256. How We Turned $4.5M into $30M with This ONE Self Storage Conversion
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This might be the biggest, best self storage conversion we’ve ever done. We turned a $4.5 million bankrupt building into a $30 million self storage facility. And here’s the thing: we could have NEVER done this if we were building from scratch. This was a needle in a haystack, and today, we’re sharing how we found it, why other investors overlooked it, and the problems, profits, and lessons from it.
Not only was this building massive, but it’s also now one of the most tech-first self storage facilities we’ve ever owned. We had to be really patient with this one. It took FOUR YEARS to get this facility open, and now, we can finally discuss the final numbers and details with you. If you want to make HUGE wealth-building leaps, then stick around because we’re talking all things self-storage conversion and the traps to avoid on your next deal.
We’ll explain how we picked up this deal for far less than it should have cost, why we went a million dollars over budget, why we changed our layout and made more money because of it, and how we did it all while storage rates were falling, interest rates were rising, and investors were running away from big deals in fear.
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- How we turned a bankrupt building into a self storage facility worth tens of millions
- Why you MUST buy when the rest of the industry is sitting on the sidelines
- How to avoid the development “traps” that’ll lose you money in self storage
- The importance of checking zoning BEFORE you buy and why it’s crucial to get this right
- Why we went a million dollars over budget during this ONE project
—
Enter our survey for a chance to win a signed copy of AJ's NEW book!
Listen to the AJ Osborne Podcast
Send Us a Question: info@selfstorageincome.com
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | It was right when COVID lockdowns went into place. |
| 0:03.0 | The markets were crashing. |
| 0:04.0 | This was at a time when everybody was standing around thinking, like, literally, everyone's |
| 0:09.0 | going to die. |
| 0:10.0 | Yeah, the world is ending. |
| 0:12.0 | Just the land on this thing was worth, you know, we're talking 10 plus. |
| 0:17.0 | It's wild. |
| 0:18.0 | This is prime real estate. |
| 0:23.4 | It was like, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. |
| 0:26.2 | We got to go, it'll never be up again. |
| 0:28.3 | This land, this property type. |
| 0:33.2 | You know those opportunities when they come up, and you move when you become experts of things. Welcome everybody to self-storage income. |
| 0:42.7 | We have got a lot to go over. |
| 0:45.6 | Big things happened in the last week. |
| 0:48.3 | We opened up one of our major conversion projects that was a conversion from an office building and the amount of |
| 0:57.5 | stuff that happened on this. It's like the timing, everything you could even imagine that was |
| 1:02.5 | thrown at it was thrown at it. We're going to go over all of that and we're excited that this |
| 1:07.8 | thing is open. We're filling it up and that it's great way to grand |
| 1:12.6 | opening and that was awesome but we're going to talk about just everything that not went wrong just |
| 1:18.3 | bad timing and all the hurdles everything that could have happened happened so we're we're going to |
| 1:23.1 | go through that and how you you pivot and what we've uh what not only we learn from it, but how we set it up |
| 1:29.6 | to where that didn't end it, didn't stop it. We were okay and still an incredible project and it |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from AJ Osborne, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of AJ Osborne and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.