres is indoor climate control. We’ve got Stocking Barrels. This is a gun shop. I don’t know why that’s coming up with storage, then Tallassee Storage. This is my guy here. Tallassee has got the North, East, and Central. He hasn’t gone down South yet though but he’s taken over the town.
This is a good area. We got B&J Enterprises. B&J’s got a storage facility. There’s a hidden gem right here. It’s a hidden gem. It’s a storage facility right here all by itself. Let me go to B&J here. This is what I’m doing. I’m looking in these little tertiary market towns in between some bigger towns, then I’m looking at the storage facilities. I’m familiarizing myself with what kind of facilities are in the area.
I don’t want to be going over here to Life Storage. This is a primary market. We don’t want to be here. We can’t go over there, so we’re going over here to ABC. It’s a good-looking storage facility. It’s got one star. It’s got three reviews and one star. It’s a perfect storage facility to be calling and talking to the owner. He doesn’t want this thing. He doesn’t want the storage facility.
If he wanted it, he’d be running it better. There’s not even a website. It’s not too bad. It’s bigger. He’s got a nice sign on the front but the owner sucks at managing this thing. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go to ABC and I’m going to zoom in. I’m going to go to satellite imagery to try and find a storage facility.
ABC Storage, look at this. It’s a good-looking storage facility. You come in, it’s fenced and gated. It’s right off the main road, right next to a Dollar General in a little tiny town. There are always storage facilities in these little tiny towns. If there’s one, there’s probably another one somewhere. Now, we’ve got this one ABC Storage to start out with. He got on Google Business, which is amazing. The truth is it is not easy to get on Google Business.
Google Business Profile is what it’s called now. Back in the day when I first started, it was Google My Business. To get listed on Google, you got to have a Google account. You got to go through the step-by-step process. You got to fill out your profile, get a card, and sign in. You may have to do a video walkthrough. It’s like a whole thing.
Getting onto Google Business is not easy. He at least did that but then he couldn’t figure out how to get his website or how to do a website. He couldn’t figure out reviews. He can’t figure all this out and the reviews say, “Very suspicious. Burglarized. Not a trustworthy business. Worst place on earth. Do not store your belongings here. Students stay away from this place.” There are some students.
“Their sign is dilapidated. They don’t even answer their phones.” This is 5 years ago, 3 years ago, or 2 years ago. Nothing has happened in the meantime. This would be a very good one. Call the owner and see if they want to get an offer. Always, when you call the owner, ask them if they want an offer. You do not ask them if they want to sell their property because nobody wants to sell their property, especially some bloke that’s sitting there watching some TV and getting a phone call. He’s not going to be like, “Let me sell a property.” They’re always open to getting an offer on their property. That’s what we do.
Now, we’re in these little tiny towns. We need to be looking for another storage facility. What I do is I spend some time virtually driving for storage in these little tiny towns. This is what all of my virtual systems do as well. I don’t do this anymore. I delegated this out. You could delegate this out as well. You can always hire somebody to do that or you could hire my team to do it if you want to do it if you don’t want to sit there and do it. You get in here and you look. Here’s a trailer park. There is nothing wrong with owning a storage facility in a little tiny town. In fact, the truth is there are not enough storage facilities.
There is nothing wrong with owning a storage facility in a little tiny town. Share on XI’m virtually driving for storage. We’re in the downtown area here. Maybe there might be a storage facility here. A lot of times they are right in this little downtown area. You just have to look for it. You could even get a building in here. You can convert if you wanted to do that. You could get in and convert a building. There’s probably a whole bunch of buildings in here. They’re sitting here and needing some TLC.
Here’s a storage facility right here. This is not even on Google Maps. This is Tuske Supply. I’m not sure who owns this. What I would do next is first, I would drop down and I would take a look at it. Is this a storage facility? I can’t tell because it’s a huge wall here. Here’s a storage facility. Look at that beautiful storage facility right there st sitting there. It’s not even on Google Maps. It’s gated, fenced in, got some donations up there, keypad, and got a little parking going on here. It’s a very good first facility to buy to get your feet wet. It’s sitting in a little tiny town in the middle of Alabama, in the middle of the two cities. You can go and see it.
Finding Property Information Through Crexi
Now what you have to do is find a sign. A lot of times, you’ll be able to find it. There’s not even any sign anywhere. There’s no sign here at all. We don’t even know. It’s right next to an apartment complex. All these people need storage. There’s a big building and a big wall here. They built the wall but there’s no sign. This is where Crexi comes in, 213 West Water Street. I get into Crexi. Now I have the investors Crexi. I don’t have the sales Crexi. I pay $200 a month for Crexi to get in and get all the data. You don’t have to use Crexi. If you want, you can find a cheaper way to do it but I use Crexi because it’s the best way to go.
213 West Water Street in Tuskegee, Alabama. Let’s try to find a different way to do it. I can’t remember how to do this. I’m a horrible teacher because I can’t remember how to do it. I got people that do it for me. There it is. I found it. This is Zinnia Properties. This is what I do. I go right onto Crexi. It looks like he’s encroaching on the side of the street area.
Anyways, I click on this, and then I view the property record. Here’s our storage facility. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s such a beautiful-looking storage facility. You can get all the information. It’s like the property report card. It’s 12,000 square feet. It’s huge storage, so that’s good. Zinnia Properties owns it and they live in Prattville, Alabama. You can view the contact information. It doesn’t have any contact information. We can’t do that but we can look and see. They’re paying you property tax on $200,000 and it gives you the foot traffic, climate factors, flood zones, and stuff like that.
A lot of times in Crexi, it will give you the contact information. This one does not give you the contact information. Let’s click on this and see what it looks like. Owner details, we’ll see if anything comes up. This is all public data but Crexi is probably one of the easiest ways to find it. The registered address is in St. Johns, Florida. This is the registered agent. It may be an attorney. Who knows? It’s the registered agent. You can contact them. You got to go through and click on all these.
Here’s another one, Victory Christian that lives in Smyrna. This is Zinnia Properties. These are all the Zinnia properties that are coming on. You could contact them and be like, “I’m wondering, do you own the storage facility in Alabama? I’m trying to figure out who the owner is.” Another way that you could do it is you could go to the county site. Here’s their address. You could mail them a letter or you can skip trace that address.
Another thing that you could do is skip trace the address and see if Zinnia Properties own any other properties. You could click on this and see if they have any information or if they own any other properties. Crexi is a good area for starting off to find owners. Most of the time like 80% of the time with Crexi, you’ll be able to find the property information. About 20%, you won’t be able to. You have to dig deeper. This property, you have to dig deeper into this deal to find this owner. How many people do that? Nobody does that. This would be a very good property to dig deep in.
Remember, this is an off-market. I call this hidden market property. This property is not on Google Maps. You can search virtually for storage facilities and see if you can find any other ones. You go through these little tiny towns and try to see if you can even find any more, then you build your list. This is what my virtual assistants do. They are virtually driving for storage inside the town, finding storage facilities. They are putting them on their list. They’re getting into Crexi and looking up the information, or going into the county information and looking it up. They are trying to skip trace, find the owner, and see if they want to get an offer.
This is virtually driving for storage and you could do that. Here’s ABC storage. There may be some subdivisions in here. There might be some storage in here. You could get in and look, and you slowly build your list. You can do this or you can hire somebody to do this. Getting into these tertiary markets or even secondary markets, you can do this. That’s getting into these smaller areas.
On Google Maps, you’re going to click on this. This is Redland Storage. He’s got 3.7 stars. No website. First of all, not being on Google Maps is like an A, and being on Google Maps but not having everything filled out properly is like a B. Having some bad reviews and stuff should also be an indicator that I should be calling these people because they may not be into it at all. You’re going to contact them that way.
You’re going to slowly go through this little area. First of all, you’re going to figure out what market and what areas would be good to be doing this, primary, secondary, and tertiary. These are tertiary markets. Let’s see if we could figure out a good secondary market. What about Prattville? Is Prattville a secondary market? I’m not sure.
We got some Stowaway, ABCs, AAA, Prattville Mini Storage, and Prattmont. This sounds like it’s secondary or tertiary. Here’s the storage right here. Got some down there and here. Maybe got a little house on the property to rent out. Here’s a little office. There’s no reason to have an office here. I’m sure if it has an office like this, the owner is sitting in there and watching TV all day. He’s got phase two. This may be owned by the same person or this is a different person, but there’s something right here. This might be the same.
The phone number is right here too. That’s the thing about driving for storage. Call this, people, 850-1592. You know it’s old when there’s no area code there. This is a rather large storage facility, and this one right here is a different phone number, 334. These are two storage facilities right next to each other. You can contact them. Prattmont is on there. The one right next to it is not on there. It’s not on Google Maps at all. That’s another hidden one. This is the facility. We’re not sure if all that’s owned by one person or if these two right here are owned by a different person. This is because these are two different phone numbers. This might be owned by somebody else than this one.
By using Google Maps and playing around with it, you can learn so much about your storage market. It’s sitting here, playing around doing this and building your list. Put this one on here. This is 923 and this is 933, Davis Street or whatever. You can learn a lot about your market by using Google Maps. I’m in Prattville. Prattville has a population of 38,000 people.
That’s a lot of people. That’s a big town. You need some storage in that town. You could see that there’s a lot of storage going on. This must be the main street. There’s a lot of storage over here. There are a couple of them going over here. There’s a whole lot of nothing going over here. There’s a high school. Maybe it’s just not being built out yet, but this is a good one.
This would be a very good primary to the secondary market. A sub-secondary market maybe is what it would be that you could get in and look at. They could build a list then add all these on here, mark them A, B, and C, and then virtually drive for storage and see if you can find storage facilities that are not on Google Maps. That’s the key.
Virtually drive for storage and see if you can find storage facilities that are really not on Google Maps. Share on XIt’s inside these areas. There may be some. There are a lot of subdivisions going up. It looks like a lot of subdivisions are being built in this area. You can look and see if there’s any storage. Here’s a storage facility. This is what they look like. Once you start getting to know them, you could tell that he’s got climate control, non-climate, and parking. It’s a good-looking storage facility right there. Let’s drop it down and take a look at it.
It’s got a nice big thing. Here’s the storage right here. It’s got this whole area. It’s all outdoor storage. It doesn’t have climate control. He’s got some more units here. It’s a big storage facility right there. That’s a little tiny town. It’s a big storage facility. Get to know your market. Find the right market to spend your money. That is the whole purpose of this episode. Find the right market to spend your money, and know that the primary market is not a good area to be in, especially now. It’s too expensive.
There’s a lot of turnover in the primary market. Get into those secondary and tertiary markets. Those are very good places to start for your first facilities. That is me and my team virtually driving for storage. That is how we’re doing it. We’re building our list and writing it on there. We use Pipedrive to manage all of our leads.
You don’t have to use Pipedrive. You can just put it on a spreadsheet and make sure that you’re following up. If you call and no one answers, that doesn’t mean that you don’t call them again. That means that you call them the next day. You keep calling. The key is in the follow-up. The key is in how often you call and in the follow-up. You talk to the owners.
You can use Crexi to get ahold of the contact information for the owner, or you can skip trace and do it in a different way if you want to do it that way. Try to find facilities that are not on Google Maps, the hidden market. If they are on Google Maps, what do they look like on the business page? Do they have a website? Do they have stars? Do they have reviews? Any questions? Any thoughts on that? That is virtually driving for storage.
Quick Reminders
Just a quick reminder, I teach every Wednesday for free but you want to invest in the triad if you have not bought that yet. Which is going to my website, StacyRosetti.com, and getting the course. My course is going to take you through everything. It’s an online course, Super Simple Self Storage. Check it out, and the deal analyzer. You want to be able to run your numbers and stuff. That’s there.
Together with the course and the deal analyzer and these trainings every week, that will give you enough information to do this. That’s what I call my triad. Course, deal analyzer, and Wednesdays are a perfect combination. “How do you know how much to offer?” You cannot learn everything in one hour. All I did was show you one of the fifteen different ways I find storage facilities, and it took me an hour to do that.
If you want to learn deal analysis, I highly recommend that you buy my deal analyzer. When you get the deal analyzer, you get training videos on how to run numbers. On top of that, in the course, you have a whole section on deal analysis. It’s a ridiculous amount of videos that you can watch on deal analysis, or you can wait until the next time when I teach it, which I don’t know when that’s going to be.
Wednesdays are like the supplement. This is where you can ask your questions. Buy the course and you can have access to me to ask your questions as you’re going through the course. The course and the deal analyzer are what teach you. I’m here to supplement. “How do you know when an area is over-saturated? Is there a facilities and population formula to follow?” Yes, the total population, divided by the total square footage.
That means you have to find every facility in the area, know the total square footage, take the population, and divide that. The truth is nobody knows the total square footage of any area. Going by net price or square feet per capita is not the right way to go. Knowing the market, understanding the market, and making a good offer is the way that you want to go. That’s basically for today. I will see you in the next training session. Thanks for hopping on. Take care.
