Twenty-two weeks of street rate data re-traded a portfolio by $1.4M
Still no deal of my own. But this worked, so here it is.
Last winter I started tracking published street rates weekly across 40 facilities in three submarkets, unit by unit for the four common sizes, climate controlled and not, with promotional terms recorded separately from the headline rate. Spreadsheet, a scraper a friend wrote, an hour every Monday. Twenty-two weeks of it.
In March a sponsor I'd been talking to sent me a four-facility acquisition, $23.8M, and their pro forma had in-place at $1.34 per square foot growing 3% annually, with a stabilization assumption that street rates were roughly flat to in-place. My data said the 10x10 climate controlled units in two of the three relevant submarkets were advertising at $118 a month, with two months free at three of the five nearest competitors. Effective first-year rent came out near $98. Against in-place, that's about 11% below what the seller's trailing numbers implied.
I sent the sponsor the raw file, not a conclusion. They ran their own check, found the same thing, and re-traded to $22.4M. Deal closed in June.
The part that nearly broke it: for about three weeks my data said rates were falling hard, and I almost sent that. It was one operator running a site-wide promotion across eleven of my 40 facilities, which dragged the average. I only caught it because I'd been recording operator names. Fixed it by tracking per-operator medians and flagging promos separately, and the underlying trend turned out to be much flatter than my first read.
What I'd keep: recording promo terms as their own field from day one, and sending the file instead of the opinion. I got a $60k slot at a reduced management fee, 1.25% instead of 1.75%, for the data work.