All Forum Posts by: Henry Clark

This is an example, for discussion only.
	Layout Phase 1, 2 acres
	Assume the 4 acres is square.										Setbacks- front/side/rear													Assume roads are not allowed on this.
											Driveways- 25 foot
	295										Buildings-15/ 30/40 foot
590											Turnarounds- 50 foot



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0 Votes

At different times I have noted individuals looking for "that" template. Take the following concepts and adapt to your needs. Remember the next person, always makes it better.

Please take the attached as a template and not a specific project or valuation. Improve it and make it your own. This is geared to the individual investor and not corporate or multi state groups, who will have their own finance/procurement teams.

There are several tabs and concepts:

1. Cost projection, 2. Site layout, 3. Revenue projection, 4. PL/Cash flow projection, 5. Valuation/Brokers/Buy-Sell discussion points.

Well spreadsheet won't post. Will do images.

Note: This is written for an individual owner or investor. The Big organizations already have their templates and methods. And will be doing Climate controlled.
This is an example, for discussion only.

A. Project Cost estimate from ground up.
B. P/L revenue stream
C. Valuation Buy/Sell
Adjust all of the above to your local market and situation.

	A. Self Storage Project Worksheet
	Drive up Storage

		Notes:
Land	$200,000	4 acres at $50,000/acre
Survey	$7,000	Site, elevation and building layout
Fence	$30,000	Black chainlink
Gate system	$25,000	Automated rolling 20ft
Engineer		if needed; $30,000 to $60,000
Dirt work	$15,000	Slight roll, no dirt brought on site
Building demo		if needed, $15,000 to $60,000
Electrical- site	$7,000	building lighting and office if needed, LED.
Electric poles		if needed; $2,000 per pole. First is free if nearby.
Security	$10,000
Storm drains		if needed; $50,000 to $150,000
Water		if needed; $5,000 just plumbing
Water line		?? if an extension could be $10,000 up to $150,000
Fire Hydrant		if needed, $3,000
Sewer		if needed: $5,000 plumbing
Sewer Line		if needed; $10,000 up to ????

Buildings	$1,180,800	Phase 1 2 acres
Office		if needed, plain storage unit 20x30; $25,000 insulated.
Office setup		if needed, $5,000- computers, printers, HVAC, frig, cabinets, etc
Footings		if needed. ??????
Roads
Gravel		if needed, ?????
Asphalt		if needed, ?????
Concrete	$676,133	6 inch Cubic yards, framed, poured, sawn,
Retention Pond		if needed, part of dirt work cost, less land for buildings
Landscaping	$5,000	I like trees and bushes. Less sterile
Road Sign	$15,000	For highway 55mph billboard sign



Total	$2,170,933

2 Votes

@Sarah. Recommend you don't rent out the back lot to "Non-tenants", unless it is massive. Do charge your tenants for their use. By having the back lot available for your potential building renters, you expand the number and type of building renters. Compare your "potential" warehouse renters versus their potential need for the lot storage. Example: If you plan to rent to a landscaper or plumber, they will want outside storage also. Just charge them more.

0 Votes

For financing purposes I always use 90% occupancy. Get interest only payment to 65% occupancy or 18 months.

Need to analyze your market before you use 90%. Idaho Falls should have about 3,400 unit market based on population. Metro 7,800. I would go count units and sizes for a couple weekends. Or more specifically check your specific area out.

I always use Sparefoot when analyzing a market to start with. Do Sparefoot, Idaho Falls. Select the 10 x15 size. Then switch to map setting. Look for the "holes" in the market compared to the population.

I note two things. Either most of the facilities up there don't use Sparefoot, or you have a big underserved market. Also I don't note any of the big REITS. If this is the case, you need to push hard the next 5 years and build about 10 locations of 300 each. Not a mega one. Check all of this with your feet on the ground. It looks like unusually fresh territory.

4 Votes

One key take away from all of the above. Most of the REITS and Sparefoot have to strong of an SEO presence for you to battle. And they have been in place longer. Also, even if you were the number 1 listing, your drowned out by the 6 to 10 pages of listings. Recommend you go with Map placement and youtube placements. These pictures standout from the 6 to 10 pages of listings.

I'm not a big online person. Just started about 4 months ago. One of you other Tech/Marketing people please jump into the discussion. Thanks.

0 Votes

30 June 2020, 02:53 PMUpdate:

Facebook for the Storage location, started at zero, have 38 likes and 39 follows. Needed 26 to get our Facebook ads started. So we will see how facebook does. Hopefully get good results like @StacieJ noted.

Sign post, the posts are in. Set back an additional 2 feet from the fence in case we decided to use the next larger sign. See picture below. Should be up in the next week. Saved money, went with creosote poles versus I beams. Will see how it does in the wind. Pretty windy here.

Joined two Chamber of Commerces, "Alignable" forum and plan to check out "Bigger Pockets" forum for adding content and google view/ranking on our Website.
Put our Coupon Program on one of the Chambers and it is showing on the 3rd page.

The "Alignable" is a pretty neat forum, its national, but can be isolated to your local area for your participation. This forum is actually better than one of the Chambers forum and the city forum. Able to host and sponsor the monthly newsletter to get visibility. Our businesses are very local, but this would be a great forum for a regional or multistate forum.

Wow. Just checked to see where we are listed on a (Bing) search and we are on the first page. This is coming from joining "Alignable". This must have a very strong SEO presence. Some how they have us listed on every page in a Google Search.

Our google presence from our website is now on Page 4. Believe this is up from page 7. Both our website and some blogs are starting to show up.

Moved up to 7 versus 10 spot on the Google Map. Also our ad shows first on the google map.

YouTube videos have not started to show. Will have to focus on them more.

The internet is not my area of expertise. So the above might not be communicated as thoroughly or informatively as possible.

0 Votes

17 June 2020, 12:57 PM@Mid, let me see if these upload very well. Getting back to your Lead generation question. Again, keep in mind, I have never cared about the internet on our other locations. This is our first venture into internet marketing and using an SEO firm.

Below are copies of the latest month Google analytics report with our SEO. Can't get them to show portrait. Sorry for the crick in your neck.

This is after two full months, with no/little internet presence before.

Again, my major objectives are:
a. Google Map placement on their listing of locatons next to the map. We are now 10 out of 17 for our town, starting from zero 2 months ago., Hopefully top 6 to 8 next month, and then the top 4 showing on the front page after that.
b. Youtube placement. We are not showing yet. But on your Google search page at the bottom where it says "Other places people searched" we are number 1 or 2.

So Google is starting to recognize us after 2 months and we're moving forward.

Report below: Traffic channels by session; Source/Medium; New vs returning visitors.
Key- New visitor sessions is high and gaining which will push Google ranking. Bounce rate and Session durations are very good. I will let you google those. Some may look bad, but for their "source" they're good.

Next report: Google My Business: Customer Actions and Search/Map views
Key: Google ad calls at 19 was good relative to last month. Total of 1,393 views is a significant pickup from last month and more importantly the Map views.

@Mid Lead generation was your basic question:
a. Road sign, not in place but it will be the best and cheapest as mentioned above.
b. Right now Sparefoot is by far. They have a strong SEO system. There is one new competitor who is very small and are new to the business. They joined Storedge, part of Sparefoot, and they are listed on the first page due to Storedge and Sparefoot SEO power.
c. Again, my goal is not to compete on Website listing, but on Google Map listing and Youtubes as discussed above. My SEO still thinks our website will be on the front page in 6 months. Versus page 7 now.

Actions after discussing with SEO:
a. Let Google ranking keep cooking.
b. Do more renter specific blogs. Doing one on RV/Vehicle parking for tenants. Website visits will improve Google ranking. ***deleted web link****
c. Google Reviews- only had 1. Was primarily working on Sparefoot reviews which help on Sparefoot, but not on Google. Sent requests out. Hopefully get this number up real quick. Again, this will impact Google Ranking.
d. @GM Stacie mentioned Facebook above. Have enough traction on Google now, going to start with $200 of Facebook regeneration ads. If you search during the day for storage and ran across us. Later that night when you check Facebook out our website will pop up. Have Zero "likes" or "follows" on my storage facebook account, which we have not used. You have to have at a minimum 26, for Facebook to allow the ad. Will shoot for 50 today and send the link out to our website and ask for "Likes" and "Follows" to customers and friends. ***deleted web link***
e. Got one lead from Craigslist after a month. Will try it again.
f. Chamber of Commerce. I will send out a member to member Coupon listing. About 15,000 members in total. Should either get someone interested in the coupon or visiting the site to check us out. Again, impacting Google Ranking.

If your a technical person on Google Analytics please add comments. Please communicate data is all relative and we are in month 2.

Thanks.

0 Votes

16 June 2020, 09:56 AMPicture above. I intentionally built at the back of the 8 acre lot, so you don't see any buildings up front. We have 3 phases planned of 230/200/200 roughly. We left the front available in case we switch gear on the last phase of 200. Which we will probably do. A large local group has just purchased some land 2 miles away and plans to build a 430 unit complex. Everything is fair game. However, there are already three large national firms and ourselves here.

Phase 3 along the road will now move to "Contractor Incubator" buildings. I'll do a separate topic on that later.

0 Votes

16 June 2020, 09:50 AM@K, thanks for the second set of eyes. We intentionally don't sell products or do Uhaul at all of our locations. All 7 locations we do Self Service unit rentals over the phone. See youtube of approach for our latest location.
***deleted web link******

On the silly idea, its great. We haven't done our grand opening yet. Once we get the Road sign up, we may do a grand opening. Our front 4 lane road lends itself to high traffic. On the silly side we may put out Free Ice Cream or Free Beer (have to see if I need a license) on a Friday from 4 to 530. Plus pass out our Coupon handouts at the same time. ***deleted web link*****

@M let me try again to get our Google Analytics report for the month of May copied so we can discuss lead generation. The Road sign will be by far the cheapest and the highest generating avenue once we have up.

0 Votes

May be a little disjointed. Pulling from communications with other people. You don't see their notes.

New Storage Facility Status update Month 4 from Opening

15 June 2020, 05:17 PMWe just opened our 7th storage location in a 1mm metro area. The others were in towns of less than 5,000. Totally different marketing approach. See my prior topic on "Big City Marketing" at:

**deleted web link**

Going to expand on 3 approaches I took and then what the status is on Rent up. This will not be the norm for anyone else, but you can use it as another data point to see how you are doing.

Approach Road Sign:
I was so worried about the Internet and Sparefoot ranking, that I forgot about my road sign. Have a 13-15,000 Vehicle per day traffic count. The contractor and sign are all set. Just got the permit approval. Will be $15,000 installed. Be about $1 per vehicle on day one, then keep dividing each day. Will be my cheapest advertising and most focused, since these folks drive by here.

Kept it simple, they are driving 55 mph:

Roof line over the top.
company name
Phone number

Start small and do your Big mistakes early. Still learning. Never had a road sign before. Building signs, but no road signs.

Approach Sparefoot:
Whoopee. Just ranked number one in the four "Sort By's": a. Recommendation, b. Reviews, c. Price, d. Distance- zip code.
A lot of hard work went into this one. Primarily it was learning who was keeping score and how. Although this sounds great, most of the other competitors are 12 miles away on the other side of town, thus they are not true competitors. But on the internet, they get in the way of my local people seeing me.

Several of you have mentioned you don't like Sparefoot or other consolidation groups. We would all need to compare time and place for our units. I will compare against myself. Today, I will take every marketing avenue possible. Have a large monthly payment to make and I'm the one making it. The faster I get to my breakeven of 65% occupancy, the faster, I am not putting cash out. This location is in a large Metro area with a lot of competition. My other locations, we own the market. Three years from now, we might not use Sparefoot. By then we will have started our "Vortex" of old customers returning or new customers being referenced by our old customers. The location will Feed itself.

Approach Internet:
Again, we have locations in rural and now in a major metropolitan area. Both take a different marketing approach. In the major Metropolitan area, Sparefoot or a similar product take the lead because it is all about SEO (search engine optimization). Although I found and have one of the best SEO persons in the market, he can't compete against a large marketing group. Even if we get to be the number one listed on an internet search, there are still 10 more pages for someone to look through. It all bleeds together, even if your number 1. That is why I am pushing for YouTube and Google Map listing. These have pictures and stand out from the many pages of Google listings. The following YouTube cost $750. It is higher from other SEO firms. Our SEO monthly costs are significant, but it is part of playing in this larger market and also speeding up the Rent up period.

*** deleted web link*****

The Google Map listing, we just have to keep working our SEO magic. The large REITS and organizations key off on Google listings more than youtube or Map listings. We were at zero; and
now are at 10th out of 17 after 2 months on the map listing.

On Google under "Searches related to Self Storage in xxxxx city" on the first page, we are the number one suggested site to look at next. This is versus not listed 2 months ago. So our SEO is working.

We joined the two Chamber of Commerce's in our Metro area. Did a special ad on their websites. These are showing up on Google searches because of these two cities powerful SEO presence. This also created a great back link to our website.

Not shown is the Google analytics report for our SEO efforts on our Website. Couldn't get it to copy or show correctly. Although I am a numbers person, these reports are all "relative". To get Google to rank you higher, I can't tell if we are good or bad. So I ask my SEO how I can increase Organic Growth external of the Internet. He handles online and I handle Organic links to our website offline.
Currently we are doing a Coupon drive $100 credit for the renter and $50 for the Referrer. ****deleted web link******

They have to go to the website to print off a Coupon, they turn in with the rental agreement. This drives Google ranking on our website. Just started, so have to see how this works. Not allowed with any other Internet (Sparefoot) or other (AAA discounts) discounts.

Rent Up Period:
Attached is a Monthly Webselfstorage report. We opened in February. Half way through June we are at 12% full. My normal expectations on my other locations would be 30% full by June/July. Note this is for outdoor driveup storage and not a Climate Controlled building, which might prebuild 4 years worth of capacity.

		Occupancy
Month	Total	Begin	Ins	Outs	End	Chg +/-	SqFt	Rented
6/2020	229	21	8	0	29	8	11.72%	12.66%
5/2020	229	11	15	2	24	13	10.08%	10.48%
4/2020	229	6	9	1	14	8	6.40%	6.11%
3/2020	229	3	4	0	7	4	3.54%	3.06%
2/2020	229	0	4	0	4	4	1.91%	1.75%
1/2020	229	0	0	0	0	0	0.00%	0.00%

Then we would pick up another 20% in the fall. Not worried about is this a bad location, or other issue. The way I do market studies, ***deleted web link*****
there is more than enough clients here.

Key thing I am doing, is to make sure I have everything, I can control covered:
a. Mow grass and keep trash free.
b. Answer every phone call promptly.
c. Monitor Sparefoot pricing and availability
d. Work on SEO non internet Organic tools. Coupon program, Chamber commerce program, Customer reviews, evaluating Free Move in truck program,
e. Street sign
f. Evaluate pricing during rent up period. There is another new location on the other side of the city and they are renting for 1/2 price of everyone else. That might be the correct approach and then raise the rents. Don't know. Not an approach I'm taking. But don't know what their shoes are like financially. Luckily they are not my competition since they are so far away.

Hope this provided a base line for any new locations during rent up period. Please don't consider the above as good or bad. Just another data point to consider. We have another location 40 miles away that we added a new building to. It was 100% rented out in 2 months during the exact same period. Both locations are strong market areas for new locations or additional units.

For any Future Readers, this was during the Covid period.

0 Votes

All Forum Posts by: Henry Clark

Henry Clark has started 190 posts and replied 3609 times.

Post: Self storage- Valuation and Buy/Sell concepts

Post: Self storage- Valuation and Buy/Sell concepts

Post: Renting a back lot for commercial storage

Post: Storage unit vacancy rate

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

New Storage Facility Status update Month 4 from Opening

Henry Clark has started 190 posts and replied 3609 times.

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Self storage- Valuation and Buy/Sell concepts

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Self storage- Valuation and Buy/Sell concepts

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Renting a back lot for commercial storage

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Storage unit vacancy rate

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Biggerpockets Logo Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

New Storage Facility Status update Month 4 from Opening

Post: Self storage- Valuation and Buy/Sell concepts

Post: Self storage- Valuation and Buy/Sell concepts

Post: Renting a back lot for commercial storage

Post: Storage unit vacancy rate

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup

Post: Self Storage- Marketing New Location startup