New Member, The Woodlands, TX. Broker / Investor. CCIM, ALC.
Hi,
I joined Bigger Pockets today!
Looks like a great site.
I LOVE real estate brokerage and particularly real estate investing. I started out in residential brokerage but graduated to commercial real estate brokerage and also commercial investing.
My favorite investment is land. Why? Well, I've been watching my clients buy and sell many investments over the years and the ones making the biggest returns have been the ones that bought land. By far. It was not even close. Also, they had almost zero management hassles. No tenants, toilets or trash! But, land does not provide income usually so it's not easy to buy with all cash every time.
So, my next favorite investment after that is self storage. Why? Well, it's kind of lIke multi-family in that you can have 100's of tenants but you don't have the three T's. For a $2,000,000 investment in a retail strip center you would be lucky if you had 7 tenants. So, if one vacated you would have a 15% vacancy. For the same money in self storage you could have 200 tenants. So, if one left you would only have a 0.5 % vacancy. Also, a new tenant in a retail strip center typically asks for TI (Tenant Improvements) which can be expensive. In self storage you simply sweep out the space and you're ready for the next guy. Repairs after a tenant moves out of a multi-family unit can also be costly affecting your returns.
I've personally invested in a boat and rv storage property and I LOVE the deal. I bought it at a 10% cap rate January 2016 and the rents are soon going up by about 25% because they were so low!!! See www.CapitolHillStorage.com.
As a broker we've also created a special niche focusing specifically on self storage... www.TheSelfStorageProfessionals.com.
Our main company brokerage site is www.TheProfessionalsGrp.com.
Looking forward to connecting!
Regards,
Lance.