This facility just hit the market again... And seeing it brought back a lot of memories because we used to own it. Here's the story. Back in 2021, another investor called me with a lead they didn't have time to pursue. At the time, I was very vocal about wanting facilities with 20,000+ square feet in the Southeast, and this one checked all the boxes. ✅ As we dug into the offering package, one number jumped off the page immediately... 👉 57% expense ratio. That was our opportunity. The facility was owned by a respected self-storage coach and several of their students, so we knew we'd have to look deeper than most investors would. When we started peeling back the layers, we found: • Expensive third-party management • High delinquency • Multiple abandoned units full of trash • Gates and cameras not functioning properly • Poor operational oversight And then we found something even better... Several units were listed as 5x5 units renting for around $25/month. The problem? They weren't 5x5s. They were actually 10x10s. Just correcting the unit mix added roughly 2,000 NRSF to the property on paper without building a single square foot. Think about that for a second. No expansion. No construction. No rezoning. Just better operations and better management. This is why I constantly tell people that value-add investing isn't always about building more units. Sometimes the biggest opportunities are hiding in plain sight. 📍 Purchased: November 2021 💰 Purchase Price: $560,000 Over the next 16 months we: ✅ Cut expenses ✅ Improved operations ✅ Fixed management issues ✅ Corrected unit data ✅ Increased revenue ✅ Added value 📍 Sold: March 2023 💰 Sale Price: $1.2 Million Now it's back on the market listed around $1 Million. The lesson? Most investors are looking for the next shiny object. The best investors look for inefficiencies. Value isn't always created with a bulldozer. Sometimes it's created with a spreadsheet, a phone call, and a willingness to dig deeper than everyone else.

This is a great listen from a smart man sharing data on the market. He operates in the multi family space, but that parallels closely to storage. This explains why we are seeing declining demand in many markets. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/willy-walker-chairman-and-ceo-walker-dunlop/id1540843402?i=1000764784687

Kept seeing comments on various platforms about how “tedious”tracking advance refundable deposits is, it really piques my interests as what exactly do operators do to “track”? I assume most of softwares take the deposit payment and categorize it (accounting wise) in a separate bucket, and when move out happens, you just click the refund button if the tenant didn’t do any damage? Is this not the case? I had no prior experience taking in deposits so would like to hear others who had and what the pain points are specifically.

Question for current facility owners. Shane and I have never had a problem allowing our any of our BOG to have a free unit (depending on occupancy, of course). It gives them a different prospective utilizing the facility as a customer as well as an employee. Do any of you do this? If so, what issues have you experienced? Positive or Negative..

Congrats to @Mike Perkins and @Tammy Perkins for reaching out to tenants to see if they need more space and have rented additional units. When a tenant can’t keep up with rent, we offer a smaller unit- opening their bigger unit to be rented at the current street rates. We also charge for 24 hours access, additional fees for cutting locks, new locks, mandatory insurance, and we set up parking spaces with any extra space that we have. I would love to see what other owners/operators do for additional streams of income… look forward to the call noon! See you there! 🙂