236. Long-Term Effects of COVID on Self Storage w/ Dane Elefante
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2024
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Self Storage was hit during the COVID-19 shutdown. But during that time, storage saw a surge in demand, which put it ahead of many other asset classes. It reacted in a way that many thought not possible in a recession.
But the problem is, the industry reacted very strangely. There became an assumption that you can succeed in storage with very little effort or improvement. As the economy shifts back towards the pre-pandemic normal, this approach HAS to change. The market will not simply work in your favor "just because."
In this episode, we talk with Dane Elefante about how the industry has shifted in recent years, but more importantly, how the shutdown impacted the mindset of storage owners and operators. And how that no longer works today.
Dane is the Chief Operating Officer at Platinum Storage Group. He has 16 years of commercial real estate experience in the self-storage property sector, and leads the firm’s data analytics business to integrate property-level, portfolio-level, and market data to inform sub-market location and design decisions.
Learn more about Platinum here: https://platinumstorage.com/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When you're on a market that has four straight years of 100% occupancy and rates are rising, it's not that there's nothing to manage, but you couldn't even see the problems. And when we go out, we have guys that call around and see if people want to get management. There's more that they could be doing to drive value at their site. And maybe what they were doing was working, but it's not working anymore. |
| 0:20.9 | The pressure's on right now. And it's still on. |
| 0:28.1 | Welcome everybody to the Self Storage Income podcast, and I'm here with Dane and Platinum Storage, |
| 0:33.4 | and we are going to be talking about everything you guys are seeing in the market. And what's going on? |
| 0:39.3 | Especially interested in the management side because you are so active in not only the management of the assets, |
| 0:48.3 | but also the industry with the technology. |
| 0:52.3 | You've done a lot of things revamping obviously your participation in |
| 0:57.0 | store local and you guys have been for a long time participants in that but tell me about your |
| 1:04.0 | company overall before we kind of start talking about the industry in the market yeah just quick |
| 1:08.2 | summary platinum stores group we've been around since 1999 it's's a family company. I work, you know, Skip's CEO is my dad, my sister's president. I've been doing it basically since I was 16. I'm 39 today and my siblings are pretty much the same. But Skip had been in the industry for 40 years. And in 1999, you know, he started out in management. |
| 1:28.3 | We started syndicating our first deals and you know ever since we got started, we found it was |
| 1:33.0 | just a great vehicle for, you know, wealth creation and helping our friends and family build |
| 1:37.1 | generational wealth for their families. So a lot of the same investors we had in 1999 we have today. |
| 1:42.4 | And, you know, we're in seven states we've operated in 20 |
| 1:44.9 | we've been up to 125 properties in size right now we're currently 35 properties in seven states |
| 1:50.6 | and we're vertically integrated so we do development you know we do management we do consulting and |
| 1:56.6 | you know obviously alongside you know we're really really into the tech and how that's influencing |
| 2:02.6 | our industry and changing things and just changing how we can do business. |
| 2:05.6 | Because a major frustration, I'm sure for you and for a lot of other operators in the industry |
| 2:10.2 | for so long was we had great ideas on how to run our business and no capability to do it. |
| 2:15.7 | Yes. |
| 2:16.7 | That's awesome. |
... |
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