All Forum Posts by: Justin Frank

Hi @Naomi Pinger, you make a great point about the flood potential. The city actually has big plans in place to bring all those now labeled flood zone areas out of the flood zone. There was just a big article released on this and is part of the reason I decided to look into this project. 

@Terry Campbell

Thanks for the great response. The facilities I was in contact with were all C class and medium size facilities. I didn’t get their actual square footage but all facilities were 150 units and more. Climate control is a great option but as far as I have been able to tell in Washington state people aren’t extremely interested in it. We just don’t have the high humid temps or very low temps that would make climate control super desireable. I may be wrong on this, but it feels There is a small market for climate control here. There is a large facility in the Olympia area advertising climate control for wine storage however I have no idea how well they do with this. Aberdeen is more of a low income area with a history of drug problems. They are trying hard to turn around burn economically there is nothing there to bring large amounts of good people in to the city. If my storage facility offered a place to store of cook meth it would be a hit for sure. Lol

@Neil Henderson

Thank you for your response as well Neil. I am going to work a little further and deeper into my own feasibility and I do agree that $5k is not much money in regards to the money that could be poorly spent on building a facility in the area that wasn’t in demand. 

@John Brennan this question could by answered simply by asking the local facilities how many units they have on site. Most place don’t mind answering basic questions like this. Also the city websites make it very convenient to search for parcel info and find basic info about buildings and parcel size. You can generally figure out the number of units on site from the city website but that is easy to gather from calling the facility’s. 

Thank you @John Dirgo Deweese 

@Ryan Rupe look in Thurston County. Great rental market. Thurston County is in a bit of a crisis for homes/apartments available for individuals to rent so if you can find a rental in this area it will be highly unlikely that you will have any vacancy issues. The hard part is going to be finding a good purchase point to cash flow. Washington is very expensive right now and when a good deal comes along it goes very quickly and usually goes to folks who are very well established in the rental investment game. With that that being said, its not impossible to find a good deal, it’s just difficult. Good luck 👍 

Hi @George Fitz

I’m not too sure of this. I will have to find this out. 

@Megan Phillips @Kim Pilcher 

Thank you two so much. I didn’t think about contacting @Brandon Turner  great idea. 

@Lance Langenhoven

Thank you for your response Lance. I do agree that $5k is a lot for feasibility. 

I have the opportunity to be involved in a storage conversion of an existing grocery and was hoping I could get opinions/info from anyone who has performed or been involved in a storage conversion. Building has a wide open 44,000sq/ft floor plan, there is a large parking lot on the building front side for customers and/or for covered boat/rv storage, the purchase would also come with another 1acre of land that is currently occupied by a local business (the business renting the u-haul will be pushed off the land at the sale of the building) to rent u-haul. This extra acre could be used to continue renting trucks, or turned into covered parking if demand was there. The building sits on a high traffic road at 25,000+ cars per day, and also has a large billboard out front for advertising. The building owner is very flexible with terms of the deal which opens up a lot of possibility to make the deal work for both of us. Downfalls are the building is old and rehab will be costly, a conditional use permit will be needed prior to construction of self storage, and the building is located in Aberdeen, WA which has also been called scaberdeen due to a reputation of low income housing and drugs. Much of the town is showing improvements, however I am still nervous about being involved in an Aberdeen project. My very long winded post was all to ask for help from anyone who is familiar with the Aberdeen/Grays Harbor area. Would you consider investing or developing in Aberdeen, is anyone familiar with storage and its demands in Aberdeen? I have done self research and every unit i reached out to was 90% full or higher and these facilities are located outside of the city center. I am working with an individual in the Seattle area to help with feasibility however I have not wanted to invest the $5k for this study until I have done more of my own basic research and reached out to everyone on BP for opinions on the Aberdeen area. I understand there are many details I have left out so please feel free to ask questions so I can paint a clear picture of the project. With that being said, At this point I am just hoping someone could assist me with some Aberdeen info before i dive too deep in this project.

@John Sonmez

Hi John, if you have any interest in storage send me a personal message and we can talk about investing into some storage units. 

@George Gao

38 units is very small but it is real estate that you could own so if you see potential to cash flow and have a good exit plan I would say it would be worth it. Is there room to expand or is there demand for more units? I look at and analyze everything. 

Hi @Laxmi Chirravuri

This is a very hard question to answer and a very long question to answer. There are many different ways to manage a self storage facility. A lot of it comes down to what size facility you have and whether or not you can afford to have a manager on site. There are a lot of good tools for self automation (kiosk, auto locks, auto gates) but they aren’t perfect and don’t allow you to be completely hands off. You will always need someone who can respond to the facility for maintenance, lockouts and potentially to show units if you choose to do so. 

I can’t help you with your competition or demand as I’m Not sure where you are looking to invest. A good start would be to simply do a google search to see what facilities are in the area of your interest to see how many facilities are around. As far as demand goes I would take the facilities you find on google call each one as a customer and start asking questions to help determine if demand is there. 

If you are unsure of these basic things I would start by purchasing a few books related to self storage and/or look at @Scott Meyers self storage training academy. There are a lot of good resources out there to start self research and answer some of your questions. 

As stated earlier the answers to your questions asked could be very detailed and go on for a long time. If you are new to self storage, I would go pick up a few books and start searching the internet for basic knowledge before you dive right in trying to purchase