Creating Your Business Plan - What is your Investment Strategy?

Now that you know how you are going to advertise your business, you need to decide how you are going to operate your self-storage business. Now that you are finding properties you need to decide what you are going to do with them. Are you going to find partners? Are you going to keep them and finance them yourself? Are you in a situation where you need to take them to other investors for a finder’s fee?

Depending on where you are at in your self-storage investing career, will depend on how you write this portion of your business plan. If you have no experience, then you should seriously consider how you are going to get that experience. Are you going to go through a training program? Are you going to get a mentor? Are you going to find a partner, if so, what do you bring to the table?

There is a lot of value in finding a great opportunity. You might decide to start by finding self-storage properties and selling them for a finder’s fee. This is a way to build up capital. There are a lot of investors who don’t have the time to go find properties, but they are willing to pay people to do that for them.

You may decide that you want to invest with a partner. If so, spell out how you are going to find the self-storage properties, how are you going to finance the properties and what your plan for each property is going to be. Are you going to keep them as passive income? Are you going to buy properties that are in distress, fix them up and sell them in 3-7 years for a profit? You must know your exit strategy before you even make your offer on the property.

How are you going to structure your renovations on each self-storage property? Who are you going to bring in to help you? How are you going to find those people? Where are you getting their references from? Take the time to check references. You want to work with people who are going to show up sober and on time.

If you are not sure where to begin, talk to mentors and trainers and ask them how they got started in self-storage. There are a lot of online sources that can help you. Make sure that you are prepared. Self-storage is a great business to be in and as always, happy investing.