What do you need to look at in a potential property for conversion?

Sometimes, when you are looking at a property, you think, wow, I can just put up a few walls and create a few hallways and then I will have a self-storage facility. If it were that easy, everyone would be converting buildings. When you want to convert a property into self-storage, you really need to evaluate whether the current buildings configuration will work with what you want to do.

You need to have a great architect on your team. If you don’t have an architect who can envision what you want and how to turn that old retail space into that vision, you are not going to be able to turn your dream into a reality. Find an architect that will walk the property with you and really discuss whether or not what you want to do is possible.

As you are evaluating your property, you need to look at the square footage as we have already discussed, the ceiling heights, whether or not the property has access to water and next you need to look at the elevator situation if you are going to have multiple floors.

Your elevator needs to be at least 6x9 which is an oversized elevator. You cannot have a typical elevator in your building. How will people get their couch, and their king size beds in it? You also need to keep in mind that you don’t want to go higher than 3 stories unless you are in a major metropolitan area with a lot of skyscrapers. For whatever reason, people don’t like to store higher than the third floor. You have to lower your rents, the higher you go. This is a strange phenomenon because it isn’t like they have to climb the stairs; you are installing an elevator.

You also need to check your loads. Most office buildings cannot support the weight that you are going to need for self-storage. Office buildings are designed with an 80 pound per square foot limit. Self-storage facilities need at least 125 pounds per square foot in order to support what your renters will be putting in their units. Typically, you are going to need 8 inch concrete floors in order to make your load limits work. Your contractor can strengthen your floors, but it is a substantial expense that you will need to budget for.

Bring in your team at the beginning so that you can avoid costly repairs later on. They can help point out things that you need to watch for so that you know what to look for in this property and in future properties. As always, happy investing.