267. Why You DON’T Need Big Facilities to Succeed in Self Storage Investing w/Justin James
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You DON’T need to be doing million-dollar deals to build wealth with self storage. Take it from Justin James, who, at only twenty-six years old, has two self storage facilities, both of which cost him as much as many people’s houses. He’s had his ups and downs, like the recent fire that burned one of his buildings, but he’s STILL bullish on self storage, especially the smaller facilities that pack much better potential.
We brought Justin on to talk about how someone with zero experience can get started and the best properties for someone just getting into the self storage game. He shares how he found the properties, finances them, manages them, and dealt with what nobody wants to deal with—an early morning call from the fire department.
But Justin isn’t the only one who sees huge potential in small self storage properties. AJ is a BIG fan of this investing strategy and shares why these overlooked facilities might be the key to the best returns in the industry. If you don’t have a ton of experience or money to start investing, worry not. Justin is a prime example of how anyone (yes, even you!) can get started today.
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- The overlooked small self storage facilities that new investors should start with
- How to manage your facility when disaster strikes (like a fire!)
- The massive value-add opportunity of mom-and-pop deals that “big money” overlooks
- “Operational” impacts you can EASILY make to your facility to raise its value
- Why value-add self storage almost always beats multifamily investing
- Auditing your time and how to STOP doing the less important work at your facility
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Justin’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/justinjameslive/
📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/
🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/
🎙️ Do you have a great story to share on the SSI or AJ Osborne podcasts? You can now apply here! https://form.asana.com/?k=TGU88eU0bFTFW1iHcckuTA&d=1203571084143207
📖 Get AJ's new book that teaches you everything he knows about self-storage https://a.co/d/aRSKcSq
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | They decided to take a break, go into one of the units, lit a candle. They fell asleep. Oh, geez. And woke up to a fire. You're buying the small facilities. You can fail small, but you can learn quickly on it. Because you can do it, you can manage it, but it doesn't consume all your life. Exactly. Like, when you go and buy a small facility, I tell people this all the time. If I wanted to get a higher return dollar for dollar, I'd do a small facility. |
| 0:28.0 | Justin James, what's going on, lady? |
| 0:32.6 | Awesome, James. |
| 0:33.4 | Right? |
| 0:33.8 | Yeah, yeah. |
| 0:34.6 | AJ O. |
| 0:35.3 | That's right. |
| 0:36.2 | How you doing, man? |
| 0:37.4 | If I was complaining, AJ, you'd have to throw me off |
| 0:39.8 | this window seriously this is a view this is the best podcast location we've done so anyone that's not |
| 0:45.6 | watching the youtube video we're up here in cordelaine and we're looking at the cordelaine lake |
| 0:50.3 | uh beautiful fall we have the self-storage income conference. So we're here with my buddy, |
| 0:56.6 | Justin James. And I've known you for a while now, known you before you got started in storage. |
| 1:01.9 | On your real estate journey, it's been awesome to see, dude. Like, it's for me, this is like really cool |
| 1:09.3 | because I'm a nerd. And just to watch you and know you and you're my friend and watch you start investing, |
| 1:15.8 | um, it's really fun. |
| 1:18.1 | It's even fun when your buildings burn down. |
| 1:21.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:22.1 | It is. |
| 1:22.6 | I woke up that morning to that news and I didn't, didn't cry I didn't get mad no drywall was |
| 1:30.4 | punched it was just like well happens and then you went straight to speak at a conference with me |
| 1:36.4 | I did about real estate I did yep so three days ago now like literally this just happened tell |
... |
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