All Forum Posts by: Henry Clark

Beautiful days and a lot getting done.

Road crew are pouring the final half of a section.  We normally do 25 foot wide roads, you could do 20.  Splitting that is 12.5 feet half sections.  A concrete truck is roughly 8 feet wide.  Thus they are able to back down and pour the last half.

By doing to slab halves they are able to put a V in the middle to let the water run down.  Normally you don't want this to occur, because if water gets between and underneath, it will erode out the wall.  I will get a close up picture how they interlock the two slabs later.

Again on the picture above in the right front corner, you can see I put in a cardboard circular form to come back later and put in our Bollard to protect the corners of the buildings.

The next picture they are pulling a brush across the fresh driveway concrete.  This bristly brush will put a rougher texture to the surface making it safer to drive on, versus leaving  a smooth surface.

The next picture shows the grey foam they are putting between the building pad and as they pour the road.  This is expansion joint so as the ground heaves or thaws the road and the building pad move separately.

Below is our existing office front.  On the ground you will note a metal ramp to get into both the office and the bathroom.  We have to be ADA compliant and we forgot to pour the concrete for the road higher to meet the office.  Don't have a picture, but we remembered and got it right on this site.  My builder did a great job on the ramp and securing it, but its just one snow push or knock away from dislodging.

Its Thursday and we can't get anymore concrete this week.  So the builder will work to get the final and last pad ready to pour.  He has 1/2 of the previous pad to pour on Monday.  Since its Thanksgiving next week, he will probably not start the pour on the last pad.

The road crew won't get concrete till next week, so they are forming up the roads and getting ready for next week.  Once everyone is offsite this weekend.  I need to go and lower the dry wash area I did.  Its about a foot high in about a 10 foot area.  Otherwise water will dam up behind it a little.  Also need to build another drywash area, which I will explain later.

Great weather today around 75. Normal should be 50. Had both the Road and the pad contractors going to town. Racing Mother Nature. The limiting factor right now is everyone is crushing it before winter sets in and no concrete can be poured. You have to schedule three days in advance for concrete. Concrete offices open at 6:30 and if you haven't called by 7:30 all the slots 3 days out are taken. Once the ground freezes you can't pour concrete on it, unless you keep the ground warm with heat blankets which is expensive and time consuming. And then you have to keep the poured concrete warm. Concrete generally has to be above 40 degrees, otherwise the concrete won't set and you just have mud and gravel.

Attachment one below showing you two things. The metal rod with the orange safety stop so you don't trip and stab yourself is the Electric ground for this pad. It is about a 20 foot piece of rebar bent in a long L shape with about 2 1/2 feet above ground. This will help with any lightning hits or electrical issues, from frying your camera or computer systems, or blowing the back wall out of your building.

At the base of the building you can now see how the building Rain guard lip and then the Road work together to keep water out of the building. The rain guard lip is about 1 inch below the floor. The black rubber guard on the roll up door will provide a sill so the rain doesn't blow under the door. If it does, then the 1 inch concrete lip keeps the water out.

The road is also set about 1 inch below the pad, helping to keep the water out. Also if we have frost heave, the road will still be below the pad or at worst even with it, thus keeping water out.


Second attachment are forms I placed while they were pouring the concrete. These are on the corners of the buildings where we will put steel post bollards. We could have let them pour over this, but then we would have to pay about $100 per hole to have a concrete "core" driller come out to use a circular saw to cut a hole. We will come back later with a post hole digger and dig down 3 feet. Then put a 7 foot steel post in. Then we will pour concrete into the hole. I do it the lazy way. I pour water into the hole. Then I slowly pour the dry concrete into the hole. That way I don't have to mix the concrete above ground. Will show you later.

I'm going to steer away from traditional REI because it's great now

You specifically referenced covid so I’ll go down that road

Your in Maryland high population. Your a realtor so you are comfortable with REI transactions and marketing on the internet

Seek out a hotel or motel with low vacancy.   Ask to rent out an entire floor or wing on an as needed room basis.  Advertise Covid recovery rooms.  Offer services.  Food, wash, check up or call program, etc. 

Start with your Loan To Value potential. Sba loan at 10% collateral with $5,000 would be $50,000.  Traditional loan with 25% would be $20,000 value.  

This would be a straight purchase with no rehab costs. 

One option is to buy or rent a trailer or rv eliminate rent and build equity.  Do the brrrr method on trailers

Another is to rent a large house or apartment and househack

Another option is to find someone doing a brrr and offer to live their and help rehab in spare time.   This gets you free rent and experience  

Woo Hoo

Don’t know if I spelled that correctly

Really becomes a cookie cutter process after you do your first one

Once your settled in. If your interested since your looking at Texas I know of some bare ground in San Antonio to be developed.  My brother and his family weren’t ready to take the passive income path. We don’t do non local storage investments otherwise I would do. 

Congrats

@Travis Rogers

Below is a checklist you can use to organize your approach to Self Storage.  Disregard any Croatia comments, I was helping a new investor there.

@Jason Turgeon

My saying is "Start small and Make your Big Mistakes early."  Obviously I don't follow my own rule.  Luckily the bigger we have gotten, it is all relative to the size of the location.  

Land/Storage can be found anywhere, even in the middle of Boston.  Read my Zoning, I3???? post.  I'm sure there are 3 bare acres right in the middle of Boston proper waiting to be purchased.

On the detail.  This is our last Storage location we are buying or building.  Thus I thought to pass on the experiences.  A lot of people buy and sell, but have not developed with all of its issues.  Moving on to our next type of investment.

Building is supposed to start mid December when the buildings get here.  About half way thru with this thread.

Three avenues you could go down.  Main thing is to talk with your local zoning and development group at the city.

1.  Ask for a special Use permit.  Don't do a rezoning.

2.  See if the Commercial zoning already allows.  Some cities may have 10 different types of commercial.  Have to read the fine print.

3.  Do a rezoning.  First go to a zone map and see if your "next" to a residential zone.  This makes it easier.  Instead of "spot" zoning which most groups don't like to do, this will be just a change.  Also ask them for a planned zoning map.  If they have it planned to be residential, usually its the other way around, Residential to Commercial, then it will be easy.  Fill out the paperwork.  Go to rezoning meeting.  If they approve, then it will need to be on the agenda for public input for two "readings".  You might ask for the two readings or the 2nd and final reading to be waved if there is no Public interest.

If you go to a meeting and present.  Don't argue with the public.  Just state your case and reasoning.  Explain the benefits to the city.  Give them a reason to vote yes.  They will appreciate a view of the plan.  And you will need to answer questions about parking and ingress/egress impact to the neighborhood.

a.  Covid- go with a 1% death rate across the board.  Assume 1/2 of these people live with others or in a rest home.  Thus only 1/2 of the houses will need to be sold.  So 1/100 die.  1/200 homes need to be sold.

Ask your local realtor what an influx of 1 out of 200 homes on the market will do.

b.  Currently our realtors are in their best year ever.  Can't get enough properties on the market.  No problem showing or closing home sales.  1/200 homes added would not impact the market at all.  If anything Covid, with people having time on their hands is having a favorable impact.

Larger impact to real estate normally:

1.  Interest rates at say 3% today.  I slow down investing at 7%.  I stop investing at 9%.  Your a Flipper/Rehabber, I would think you could go up to 20% interest if you can flip the house start to finish in 3 months.  If it takes you 6 months then interest of around 15% might stop you.  Don't see interest rates changing in the near term.

2.  Stock market implosion.  We are due.  As long as you have capital to ride out additional months till you sell or rent.  Lets say a house takes 1 month to sale today.  Can you go say 12 months from completion to sale or take a xx% price decrease to unload, in a down market.  Greater chance of a stock market drop, since we are in a long-term bull market and Price/Earning ratios are in neverland.

We did a "minor" subdivision.  80 acres into 10 lots.  But with front road access, no interior roads, to cost prohibitive.

Go to your County and ask for their subdivision rules and a step by step process.  If they don't do many subdivisions, this could take a year.

Determine if you are doing a true subdivision or a land split.  Sounds like a subdivision unless everyone has front road access.

What you want to find out is:

a.  Minimum lot size

b.  Road surface requirements

c.  Covenants required.

d.  utilities, sewer/Water/Electric

e.  Fire hydrants, must you supply

f.  If water wells.  Then you need to do test wells and/or guarantee water.

g.  Storm retention pond and/or storm drain systems required.

If you have to do hard surface roads and fire hydrant, 20 acre splits will not work to cover cost, unless your selling for $100,000 to $250,000 per lot.  Hopefully just rock surface and surface water run off.

Good luck.  Can be very profitable.