Self Storage Seminar

Spent 6 hours this weekend at a self-storage mini-seminar. The speaker, Cory Donaldson was pretty good. He started buying real estate 15 years ago. He bought a duplex, then a four-plex and eventually starting buying small apartment buildings.

From there he 1031'ed into mobile home parks and self-storage facilities. He currently owns 500 mobile park lots and 2500 self storage units.

Seems like self storage units can be better investments than regular real estate like single family homes and apartment buildings.

• There's hardly no maintenance.


• It easy to get rid of people's stuff if they don't pay


• You can remotely run it if you have internet and a phone line


• Boosting the rents can greatly increase the value of the property


• They might actually cashflow!

I had attended a 3 day boot camp before but it seemed a lot more difficult at that time. I guess as I've done more and more deals, my confidence to do bigger deals has increased too. Anyway, I'll be looking at self storage facilities to possibly buy.

I have been looking at apartments but none of the ones I've seen are any good. They're being sold solely on proforma (which is a fancy name for best case scenario that the current owner hasn't been able to achieve) and are too expensive. I've come to the conclusion that people that buy apartment buildings that are over-priced for one reason. Not to make any money, but to be able to use the write offs against their other income.