A bottleneck for me is keeping up with too many leads to underwrite and make offers on. My VA is bringing lots of leads, but I can't keep up with them all. I spend too much time underwriting a deal, estimating expenses, doing a market rate analysis, figuring out what value add there is and where an offer would make sense for me and it doesn't allow me to keep up with all of the leads coming in. How can I spend 20 mins instead of 2 hours determining if a lead is worth diving deeper into? I use the range finder to quickly come up with a rough value of the biz based just on 35-40% expenses and applying a cap rate, but going one step deeper (but not as far as a full underwriting), what are others doing? I do some quick math using their revenue, applying a quick 35-40% expenses and then applying a 8-10 cap rate to give me a very rough value, but going one step deeper (but not as far as a full underwriting), what are others doing? Do you treat these all differently or qualify them differently? - on market vs off market deals - How do you determine if a deal looks like a deal you could wholesale - a 3-5 year optimize and sell - and a buy and hold? 

It was nice meeting up with @Jeff Spaulding at the Texas Self Storage Association Luncheon in Houston yesterday. I should have taken a photo like Scott Speer normally does. You'll have to take my word for it. Looking forward to working and learning together in the future.

Any other way to gauge the market besides secret calling competitors? I've called a few and getting vague answers of "a couple", "a few", "several", and etc of units available. I'll call a few more to see if I have any better luck. Maybe my story is not good enough.... I'm underwriting for a severely mismanaged facility. Physically it looks fine but the management of it is not there. Financial occupancy is only 25% (physical occupancy is 44%) and the people there are paying 25% to 50% below market. The market is 25 sqft/capita within 3 miles and 27 sqft/capita within 5 miles. It's a small town of about 19K people with median HH income of $41K (3 miles) and $46K (5 miles). Owner spending only a few hundred dollars per YEAR on marketing and no website. Basically, not paying attention to it at all. It could still be a deal if I can get it to 75% occupied. I just need to know how the competitors are doing and it's not over saturated. I know TractIQ can now show occupancy and financial. Would be nice to have that info but that's only available with their Pro+ level and likely out of my budget. How else can I gauge the market in that town?

I really thought I was going to have to build. I just wasn’t finding anything that met my requirements. I even bought a piece of land and rezoned it. I’ll probably still pursue that but excited to say I’m supposed to close this week on a new facility. It’s a really small one, just 34 units but the numbers made sense and it’ll be a good intro to the industry.

Dave's underwriting tool is good for valuing a decently run business, but how do you determine the purchase price of a severely distressed property that's only 25% occupied? I've heard of calculating the potential value and offering half of that. Any other methods you are using?