How do you collect rent for your storage units?

Question

Thanks to the BP podcasts and support from this community over the last 3 1/2 years, I have grown my portfolio to about 30 units and we're still growing. I'm excited to be under contract on our first commercial property and looking for some help.

Among other things, this property has 28 storage units. I have managers who collect rent and take care of the day to day operations of my residential units, but I'm interested in hearing how other storage unit owners collect rent. Obviously, there aren't enough units to have an employee there, so I'm looking for a solution. I would love a wix type site already setup to collect rent and advertise on a sign... any suggestions?

Henry Clark · Answer

@ John.

Here is how we do our rentals as another variation for you.  Key is to have someone sweep out after someone moves out and then set a new contract and lock, with a zip tie.

Henry Clark · Answer

@John, my attachment was not allowable.  Please look over in BP youtubes for a copy of our Self Service rental process.  Thanks.  If you can't find it, just PM me.

Mark Shaver · Answer

@John West, Website builders like Wix are very slow in generating pages. The page load time can be tens of seconds. Only one of 10 visitors is ready to wait so long for the download to complete. This means that your advertising will only work at 10%.Use a faster website engine for your lead generation site.Read more in the article "How to increase website conversion up to 100 times".

John West · Answer

Excellent Henry - thank you! I like your setup.

Mark Shaver · Answer

@John West, You probably need a "merchant account subscriptions" service:

"A subscription merchant account provides businesses using a subscription-based sales model the ability to take payments from customers. Payment methods could include debit card, credit card, value added card, and high risk ACH processing."

Cloud accounting services also know how to collect monthly payments and automatically monitor them.

Disclaimer, I'm not an accountant.

John West · Answer

@Mark Shaver thanks for your input. I’m not so concerned about the advertising side as I am the rent collection portion. I’m planning to require automatic deposit, but don’t want to physically meet every tenant to do a lot of paperwork. I’d like to automate it online... maybe on this small of a scale, it’s a pipe dream... idk.

How do you collect rent for your storage units?

Most Popular Reply