All Forum Posts by: Henry Clark

You would need to hire a general contractor.  Then hire a manager to start up.  

With all of the detail and issues that can come up, I personally would prefer to develop myself. But that would mean covering the project for over a year. 

Since your open to out of state. I personally would rather purchase a location versus develop out of state.  You will miss out in the inherent profit from the development but also the risk and time. 

Also purchasing takes less time allowing you to expand faster. 

Find some of the towns that don’t have any of the Reits or large regional firms. Then you have 2 or 3 value add propositions. 

Can you say slow going?
Great weather, but contractors are really tied up and hard to get to close small issues.

Uh Oh. My wife just looked over my shoulder and got on to me for posting her beautiful picture.

Assorted lose ends:
a. Will go for Occupancy and inspection next week. Was waiting on Plumber which is done., Fence/gate not responsive. Big Google project going on. Road contractor build form for parking and will pour next week. Parking is in the form. Need to put Handicap parking and regular parking for occupancy. Still have the handicap form from last project. Costs about $50. The dirt section in front will be where our Road sign goes. Still need to design.

b. Overview of phase 1, basically the buildings you see above. Phase 2 will be the two long buildings at the top of the picture below. Just need to pour the roads around them.

c. Phase 3, we will start doing pads on the bare ground above next week. Building cost went up about 25% since the units we build last year.

d. The storm retention pond drain is shown below. The drain is the large Concrete structure. Water can exit in both the round circle at the bottom and the small outlets at the top. Facing the side of the pond is the outlet which goes to the city storm drain. This pond has to be designed and sized by an engineer. They only count dry surface area as retention. If this pond had standing water, they would not count that area. The black tube on the left is the driveway drain. It is taking all of the water flowing from the buildings in "b" above for phase 1, into the pond.

e. Landscaping is almost done. Really dry here. Put seed, then grass mat down. Watering every night. My son and his friends will get home from College. Have them mulch all trees and bushes then. Also in the second picture, time to take the Silt fence out. Grass has mostly grown. Reseeding some. Have to get a zero turn mower to mow since this is a high bank and my riding lawn mowers wont work. The first picture where the two Bollards are in the concrete is where the security gate will go. You can also see a light green standing plastic stand. This is one of the connections where the Fiberoptics goes into the building. They just put in yesterday. Same security system as at our other location. Will go over later. Cameras are already recording in Phase 1.

f. City Inspection, will schedule next week. Kind of crazy, they have all of the inspectors come out at once. I will probably be the only one there. Contractors don't usually show. We will get a bullet list of items that need adjusted. Then we fix and just email a picture to them for approval. Just remembered on the bathroom sink, it has a plywood backing against the wall. It has to be painted, or the city won't accept. I noticed and painted today. Must be a plumber thing, that they don't paint wood. This was an exception at our last location inspection.

B.A.H.  Base Allowance for Housing.

A.  Find  out what your BAH is for that location.

B.  Recommend you buy a mobile home, and rent out extra rooms.  Use your BAH money for the payments.  When you leave, sell or keep renting.

C. Do a BRRR or Flip on the mobile home.

D.  Keep doing this, and as you get cash, start either moving up in value, or start to do more Mobile homes at each place you move to.

Reach out to the military folks here and get them to help you get started.  Checklist, appraisals, what to watch out for, etc.

@Christie Duffy

We do self storage.  Our objective is to get units cleaned out, that are being auctioned.  If we make $10, we are happy, even when there is a motorcycle, diamond ring, Drone or whatever in there.  Doing Ebay is not our game.  We want it cleaned so we can "FLIP" it.

If you just want cleaned out, recommend you do the following.  Contact your local Self Storage locations.  Tell them your situation, and ask for their top Auction people.  

a.  Get some orange or lime green masking tape and put it on everything you want left.  Take photos.  If you don't want something broke, protect it.

b.  If your in a hurry, contact 3 or 4 of the Auction people and assign them different rooms with different access doors. Back door, garage door, front door that is closest to their rooms.  

c.  Place some dumpsters in place.

d.  Tell them everything has to come out of their rooms, good and bad at the same time.  Bad goes in the dumpster.  If they start to cherry pick, kick them out.  They can only access the building from xx am to xx pm.

e.  Don't sell to them.  Give it free.  Reduce your exposure.

f.  Give them two days to remove everything.

Over the last two weeks I was asked what is a good customer in terms of length of stay. My response was all customers are good, because most of them don't know how long they will stay. Even when they tell me they only need a unit for one month, I will rent to them. Even if it is the last unit we have available.

Our oldest location was flooded about 2 years ago and we lost all of those tenants, so their dates are not reflected. The below data covers only one of our three reporting areas, but are the oldest locations. This also includes about 60 parking rentals. The Terms below represent that period and prior, to the next Term. So 90 days is 90 days or less; down to 60 days. Then it converts to Months.

Always tell people it takes 3 customers to cycle through, to get one "good" customer who will stick. So especially for a New location, want the customers to come and go, till we get customers who stay longer.


Below is a Cacao Pod, from which Chocolate comes from. Until you crack it open, you don't know what's in it. Just like a new customer, until they start renting you don't know how long they will stay. So every customer is a good customer to us.

You eat the white film around the seeds, which is really sweet. Then you can dry the beans, for Chocolate.

@Timothy Roberts

All of your requests/questions are valid, but I recommend you regroup and develop a road map.

Objective- financial freedom, Wife quit her job (Why?), 

Time frame- sounds like soon.

Tools- house hacking (can only do one house at a time, not scalable, although good tactic); looks like your next investment would be SFH?;

Road Map: timeframe, Cashflow/profit per house SFH, collateralization needed, Cash flow needed for financial freedom.

Lay the above out.  Something needs to give (timeframe, objective, collateralization or investment tool).

SBA will always be lower than conventional since it is guaranteed by the government.  I would ask them more specific questions.

If you are able to get 3.25% with a conventional, that is better, since you can use your investment to collateralize future investments.  SBA is restricted to only certain types of investments.  Your local bank is probably on a 20 year amort, but with a 5 year renewal?  3.25% is a great rate for conventional, especially if this is your first Self Storage experience.

Did you look at SBA 504 or 7?  You could do one for both construction and to refinance to better terms.

10% down, 20 year amort, 2.99% interest rate. 

We have both self financed, seller financed, collateralized with prior storage or other assets, SBA, or Conventional 5 year revolving.

Great, you have Sales background.  Lets use those skills.

Target: Baby boomer SFH/MFH investors in Hartford CT, who have a lot of units. "Who don't know they want to sell."

Product:  Just like in Medical sales, you want a High, Medium and low product mix.  Develop that mix.  Don't just say you want to buy their units.  a.  Talk with your Parents, Grandparents and older people, Kids with real old parents.  Ask them what solutions they are looking for or have taken, to handle the older persons home., b.  Develop a offering that an aged investor would want.  Example:  Offer them seller financing, with 5-6% interest.  Come up with about 7 offerings.

Search:  a.  Get 10 addresses of properties of the types, neighborhoods and potential price ranges you would like., b. Google Hartford CT GIS map or Treasurer map.,  c.  Pull up their report.  Our system will list all other PID's under their name., d.  Look for one of the properties where the person has many PID's owned by them.  Check those out, to see if most of them fit your "Buy" metrics., e.  Go offer them your "Product Offering".  Don't try to buy from them.  Offer them Solutions.  Example, I don't know them, but I know they don't like paying Sales commission.  The Buy will come later.

Sales Software:  What type of sales software are you using?  You want to use the same approach you are using for Medical sales on your "Buy" targets.  Birthday card.  Happy New Years letter.  Way to go letters.  Stop by on the porch and have tea times.  Etc.  Get to know them.  Don't do a hard sale.  Play the numbers, someone will sale.  You don't have to buy all of their units at once.

OLD folks:  If the folks are really old or maybe "susceptible", I would recommend asking if it is okay to talk with their kids.  No matter where they live.  Send the Adult kids your brochure with offerings.  The adult kids will do your selling for you.

"NO":  I love a great "NO".  Anyone who gives me a solid "NO", I thank them.  By now you have learned this.  Its a numbers game.  Keep working your Sales database.  Take every learning moment your manager has given you for Medical sales and turn it towards your Real Estate data list.

Seasonal:  Next winter go around after each snow and develop a database of all houses that fit your "buy" parameters,  that haven't cleaned their snow up after 3 days.  Add those to your Sales database.  Understand why, their snow wasn't cleaned up.  That will help you determine which Product offering to sale them on.  Knock on their door and ask if they need help with the snow, if they fit your profile.

Financing:  Get it in order. You have to be able to act fast.

Basically do what you already know how to do, just with a new product.

Step 1:  Write your goal, time frame, risk assessment, funding source and available collateral.  

Step 2:  Develop a road map.  Point A (current) to Point B (goal); timeframe.  Even though you don't know the deals, lay them out with targeted returns.  Be able to visualize it. As you get more experience keep redoing this task, to make it sharper.

Step 3:  "Financially free" and "not have to deploy anymore".  Explain what these two mean to you.  For example, "Financially free" to me, means I have hit my "number" and don't have to work anymore.  That would never happen for me, since other than gambling, I could never achieve it in a two year time frame.  Explain.  "Not have to deploy anymore", if your in the military, you have some great R/E investment potential with your BOA.  If not military, you have great potential doing a House Hack with example a 3 bedroom 3 bath, and you live in the small one, since your gone.

Step 4: Give more detail.  The BP community will give you better options.  Are you living in Utah or NYC?  Single or Married with 5 kids.  Etc.

Thanks, I needed the break from landscaping, work my mind for a while.