Firefighter. Multi-state self-storage operator. I teach first-time buyers how to find, underwrite, and close off-market deals. Free calculator below
California
Joined October 2012
- Tweets11.8K
- Following822
- Followers6.1K
- Likes8.8K
Pinned Tweet
Quick reintroduction:
I’m Kevin. Firefighter. 36. Wife, 3 kids (5 and under)
I bought my first house at 19 during the worst housing crash in modern history.
Ended up buying about 50 more over the next 5 years.
Quit two corporate jobs before 25.
Moved to Australia for a year to figure out what I actually wanted. Turns out it wasn’t to sit behind a desk and work a 9-5 or to manage a bunch of homes.
Today I own 12 self-storage facilities across 4 states (acquiring more each year), run a hard money lending business, and coach people getting into storage.
Things I believe that most people in real estate won’t say out loud:
* High occupancy can be a trap
* Most coaching programs are marketing funnels disguised as education
* Real estate isn’t passive. Run from whoever tells you it is.
* A $500K storage facility in a small town will outperform a $2M multifamily in a “hot market” 9 times out of 10
* Automation is overrated if your processes are broken - you’re just automating chaos faster
* You don’t need to quit your W-2 to build real wealth
I post real numbers, real mistakes, real lessons learned, and real operations. No fluff.
What’s one question you have about self-storage or real estate investing? Drop it below or DM me - I’ll answer every one.
Everyone wants storage in Austin and Phoenix.
I buy in towns most investors can’t find on a map.
New Q3 data from Cubby showed why. And it’s not the reason you’d think.
Start with the hot metros. Storage sq ft per resident:
US average: 7.9
Phoenix: 10.1
Houston: 10.9
Dallas: 11.5
The markets everyone wants are the most built out. You’re fighting every REIT and developer in the country for the same tenant.
And those REITs are pricing hard. Their online rates fell 8.6% from May to September. 58% of their listings now carry a promo.
Now small towns. Real numbers, including the ugly ones.
Tertiary & rural, Q3:
Occupancy: +0.8 pts (smallest gain)
Move-ins: -7.5%
Delinquency: 3.7% (highest)
Small towns did not win on demand.
They won on price.
In-place rent growth, Q3:
Urban: +0.6%
Suburban: +1.7%
Tertiary & rural: +4.1%
Nearly 7x the urban number.
Fewer competitors means you set the rent. Not a REIT’s algorithm.
Midwest rural stores ran 84.3% occupancy. Midwest urban stores ran 84.5%. Same occupancy. A fraction of the purchase price.
That’s the trade I want.
The catch: small towns aren’t automatically safe. Montana and Idaho have 17.5 sq ft of storage per person, more than double the national average. One new facility in a town of 5,000 can wreck your numbers. Check supply per person before you buy. Not after.
My filter:
Small town.
Few competitors.
No new supply coming.
Room to raise rents on current tenants.
Boring markets don’t win on demand. They win on pricing power.
What market are you looking at? Let me know in the comments :)
Seller financing should make a good storage deal better.
It should never be the reason you do the deal.
How I approach it 🧵
Seller financing for storage, step by step: storageventure.com/how-to-bu…
What a free month really costs
A free first month isn't an 8% discount.
On a 12-month stay: 8.3%
On the median 6-month stay: 17%
2 months free on a 6-month stay: 33%
Price your promos against how long your tenants actually stay, not a 12-month lease nobody signs.
The only 4 numbers I track for off-market storage deals:
Calls made
Owners actually reached
Meaningful conversations
LOIs sent
The target is 1+ LOI per week.
Not a perfect LOI. Not a perfect deal. One real offer, every week.
I don't always hit it. I've gone weeks without sending one, and those are exactly the weeks nothing happens.
Deals don't come from bursts of motivation. They come from consistent, imperfect action.
Most new storage buyers price a facility off the seller's pro forma.
That's how you overpay.
So I built a free calculator that runs the same method I use:
1) Enter local street rents for a 10x10 and a 10x15s
2) Enter rentable square feet
3) Get stabilized value, my 75% max offer, an exit check, and the 100x rule
Cap rate and expenses are adjustable.
The defaults are mine: 8% and 35%.
It's a first-pass filter, not an appraisal. Still underwrite every deal.
Link to the calculator is in the comments
Free, takes 2 minutes:
storageventure.com/self-stor…
Bought 3 houses at auction Sept 1.
1 in escrow
1 listed
1 in rehab
Bought 4 houses Oct 6 auction.
1 in eviction process
1 reverted back to owner
1 listed
1 in rehab
Interesting housing market right now
Makes me really appreciate self storage
You have $500,000 cash and want to invest in real estate.
Are you:
A) Buying a cash-flowing self-storage facility
B) Flipping houses to grow your capital
C) Buying rentals for long-term appreciation
D) Sitting on cash waiting for a crash
What are you doing and why?
Only 2% of you said underwriting is what's stopping you.
That's the problem.
Underwriting is the one skill that protects you from everything else. Bad deals don't kill investors. Bad math on decent-looking deals does.
Here's how I underwrite every storage facility:
1) In-place NOI only. I pay for what the facility makes today. Not what the broker says it could make. The upside is my reward for doing the work, not something I pay the seller for.
2) Rebuild the expenses. Never trust the seller's P&L. Small owners skip management, payroll, software, and repairs because they do it themselves. I plug in what it costs me to run it.
3) Reassess the property taxes. When the facility sells, the county can reassess it. The seller's tax bill isn't yours.
4) The 100x rule. Price (typically) shouldn't exceed 100x monthly gross rent for small town storage. A facility collecting $5,000 a month tops out around 500K. Fast filter. Kills most overpriced deals in 30 seconds.
5) Check supply. Roughly 7 square feet of storage per person is my benchmark. Way over that and you're fighting for every tenant. Verify by calling competitors and assessing vacancy
6) Four hard gates. Going-in cap rate, year 1 cash-on-cash, debt coverage, and the 100x rule. Fail one and the deal is likely dead.
7) Verify what isn't on the spreadsheet. I cancelled a deal this year after one call to the state environmental agency. The numbers worked. The dirt didn't.
Here's why this connects to everything else:
Can't find deals? You can't recognize one.
Can't raise capital? Partners fund numbers, not enthusiasm.
Scared to operate? Good underwriting already priced in the cost of running it right.
Underwriting is the skill that makes every other part of this business easier.
20% of you said you’re scared of operating a storage facility.
Fair. Nobody wants a second job.
But here’s what most people picture: sitting in an office, answering the phone, chasing late payments, dealing with a guy living in his unit.
Here’s what it actually looks like when it’s set up right:
I live in California. I've owned facilities in Texas, North Dakota, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Kentucky.
That only works because of systems, not effort.
Online rentals. Tenants find the unit, sign the lease, and pay online. No office. No office hours.
Autopay. Most tenants on autopay means most rent collects itself.
Cloud management software. Rent roll, payments, late fees, and lien notices all run automatically.
Gate access and cameras. Tenants get a code. You see the property from your phone.
A local part-timer. Someone in town for a few hours a week. Walks the property, cleans out vacated units, cuts locks, handles anything physical.
A VA or call center for phones and follow-up. Calls, collections, and tenant questions handled without you.
Written processes. Move-ins, move-outs, delinquencies, auctions. Write it once. Hand it off forever.
Now the honest part.
It’s not zero work. Delinquencies happen. Auctions happen. Something breaks. A tenant calls angry.
The difference is whether that lands on your phone or goes to a system you built.
Most people aren’t scared of operating storage. They’re scared of operating it without systems.
And the one nobody voted for, underwriting at 2%?
That’s the one that matters most. Post #4 is next.
Just dropped $10,700 on an 11-night Airbnb stay in Orange County. Not on the beach.
That’s almost $1,000/night
I thought Airbnb owners were getting crushed?
Apparently some markets didn’t get the memo.
Maybe I should’ve bought more Airbnbs instead of self-storage facilities..
We tried this at one of our storage facilities.
By morning, 14 raccoons were living in a 5×5 and the one on the lease was asking for 50% off the first 3 months. 🦝
