How a Self Storage Facility CONVERSION Works (Full Tour!)

and Tyler tell us what is this building were standing from right now so this is a classic self storage convergent this is actually a existing bull barn that was used commercially for many different businesses over the last several years when we purchased this back in November just about seven months ago we purchased this as a distressed commercial site but has a couple acres out here in the parking lot as well as the building that's here existing and we turn into a self storage so how many units are in this so this building is 10,000 square feet we were able to do a unit layout mix of 78 units and unit mix is some sizes are twelve by by twenty there's some fifteen by thirty we have them even as small as five by five so we did a pretty even layout mix and jaren if you step up here and if you look at the building so based on the different parameters that you have within your local city just codes to be compliant when you get into conversions if you don't already have a water sprinkler system or if you don't already have a functioning building within that zone II you have to become compliant so with this site being ten thousand square feet this did not have a water sprinkler system that is necessary within commercial unless if you can find ways around that so what we did is we took this building that measures two hundred fifty we split up into four quadrants so each quadrant is independently ran with one door entry for each building now when we go inside here we're gonna hallways that wrap around and around these hallways it's gonna have a unit mix all varying sizes and the idea of doing this was we have firewalls that quarantine each unit and it helps us not only keep control of our guests that are there but it's also a way of making sure we're compliant with fire code regulations as well as figuring out a way to contain just the storage facility as a whole so how did you decide on the unit mix in terms of like how many of the size versus that stuff yeah so this is another really good question so at the end of the day it wasn't me who decided this so when I had this building there are so many decisions that I had to make just like anybody with the conversion that that's really the last thing that you're gonna know when you're going through all these different loopholes so what I did was I partnered with a self-storage business that specialized in doing the unit mixes of the inside so I originally came to them with a layout of what I wanted and they said hey we can do that but if you let me do this I think I can get you more units with more diversity and so how did you find that company so I found that company by just researching online for different people that are within the self storage industry and in that case I went with the company called Janice manufacturing and is interesting because since they've been through the grind so much when I gave them the dimensions of the building to show them what I was working with especially within conversions of existing buildings it's very easy for them to come up with odd sized units and when they do that they can they can really stack them in there by having different sizes and I know you sort of explain why though these yeah yeah weird doors why not just have a bunch of different boards directly into you okay so since this is a climate-controlled facility we opted for doing climate-controlled to deal with fewer problems so climate-controlled facilities tend to to pay out anywhere from a third to two times the amount but a normal drive up storage facility would but with that you have a lot of in efficiencies because you have heating and cooling that take place year-round so when dealing with heating and cooling having to deal with the efficiency not only you have to keep your building insulated but I also wanted to get rid of extra doors and extra windows I wanted to keep this place as airtight as possible so now that we have one entry point for each quadrant not only do we get rid of all the draught and airflow but we really prevent I'm just wasting energy and then climate controlled means there's actually air conditioning and heaters so those air conditioning heaters but really climate control is about the moisture in the air making sure that it's an acceptable temperature as well as moisture level so humidity probably messes what it does yeah so with within closed storage you're gonna have a lot more valuable items that's most likely going to be stored inside such as TVs electronics or even like collectibles furniture and it's not gonna decompose as that would with fluctuating temperatures outside and humidity tell us what you just told me about this gate this this is uh people have a card or something or how do they get in that when developing this site especially with this not being a stabbed facility we'll try to figure out a way to simplify the management of this and control since I won't be here and operating this independently from home so this site is controlled by two gate access right now we're sitting on the exit so there's only one way out of this facility and that's through this gate there's no way to enter through this gate it's only an exit right now Darren's standing on the exit Luke was what they call so it's sensor by a vehicle weight and some type of magnetic motion detector and this is the only way to gather the facility so you said there's a sensor right yes so when you drive over this it's magnetically triggered by the motion of some type of electrical frequency immediately the gate that we came through has one keypad it's only an intrastate there's no way to exit through that part of the facility that gate has an independent code for each client who rents a unit here the moment a client is delinquent on payments or a client that has moved out that code will no longer be used because it will be non-existent it just shuts it off and that was a way to keep us from having to come here to double walk units when we're not having units that are that are current on rent payments so it was more of a way of controlling without having to spend the time to come here to manually go through the facility looking for empty units that whole system is that something that Janice helped you set up for we did that for you so the security systems that we went through the precautions anyway this was all a local vendor using for the fencing and flow the heat operators so this was more of something that they talked about online but this is definitely something that you would find and hire out locally as well as any exterior remodeling if it's not self storage exclusive then you're pretty much gonna be stuck with an infinite contractor in your local area and bear with me like I don't really know if you originally bought that I bought this because I was gonna pre lock every day so these were locks what they recommend to use when you want to pre setup your facility with each unit being locked and you can control where your clients what units they're going to take so they don't they don't rent a five by five and then go take a ten by thirty okay interesting they were bought specifically to pre lock every unit and for that just to be assigned to the next client mmm okay but that's a lot more managing and we don't want to do that okay each lock can be independently changed and so I was just offering it as an additional service they want to take them so going back you would not do that ya know so I can see what you mean how Janice kind of like yeah these guys pretty so much Robin I could fit the most dangerous yeah all the units have open ceiling tops they call this jail bar so as we go over to the other side will see that 30,000 vichu units that heat and cool this facility but that with the air circulates through here if you look down at your feet you'll see the lines these guys from Janet's were very specific they talk about everything about and then everything is dimensioning sound and there's like a week tonight so this is about size I would need to put my cache right yes okay yes right then so how much did it cost like poisoned our mouse install seven eight units like this so it comes out for doing this whole facility with everything that came out to around just over seven dollars a square foot it probably would have been seven dollars a square foot had I not increase the project size I had all of the interior walls in this entire facility Reese curtain rather than doing finish work of closing them all off so you'll see all the new galvanized steel and it'll be directly behind it's unit so behind all these walls is raw insulation we didn't do any painting we did do any dry walling we did buy any more material film out we literally just had James coming here and they skirted out the entire building including the firewalls so as he was sealing original ceilings original did they put my pictures are all original wood swapped him out to LED but where it was meant to take existing key yeah all the ceilings are insulated with cellulose cool so with this facility being climate-controlled it was really important to figure out a way to do this efficiently with installing something so rather than going with ductwork and running some type of central air system throughout the facility since all the units here had the gel bar netting for the ceilings that means everything's open is just contained in each individual unit but we opted for a mini split units so this one mini split can handle this entire quadrant that's already petitioned off from the other units this is a 30,000 BTU unit along with a three-ton air conditioning unit outside that heat and cool this place between 40 and 80 degrees year-round so it's automatic so it kicks on and off and it worked out really well because how Janice does their enclosed units they're all open mesh ceilings so doing this we didn't have to go through any of the additional prep site work of doing ductwork and running different vents and air returns we could do it all right from a central location every single unit you've opened so far has been a different size how do you decide how much this one rents forever just whatever the square footages yes oh well first of all when you're doing conversions that's when I was mentioning earlier how you can have a varying in sizes and they're gonna do that basement unit mixed layout whatever makes the most sense for maximizing your rentable square footage this was done by Janice they did the layout and they also installed now when it gets to pricing that gets a little bit complicated because the easiest way is to look at your competition and see what communites they have figure out with their rented floor most people are conventional sizes 5 by 5 5 by 10 10 by 10 10 by 15 whereas I have some 5 by 7 and a half's some 8 and a half by 12 and a half some 10 by 30 s and whatnot so that gets a little bit tricky but really it just comes down to just doing math and you just want to have it as a sliding scale if you get a feasibility study done they will help but then again that only works when you're comparing apples to apples so when you're having units that might be a little bit bigger than a 10 by 10 but not by much that's when you need to just kind of play with the numbers to buy them out and just figure out what kind of increments plus or minus we need to be I assume there are other storage facilities in this area right so like how do you convince somebody to come here instead of they're like are you pricing lower what's your head so there's different angles to go probably the only advantage that I will have at this specific facility is since it is a smaller facility for example this buildings only 78 units I had the location going for me and also I only have 40 feet to the farthest unit from the entry point whereas a lot of larger complexes you might have several hundred feet to get to there whether it's upstairs on an elevator up a staircase or if it's wrapping around hallways so really it's just about how centrally located the unit going to be for the guests do you know what that traffic county's over here yeah so traffic counts important for this specific area I think it's situational not depending on your area my traffic count is around 12,000 people I have three self storage units within two mile radius the other three are all pre stacked with clients so because they are all maxed out with their capacity I think there's more than enough we just opened up two days ago so I'm excited to see the progression yeah you know it gets a little ice it's probably a big clue that there's still a need if they're all maxed down right yeah that's that's the goal yeah and as you've been telling us the goal is not only to make sure it's feasible to pulling these here but also your location should be ideal for a region to vacation you know if they're ready to knock this down in the future like the location is really kind of like your insurance or it yeah so it's for this specific spot it was more about holding the location making a cash flow for a long-term investment play well riding the coattails of consistent income yeah and we were really excited we've got some more room to build we're just trying to figure out what that means and I don't know quite yet you want to get a view back out there by the parking lot yes when it comes to property management what do you have a company or are you doing this yourself like I know you handling all that yeah so I come from the background in rental homes and some of the reason why I did storage was because I was tired of dealing with property managers and I most certainly don't want to manage my own properties anymore so when I did this building the whole reason why I went to the extent I did with the various site preparation was to prevent an on-site manager I was able to find a company called easy storage and they managed this facility from Utah and this company that handles this they take care of all the phone calls and inquiries and just to go on that note that's a really big deal because a lot of mom-and-pop self storage facilities they don't always answer the phone because they do have lives but those guys don't outsource their phone because it's a retiree or if somebody's just doing storage on the side he's working a day job he can't take the call and in storage it's not necessarily a brand that gets you that client it's more about just convenience and just trying to get it taken care of so they can move on so we opted for easy storage because they answer the phones just about 14 hours for a full day's extent they answer Monday through Saturday they're not open on Sundays but they do have a voicemail system that's set up so they alleviate the whole congestion of phone calls and inquiries and a lot of monotonous extra questions and then we also have a website through easy storage that has a very sophisticated management tool where you can rent your own units online it'll also tender out a gate access code for the client that way they can do this all with without somebody into the phone but we have the phones set up easy stores just to take care of that piece so easy storage is managing the entire thing very affordable I think we have it just under four hundred dollars between the call service and the management per month because it's under a hundred units here at this site so it's not a percentage it's just if your honor under 100 units its yeah so it's a flat rate it's not based on a percentage of rents so so if somebody like I was actually doing this with my brother one time where we came to his storage unit but code didn't work couldn't get in if something like that happens or I don't know a door is stuck or something like that who do people call and that's a great question because I've been very paranoid about it the gates when it work what is somebody gonna do if they feel trapped no to be fair the phone number is manned 24 hours a day seven days a week for emergencies only but also during out throughout the week there is the call center that's going to answer within normal business hours so if they do run into a situation where they're locked in here they can contact the number on the board it'll opt them to an emergency number and they will be able to get out so that number on your billboard if they call that they're getting easy soft storage they're gonna get easy Self Storage or it's gonna opt for a emergency line okay so other sites will have side doors where people can exit the facility without going through a motorized opening we don't have that here I really don't want people coming here without being in a vehicle some of it is the way how we have our security system set up here I want to know the license plates of the people who are entering and exiting whereas if we have people parking out in the road and walking in we'll have no way to regulate who's in the facility and this fence around the perimeter I think you said that was like 25 grand or something how vital is that for this type of operation like you must have that or is it not that big of a deal so with this facility being unstaffed and having an indoor facility there's a lot more liability that you have when you have doors that lead in to a facility so just to be able to control who's here and to prevent any incidences not only do we have the security cameras but we really had to have the gates up here to keep people from walking in off the street if that would happen the last thing we want to do is jeopardize somebody's safety but yeah we spent just about $22 a foot just for the perimeter fence and we spent an additional three thousand dollars to add a secondary gate and this is all the precautions we took just to keep people out so we have a six-foot fence along with barbed wire around the perimeter is there a reason you didn't get armed guards with machine guns I'm concerned you didn't think that far if the zombies attacked this place I could do a funny video on that if we get into the apocalyptic about how many months did it take you from start to finish when you bought this thing to what it is now so we took title November 15 [Music] we would have finished sooner but we ran into some issues with some contractors about seven months to seven months I was my own GC on this project it just kind of worked it kind of worked its way in they do what you write recommend that to other people or was that more trouble than his whole I think it depends on the person's experience kind of time they had to devote to the project at this project Matheny buildings [Music] with this being a fairly simple project to being a 50 by 200 foot building it's pretty easy to just look at but if you're dealing with a lot more space and a more complex site I would definitely recommend a GC and you have to use a GC if you're going through national funds that's a really most banks are gonna require credentials whereas when I started out to banks and this what was this thing zoned as like did you have to verify anything before you bought it to make sure you can use it for this yeah so with him when when changing a use of his site to a different zone and very time-consuming so I need counsel to changes to zoning to be compliant for self storage so this was originally a retail store outlet and when taking it from that to self storage that's the same category as a car sales lot or a gentlemen's club so they all had the same e to zoning and that was a that was pretty difficult to do it took about six weeks and about four thousand dollars of attorney fees to help her stuff for you I was sort of think of self storage facilities is like I have a picture in my mind of what that means usually it's like a class a property with like multi floor or it's the drive up like big rows of storage units but this just kind of opened my eyes in terms of that you're the can take a building that was never intended for this and make it work and that's that's kind of work I think a lot of people either aren't willing to do or they don't have the creativity to see the opportunity so yeah so I think this is just hopeful for me and hopefully the arty tips your audience to see what's possible if you're willing to get creative and do the work okay so you've got this nice beautiful parking lots a lot of space here that just kind of came with the property if you have any plans can you do with it okay so when I bought this facility it was for future expansion in this case it's going to be a comedian expansion so we just finished the building but I'm gonna start investing in this piece now the big thing that we had that we ran into was figuring out what we couldn't could not do we are located in town so we have setbacks and easements to and with that we also have drainage that we have to consider so this site when it was originally developed did not have underground storage or any type of water drainage so with that we are trying to figure out the best way to develop this without flooding out the neighbors to avoid a future lawsuit so after doing the different types of numbers there's different ways to do it it mixes on this site to you multiple multiple drive ups but again we've already talked about that before we have a lot of supply of drive ups here should drive ups drives are smaller units that are accessed from the outside so each individual unit is outside it has a garage door separating so out here the the best way to maximize the space to make sure we have a sufficient demand for the units would be enclosed Rd self storage so the bigger units so we're gonna have fewer units higher pane units similar to climate control we have fewer units they just pay better than regular drive ups with that we've had setbacks along the entire perimeter of the property as well the front we have to be 50 foot off the road so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a 35 by 220 building with accommodate Class C Class B RVs as well as boats and the way how it works you have an entry point that they will drive around and we're going to actually do 60-degree drive up units so what that will allow is well we have the flow of cars coming around the corner it'll make for easier backing up because if it is 90-degree parking within these enclosed units we don't have enough parking lot here we have about a hundred foot and width we can only build on 85 feet of it have you taken their town or easements so when you're doing sixty degree parking you actually can back up a full-size RV within thirty five to forty five foot of parking lot space whereas if it was 90 degree parking you need usually 1/2 times the size and what you're actually back now with something like boats and RV's I mean couldn't that just be outdoor storage like why build anything at all why not just give him a parking space yeah so it goes back to your region where you're located here in the Midwest we get quite a bit of snow we get very harsh sunlight and we get lots of rains calls and please so bigger toys and decompose pretty quick and we're helping via values for people to be able to party I know that this next expansions to be around seventy seven hundred square feet during the 60 degree parking we're pretty sure we can use about 95 percent of that which role with us around 25 is near competitors offer RV and boat storage so we do have I have two competitors in my local market that you provide that service and they we know there's a demand for it it's a matter of how long that demand [Music] that be able to be used for if it cannot stores later on because does that type of storage a less money than this type of storage so this type of storage pays better but there's only so many customers that we find of natural lots of different variables to consider cool man well it looks beautiful anything else we should know or that's it I appreciate you take the time to show us around and if you are in Anderson Indiana there's an obvious place and go store and stuff right here

Channel: REtipster

Views: 23,186

Rating: 4.905983 out of 5

Keywords: self storage facility, self storage conversion, pole barn to self storage, self storage investing, investing in self storage facilities, janus international, easy storage, property management, property manager for self storage, security, fencing, gate, self storage business, storage conversion, self storage investor, real estate investing, storage, self storage, REtipster, scott meyers, mark helm, real estate, investing, self-storage, full facility tour!

Id: ynvkJ0V1ZnE

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2019