How to Improve Your Current Facility

Self-storage is different from other types of commercial real estate. This is a great thing. There is less plumbing to deal with and less tenant problems, usually. However, there are different problems and issues that you need to be aware of. You can stagnate and let your property go into coasting mode. When that happens, you lose out on a lot of income. Make sure that you are always staying at the front of self-storage so that you can make the maximum amount of money from your facility.

When was the last time that you looked at your self-storage management system? Do you even have a self-storage management system, or do you still use a card file? A state of the art self-storage management system can help you create daily reminders on things that you need to be doing to grow your business. It can help track billing issues and make sure that automatic billing is running smoothly. It can adjust rents on a regular basis to make sure that you don’t have long term tenants in the facility who are paying 20 year old rental rates. There is a myriad of reports that you can pull to see where you are performing well and where you are not. If you are not using a state of the art management system, you need to start researching what system is best for you.

When was the last time that you did a deep dive into your rental rates. Do you regularly raise your renters’ rates? You should raise 1/9th of your renters’ rates every month. This means that every 9 months you will be raising your renters’ rates. You will have some fallout from this, but most people are not going to move all of their nicely situated belongings over $6 to $10 a month. While this may not seem like much, if you have 50 units a month, that is $500 a month in increased revenue. That adds up quickly. You don’t want to be the facility that is bringing the entire market down in your area.

How are you finding your renters? What marketing are you doing? When was the last time that you switched things up? Is your advertising getting stale? Are people ignoring your ads because they have seen them so many times. If your occupancy levels are dropping, then you need to put together some kind of marketing plan to fill those spots. Whether you are offering incentives to your current tenants to send referrals or you are advertising your space, you need to make sure that people know you exist. There is to much competition in the market today to just hope that you show up on a Google search.

When you are advertising, make sure that you are pointing out the features that you offer. If you don’t know what people are looking for, check out the competition. What are they offering? Is there anything that they offer that you don’t? Is there anything that you need to start offering to compete? What sets you apart from your competition? How can you convince people to rent with you instead of with someone else? Find your niche and then make sure that they know you.

Finally, if you are not selling insurance policies, you should consider it as another source of income. You want your tenants to be insured. You need your employees to be trained to require or offer insurance. If they do not do this step, this could come back and haunt you. Make sure that you have insurance requirements in your leases. You can show your renters that for just a few dollars more they have the security of insurance. You don’t anticipate a loss, you don’t anticipate an earthquake or flood, but should it happen, they are covered. You don’t want to scare them into thinking that they aren’t safe, but you also want to cover yourself. Insurance companies pay you to put these policies in place. Take advantage of the additional revenue.

If you haven’t done a pulse check on your current self-storage facility recently, then you need to take the time to evaluate what you are doing. You need to make sure that you are not throwing money away because you are behind the times in rent or management policies. Be on the cutting edge. This is your future, make it great. As always, happy investing.