All Forum Posts by: Mark Byrge

@Johnny Horner I currently own three of them right now and I'm killing it with them. I buy them on land contacts from the current owners, put websites and call centers and install fence and gate systems and run them remotely. All are now 90%+ and cashflow like crazy. Finding sellers down the road will be harder but not impossible as I have people being me to sell to them. Small properties are great to learn the business and setup your processes.

@Christopher Battista

Not a ton of books out there but I recommend Mark Helm videos on YouTube and also Scott Meyers self storage academy. Lots of great content from both!

We just purchased our sixth property, five of which we were able to negotiate seller financing. This allows you time to get the financials where they need to be and make it easily financible for any lender. Another way to do it is look for SBA financing and have a solid business plan in place. This usually requires you to have some experience or an advisor that is experienced in self storage.

Good luck!

Garage door repair services can come out and get them in good working order. initially you can have an exterminator come out or you can order the bait boxes on amazon and place them around the units. for specific replacement parts if you are wanting to DIY it, you can go to Chateauproducts.com and they carry replacement parts for storage doors.

I would NOT use glue traps as then you are left with dead animals to go pick up and deal with. Get the bait boxes that have the dehydrating chemical in them. They eat the poison and then go off and dry up and do not stink.... 

Good luck!

They are purely a software and call center. I did mine in conjunction with a local supplier and then just integrated it with ESS. Pretty simple actually.

 I would say the same thing no matter what company you go with, that way if there is a problem there is no finger pointing and warranty issues. I have several facilities, Betco, American, and Heritage are the manufacturers, I also have a couple that are "pole barn" style and highly suggest the all metal structures, It also appears that the metal kit variety have favorable treatment for taxes as they can be depreciated quicker using cost segregation studies.

Another great source of free material is Mark Helms on YouTube. He has over 300 videos with a wide variety of content from buying, building, managing, advertising, etc. 

All of these activities that I speak of take minutes each day, its not overly time consuming and honestly the majority of my time is spent driving to my post office box to collect checks, entering the payments into the system (only the checks, credit payments are automatically entered), and driving deposits to the bank.

Not a terrible way to spend a friday each week!

 One of my properties is 2.5 hours away that I have only been to every 2-3 months. As stated, I DO have a local "handyman" that I send over towards the end of the month if I have had a moveout or two and have him check on any open units, blow out empties, etc. I also monitor gate entries through the gate software to see what kind of activity has transpired at the property as well as monitor cameras to verify no issues.

My other properties are closer to home and I will visit them maybe once a month, more out of boredom than necessity.

These are all exterior non-climate controlled units. 

The downside of having a setup like this is that you are not able to upsell boxes, tape, locks, etc. however the costs for having someone onsite generally will negate that income anyway.

Additionally, the call center people are trained to rent units and know how to close. They are also trained to upsell insurance policies which are a pure profit center for an owner. They can also be linked into your gating systems and program gate codes for you. Depending on your tolerance, you can typically just get emailed a notification that someone moved in and they take care of the rest. It's such a phenomenal business, I can't get enough of it! It's all in how you set it up and finding the right local boots that you can work out an arrangement with!