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Self Storage Income

264. 7 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying a Storage Facility

Self Storage Income

AJ Osborne

Entrepreneurship, Education, Investing, Business, How To

4.9591 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

New to self storage investing? Then, at all costs, avoid these seven crucial beginner mistakes. When you’re buying a storage facility, a lot can go right…but a lot can go wrong, too; if you haven’t been in this game for a while, it’s easy to trip up and buy a facility that ends up costing you. So, how do you avoid all the beginner pitfalls that we’ve seen wipe out storage operators before they get their footing? Stick around because we share two decades of mistakes with you, so you DON’T make them.

We’re getting into WHY beginners never buy their first storage facility, the “good” problems you should hunt for when looking for deals, and the WRONG metrics that will throw you off course. We’ll also describe, in detail, how to analyze a market for demand so you don’t buy in an area that DOESN’T need more self storage. Plus, how getting unit sizes right can help you beat the competition and fill up your facility fast.

We’re also highlighting due diligence errors and how to fact-check what the seller reports so you don’t buy a facility different from the one you thought you were getting. And stick around for the end—we’re taking your questions from past episodes and answering them on today’s show! 

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

  • The seven biggest mistakes you must avoid when buying your first (or next) self storage facility 
  • Why you DON’T need “everything” to get started and how to get in the game NOW
  • The reason we hunt for “good” problems that we can fix (these make the BEST facilities)
  • Self storage “rules” you should ignore that could cost you a solid deal 
  • How to project future demand and confirm that your facility will have high occupancy 
  • Getting your unit sizes right and how to know you’ll be vacant/occupied after you buy

Growing Wealth in Self-Storage 2.0 - https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Wealth-Self-Storage-2-0-Post-Pandemic/dp/1735258865/ref=pd_lpo_sccl_1/130-4697294-4842904?pd_rd_w=Avd61&content-id=amzn1.sym.4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_p=4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_r=BSC3EPJZ1BW18SHS5Q43&pd_rd_wg=iwGnD&pd_rd_r=a8a3d912-35b9-4cb4-9824-72248ca17bb7&pd_rd_i=1735258865&psc=1

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome everybody to self-storage income, and today is a day we're talking about mistakes that you make as beginners, getting started.

0:15.7

Now with that said, I will tell you a lot of the mistakes we're talking about come from what we believe you need to know as beginners, but people do it at all stages of their storage experience.

0:27.4

A lot of these, I did not learn until we had a portfolio.

0:31.2

Remember when we got started, there were no podcast books, anything else like that.

0:34.6

So I was learning as we go.

0:35.3

But although this is a podcast where

0:38.1

we're talking about mistakes that are common that you need to avoid, when you are looking,

0:43.3

getting started, or even scaling, we really want to focus on those key points. We really want

0:51.3

to focus on things that are really impactful. So it's not just like

0:56.2

mistakes or little mistakes. We want to talk about the things that make the difference.

1:01.0

And that's really important. We also have a list of questions from you, our listeners,

1:07.2

about storage. And we're going to go through those at the end.

1:11.8

Other thing, we try to cover a lot in these podcasts. There's just no way we could do.

1:18.3

Don't forget everybody. The book, it's 450 pages. Go on to Amazon. We're at the cheapest

1:24.3

level that Amazon will let us actually sell it, which is the cost to print and ship the thing.

1:29.9

So we're not making any money off or anything else.

1:32.1

You guys buy the book.

1:33.6

You get it.

1:35.4

And you read it.

1:36.5

You leave us a review.

1:37.9

Send that in.

1:38.7

Send it into self-storage income.

...

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