Passive Investing into Self Storage Real Estate with Scott Krone
“One of the things that we're doing is how we've been able to avoid a lot of overbuying and making sure that we're buying at the correct level, and then what I also do outside of real estate is just my ability to help people through different situations.”
Mr. Krone is a Chicago native whose career in architecture began in 1991 by pursuing his Masters of Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology. While obtaining his degree, he also worked as a Project Manager for Optima, Inc.
In 2012, Krone founded Coda Management Group – a firm that specializes in managing real estate assets. Since its inception, Coda has managed a wide range of real estate, including single and multifamily homes, retail, commercial warehouse, self-storage, and multi-use flex athletic spaces. Currently, the platform of investments is in excess of $54 million.
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Brett:
I'm excited about our next guest. He is a part of the CoDa Management Group, and they purchase undervalued warehouse space warehouses and convert them into climate-controlled class a REIT-ready Self-Storage properties and so much more that we're gonna learn about him. He's from the Great Chicago land area. Please bear with me Scott Krone. Scott, how are you doing?
Scott:
Doing well. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm really looking forward to this.
Brett:
By the way, you can learn more about Scott Krone at codamg.com, that's codamg.com. We're talking all things passive investing into self-storage real estate today. But before we get there Scott, would you give our listeners a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Scott:
My background is in architecture, I got my master's degree from Illinois in technology, way back in 1994. During that time, I was a TA for my professor who owned a real estate development architectural and contracting firm, which was focused predominantly on multifamily. My background is in multifamily development. My master's thesis was a 400 unit 100 million dollar project that I worked on, while in school, but also in his office, and so I was doing multifamily for six years, and then I started my own company at the very, ripe age of 28, and looking back on it probably a little too soon. But we began on this single-family multifamily side. Then when the crash of 08 or 09 came when we focused on multifamily, and then 13, we be in our first cell source development, and we did that and flipped it to compass self-storage, and then we've been sold off our multifamily portfolio, and I've been expanding our self-storage portfolio since then, and this past year, we just launched our own self-storage brand, one-stop self-storage.
Brett:
We're gonna talk about why self-storage has been one of the safest bets in real estate in the past 50 years, a $38 billion industry. One in 10 Americans pay an average of $92 a month to use self-storage and self-storage. He has had a 7.7% annual growth since 2012, and so much more here in a minute. But I want to take one other step back, Scott, I want you to go back to the high school days, I believe we've all been given certain gifts in this life. Some people call it strengths, some people call them superpowers, I think their God-given gifts that are given to us to be a blessing and help to others. I'm curious, what is that one or two gifts that you believe you were given? How does that help? How do you help and bless people today?
Scott:
Well, and I think there's, it's a very intense question, and I say that because it is not a negative thing. But a very positive thing. I would say the one super thing that I have is I have the ability to sort of seeing what's coming down the pipeline a little bit sooner rather than later, and I was able to alter our investment strategy, prior to the internet bust, and then also to the real estate bust, and then currently what we're doing now, so I'm not perfect at timing things. But I can certainly get a glance, see what's happening in the landscape. One of the things that we're doing is how we how we've been able to avoid a lot of overbuying and making sure that we're buying at the correct level, and then what I also do outside of real estate is just my ability to help people through different situations, and so I'm willing to, provide my insight, in my experience, to help people avoid some of the problems that I've, seen and dealt with and learn from. those are the things I think other people would say about me as opposed to what I just feel about myself.
Brett:
See what's coming down the road sooner rather than later, and make adjustments, and help those to take action. Is that a fair summary?
Scott:
That is a great summary.
Brett:
Let's dive right into passive investing into self-storage, real estate. What's the number one secret? Scott, I mentioned some of these major stats, including they're over 4 to 8,000 self-storage facilities in the US and that there are more self-storage units in the US than McDonald's and Starbucks locations combined, which is pretty staggering. Most people maybe don't know about that but give us the number one secret to taking these stats, understanding them, and investing passively to make a good return.
Scott:
Well, the main reason why I'm focused on self-storage versus apartments in multifamily at this point in time is a few different reasons. One, it's a much more predictable business model. Some I deemed recession-resistant, others had deemed it recessionary proof. But we went back and studied all the major recessions, from inflation all the way up through the current one, which technically wasn't a recession, but we're certainly experiencing a recessionary type. circumstances, and so in each of those cases, self-storage slightly dipped, but then rebounded very aggressively, and it's always stayed around 88 to 90% occupied during that entire time period. It's a very consistent and predictable business model, and we can also go look at a specific market and ascertain what our supply and demand are so that we don't go into situations where there's too much supply already in the marketplace, we can avoid those areas. That's the reason why we're doing it is just that it's a lot more predictable in terms of the business model compared to multifamily.
Brett:
So predictable, recession-resistant, occupied 80 to 90%. It's consistent, and it's more predictable, I guess, maybe the overall first part of that theme, is that correct?
Scott:
That's absolutely correct.
Brett:
What's the second secret or second step too, it could even be investing with you, maybe what an investor should be asking, maybe they're looking at me, they see the sexy multifamily. I don't even call mobile home parks sexy, but you might say like, It's it used to be, but that's kind of the secret out there, too. Walk us through, a high net worth accredited investor looking at potentially investing, and you're making the case for self-storage on that first part of it, but will it be the next thing compared to those other two?
Scott:
Well, I don't think anyone's ever accused self-storage of being sexy. But I would say that 50% of our investors are doing it for tax strategies, as opposed to growth. There are three different types of assets within self-storage, and we equate them to different stocks. One would be Penny blue chip and growth, and we're predominantly focused on the growth and, and the blue-chip, in terms of good annual cash flow, but also the appreciation. But more importantly, the different tax structures that we have set up in order to help protect or defer capital gains. We've done everything from historic tax credits. We've done multiple cost segregations, one upon acquisition, and then one upon redevelopment. We can load up on the depreciation schedules at that point in time, and then the most powerful tool that we've implemented is the opportunity zones, which actually wipes out any tax gains, and worst case is a tax deferment. But the best case is a complete wipeout of any tech capital gains taxes.
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