Self Storage Income

Get my FREE self storage starter pack to learn how to analyze, underwrite, and operate your next storage investment: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/start-podcast

Ready to achieve financial freedom? In this episode of Self Storage Income, we share real-life case studies of people building wealth through self-storage investing. Discover how beginners used creative strategies like seller financing, SBA loans, and partnerships to secure deals and grow their income.

We break down key topics, including:

This episode is packed with actionable insights to help you succeed. Don’t miss out—listen now and start your journey to financial freedom!

Listen to Charles tell his story: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/podcasts/self-storage-income-2/episodes/2148881990 

Links:

📌 Tenant Inc. - Streamline your property management with cutting-edge tools. https://www.tenantinc.com/

🌳 Live Oak Bank – Our trusted go-to for self-storage financing, including SBA loans. https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/

💻 Our Private Facebook Community Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/selfstorageincome/

📖 Grab the book for more insights into structuring deals and building wealth through self-storage! https://a.co/d/aRSKcSq 

Get my FREE self storage starter pack to learn how to analyze, underwrite, and operate your next storage investment: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/start-podcast 

The last few years have been difficult for real estate, self storage included. Is there finally light at the end of the tunnel? Today, we’re giving you our high-level, self storage industry outlook for 2025. Whether you’re a long-time investor or brand new to the industry, you’re about to learn why NOW is the time to invest in self storage!

After a three-year down period, we are finally turning the corner and entering a new cycle. If you’re an investor, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about where self storage is headed. If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, there’s no better time to get into the game than right now. And this isn’t just false optimism. We’re so bullish that we’re buying and developing our own facilities in 2025!

In this episode, we’re reflecting on 2024, diving into the data, and giving you an investing roadmap for the next 12 months and beyond. Tune in to learn which markets offer the most opportunity for small investors and how YOU can take advantage of an enormous transfer of facilities that will occur by 2030.

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/

🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! We seriously love them. https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/ 

🎙️ Do you have a great story to share on the SSI or AJ Osborne podcasts? You can now apply here! https://form.asana.com/?k=TGU88eU0bFTFW1iHcckuTA&d=1203571084143207

📖 Get AJ's new book that teaches you everything he knows about self-storage https://a.co/d/aRSKcSq

📉 Take advantage of today’s market conditions and invest with us: https://cedar.cc/invest 

Get my FREE self storage starter pack to learn how to analyze, underwrite, and operate your next storage investment: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/start-podcast 

What does it take to buy your first self storage facility? Just ask Ben Kall, whose first investment was a $1.5M facility after having ZERO experience in the industry. Sounds like a big jump, doesn’t it? Thankfully, Ben is going to show you how to do the same today, explaining how to buy a storage facility (even with no previous experience in investing), work with banks, and manage a business. But don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds!

Ben has a handful of do’s and don’ts he’s sharing with us in this episode, and we go through everything! From structuring your loan with the bank to why you should treat your self storage facility like a hotel, seller financing and creative financing terms that are working for Ben, and building your buy box so you can achieve financial freedom!

Ben has grown quickly, going from zero self storage to 125,000 net rentable square feet in under a decade. He’s been able to take home six figures in cash flow (seriously!) and has amassed a sizable portfolio in a very short amount of time. This is a masterclass in buying your first facility and scaling up!  

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

📷 Ben’s Businesses and Instagram:

https://www.mn-storage.com/

https://www.waukeestorage.com/

https://www.instagram.com/ben_kall_/ 

Links: 

📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/

📑 Our Self-Storage Feasibility Studies will help you speed up the process in understanding markets, potential risks, and analyzing the facility itself.  https://cedar.cc/feasibility-studies/ 

🎙️ Do you have a great story to share on the SSI or AJ Osborne podcasts? You can now apply here! 

https://form.asana.com/?k=TGU88eU0bFTFW1iHcckuTA&d=1203571084143207 

📖 Get AJ's book that teaches you everything he knows about self-storage https://a.co/d/aRSKcSq 

📉 Take advantage of today’s market conditions and invest with us: 

https://cedar.cc/invest

Want to buy a storage facility? Then you’ll need self storage financing—and you’ll want to know where to go BEFORE you find your first (or next) self storage investment. So, today, I brought on one of my favorite lenders, Live Oak Bank, to teach you how to finance a storage facility, no matter how much experience you have or how many facilities you’ve bought. They’ll reveal exactly what they need to see from you to lend, the biggest beginner mistakes that stop you from closing, and their outlook for 2025.

Anna Taylor and Bishesh Shrestha have worked with self storage investors for over a decade. At Live Oak, they lend to self storage investors just like you and even own some self storage investments themselves. But Live Oak isn’t like any other bank—they focus on self storage, SBA loans, and making your life WAY easier when buying a storage facility.

I went to their Wilmington, North Carolina headquarters to record the most value-packed episode on self storage financing around. Today, we’re talking about SBA loans, why they often wrongly get a bad rap, how to use them to buy your first or next facility, and why you should NOT get them from any regular lender. We talk about why Live Oak actually loves seller financing in a deal, how long they take to close, what down payment you’ll most likely need, and what to know in 2025 as interest rates and lending requirements have changed. 

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/ 

The self storage industry will change in 2025, and it could make you (and many others) very wealthy. In this episode, we’re giving our 2025 self-storage industry outlook, breaking down our predictions for 2025, what self-storage investors can expect, and why this could be one of the greatest years yet for self-storage investing. 

We’ve just come out of a market-defining cycle. The “easy investing” ended in 2022, and since then, self storage operators have suffered. Discounted rates, low occupancy, endless supply, and deal-breaking interest rates have plagued us. Thankfully, that just booted a ton of your competition out of the market. 

We believe 2025 could be one of the most critical years in self storage, and we’re making BIG moves. If you want to hear exactly what we’re doing to ensure we grow our portfolio in 2025, what we’re looking to buy, and how we’re finding deals, stick around. These are our 2025 self storage predictions; if you miss them, you could miss out on an opportunity that might not resurface for decades. 

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

_____________

🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/

📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/

Inner Circle: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/inner-circle

📖 Get AJ's new book that teaches you everything he knows about self-storage https://a.co/d/aRSKcSq 

The self storage industry is about to see a major shift in 2025. If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines or waiting out market turbulence, now’s the time to get in the game. We’re entering a new cycle with plenty of opportunities for new investors, but if you blink, you’ll miss out!

In today’s episode, AJ and Conner are reflecting on 2024 and offering a high-level view of what’s to come in 2025. Along the way, we’ll be answering your questions! Tune in to learn how YOU can take advantage of huge investing opportunities in the coming year. We cover some of the best ways to find and fund self storage deals, where to find your “boots on the ground” when investing remotely, how to leverage your retirement accounts to invest, and much more.

Want to know how to analyze a new market and where to set rent rates? We’ll show you how! But that’s not all. We’ll also share the tools, software, and systems WE use to manage our investments and keep our facilities secure. Worried that your customers will get left behind as you implement new technology? Not to fear—use our strategy to bring them along!

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

Live Oak Bank: https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/

Hummingbird: https://www.tenantinc.com/products/hummingbird

UniFi: https://ui.com/camera-security

Radius: https://www.radiusplus.com/

ESRI: https://www.esri.com/

📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/

Buying vs. building storage units: which is the better choice, especially for beginners? Is buying a pre-fab (kit) facility better than building one from scratch? Or does buying a run-down self storage facility with value-add potential outperform building due to lower costs? We brought back an all-time favorite episode with investor Matt Wallace to get you some answers.

Matt has done both—buying and building storage units. He’s taken run-down facilities and made them top performers, as well as taking a plot of land and turning it into a 100% occupied self storage facility. Which one does HE think is the better investment? And would he advise a beginner to start with self storage new builds? 

In this episode, Matt gives a masterclass on the pros and cons of building storage units, who should (and shouldn’t) be doing it, what you MUST know before you start building, and how he “makes” phenomenal self storage deals that most other investors miss. 

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

—

Connect with Matt: https://wealthfit.com/expert/matt-wallace/ 

Connect with Ben, Cedar Creek’s Debt Expert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-benditson-291a6010/ 

—

📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/

🎙️ Do you have a great story to share on the SSI or AJ Osborne podcasts? You can now apply here! https://form.asana.com/?k=TGU88eU0bFTFW1iHcckuTA&d=1203571084143207

📖 Get AJ's new book that teaches you everything he knows about self-storage https://a.co/d/aRSKcSq

📉 Take advantage of today’s market conditions and invest with us: https://cedar.cc/invest

This isn’t going to be a regular podcast episode. So many of you want to get into self storage, build your business, scale bigger, find financial freedom, and achieve the impossible. I’m directly talking to every one of you in today’s episode as I share the most critical trait of successful people, one that has helped me scale to a level I didn’t even know was possible. If you listen and learn from what I’m about to share, your world will change for the better.

Everyone is trying to show you the step-by-step plan to build wealth/a business or buy real estate. The problem? They never discuss the one specific skill that you MUST cultivate if you’re going to succeed in this business. As soon as I learned what it was and how to use it, I was able to make better decisions, grow faster, and spot opportunities that 99% of people will overlook.

You can essentially make your own luck (like I have) if you take what I’m saying to heart. If you’re tired of feeling tired, want to go out and make yourself proud, and build something that will help you and your family, 2025 is the year to do it. So, before 2024 ends, listen to this episode. You won’t regret it.

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

Growing Wealth in Self-Storage 2.0: https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Wealth-Self-Storage-2-0-Post-Pandemic-ebook/dp/B0D67CJXTZ

This seasoned investor stumbled on self storage just four years ago, and now he’s selling off his rental properties to buy more. Why? Right now, new investors with limited capital can profit from self storage in rural markets where larger firms are unwilling to go. There’s cash flow, appreciation, and, surprisingly, plenty of demand!

In the last twenty years, Derek Weaver has dabbled in just about every area of real estate. He’s been a licensed realtor. He’s managed large rental portfolios for other investors. He’s even bought his own single-family and multifamily rental properties. His latest venture? Self storage! He had no idea what he was doing when he “accidentally” bought a dilapidated, 66-unit facility, but taking action and learning on the fly has allowed him to stabilize the property and add another three to his portfolio!

In today’s episode, Derek shares why now is the perfect time for new investors to start buying self storage. He’ll show you which types of facilities to target, how to maximize your square footage (and income) with portable units, and the systems and processes you need to scale your self storage business!

Insights from today’s episode: 

—

Email Derek:

[email protected]

__

📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/

🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/

🎙️ You can now apply here to be a guest on Self Storage Income, the AJ Osborne podcast OR the Drunk Real Estate Show! https://form.asana.com/?k=TGU88eU0bFTFW1iHcckuTA&d=1203571084143207

📖 Get AJ's new book that teaches you everything he knows about self-storage https://a.co/d/aRSKcSq 

President-Elect Trump’s economy could change the course of the self storage industry, but will it be for the better? There are many “what ifs” after the Republicans took the presidency, House, and Senate in the 2024 election. Will inflation return? Could interest rates finally fall back down to reasonable levels? Will homebuilding get easier, prompting more moves and, by proxy, more self storage demand? In this episode, we’re sharing our raw opinions on what Trump’s economy could mean for Americans.

We’re tackling a few critical subjects before making any predictions about where Trump may take the economy: mortgage rates, government spending, inflation, and recession risk. Trump said he’ll lower interest rates, giving Americans an affordability boost. This would be terrific for self storage, but are lower interest rates really under his control? What about government spending? Lowering it could help curb inflation, and Trump’s cabinet looks EAGER to slash these budgets.

But, with such an economic overhaul, will we be steered toward a recession, and if so, is that a bad thing? How will this affect YOUR ability to buy (and manage) a self storage facility? Should now be the time to wait to see what happens next? Stick around because we’re getting into it all. 

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/

📉 Have your feasibility study done by MY team! https://cedar.cc/feasibility-studies/

🎙️ Do you have a great story to share on the SSI or AJ Osborne podcasts? You can now apply here! https://form.asana.com/?k=TGU88eU0bFTFW1iHcckuTA&d=1203571084143207