351. Self Storage Analysis 101: How to Find and Underwrite Deals (Step by Step)
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You want to buy a self storage facility, but you don’t know where to find one, or how to analyze one, or even where to begin.
You’re in luck because today, we’re showing you exactly how to analyze a self storage facility, step by step. We break down the entire process, from creating your buy box, finding listings, and reviewing offering memorandums (OMs) to evaluating markets and analyzing competitors.
We’ll even show you two real properties currently listed online, go over the numbers, comb through the photos, and tell you what we might do if we were buying them. You’ll quickly learn that some figures matter far more than others. The purchase price is always negotiable (especially in this market), and low occupancy isn’t a dealbreaker if there’s self storage demand.
Whether you’re targeting stabilized assets or value-add opportunities that allow you to increase revenue, use this practical framework to hone your self storage underwriting skills and achieve the ultimate goal: buying your first or next facility!
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- How to analyze a self storage facility (step by step)
- Offering memorandums (OMs) explained, and how to use one
- The best places to find self storage facilities listed for sale
- Why you should build your buy box before analyzing self storage deals
- What to look for when evaluating a self storage investing opportunity
- Why self storage market demand matters more than occupancy
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Join the Self Storage Income Community: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/learn?el=pc-ep351
Get our FREE self storage starter pack to learn how to analyze, underwrite, and operate your next storage investment: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/start-podcast?el=pc-ep351
Grab AJ’s Book, _Growing Wealth in Self-Storage 2.0_ : https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Wealth-Self-Storage-2-0-Post-Pandemic/dp/1735258865
Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | But for anyone who's just like, I don't even know where to start, like this breakdown that we're showing here is how you can, you know, start looking at deals right away and then start underwriting them to refine your skills and get better and better. |
| 0:12.1 | Tie in all of those things we talked about into your buybox. |
| 0:14.8 | What kind of storage facility asset you're wanting, potential purchase price that you're looking for? |
| 0:19.8 | You know, are you looking for stabilized? Are you looking for value add? |
| 0:22.6 | Like, what exactly are you looking for when it comes to self-storage? |
| 0:25.6 | Do your competitor analysis. |
| 0:27.6 | Look at the overall competition in that market and then really niche down into your like competitors. |
| 0:32.6 | You're just trying to figure out what is the play here? |
| 0:35.6 | What would the business plan be? If all of a sudden you were in charge of running this, |
| 0:39.7 | what would you need to do in order to make it the best possible facility it could be? |
| 0:49.6 | All right, everybody, today's episode is absolutely incredible |
| 0:52.5 | because we're setting all of you guys up for success to go out and start finding storage deals, start going through opportunities, and giving you a step-by-step view of how George and myself would be looking at these listings as we're going on these different platforms and websites. |
| 1:09.9 | I mean, where do we even start, right? Like how do we even look at what facilities or what regions to potentially invest in or to underwrite or any of the stuff? And today we're giving you guys that framework. If there's any episode to listen to, this is, this is one I really recommend taking the time to pause and go through because we give you guys, we're not just |
| 1:27.6 | teaching you. We're giving you action steps to go so you can go and do this yourself. So I think this is a |
| 1:32.4 | great episode for you guys who are wanting to go out and find deals and actually start building up |
| 1:36.9 | your pipeline and learning how to run to these deals quickly. You know, we talk about looking at |
| 1:42.2 | different markets and we talk about looking at these storage opportunities and all this stuff. |
| 1:46.8 | But what happens when you actually look at them? |
| 1:49.3 | You know, you're looking at all these different facilities and these opportunities that may or may not be in all these different areas around the country. |
| 1:56.8 | There are different sizes, different prices. |
| 1:59.2 | There's all these things going on. |
| 2:03.6 | And it can be really difficult to figure out where to start. It can be really overwhelming too. |
... |
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