Is five hours a week a realistic owner workload on an unmanned 180 unit storage facility?

Question

Take a common listing profile: 180 units on a paved lot, keypad gate, no manager on site. The seller says he drives over twice a week, walks the rows, and does the rest from a laptop. He also says storage is recession proof because people always need somewhere to put their stuff. Buyers who want income that does not turn into a second job hear five hours a week and want it to be true, which is exactly why it deserves scrutiny. What is actually filling those hours, and what does that description leave out? The lien auction process for tenants who stop paying is known to be slow, but slow is worth pinning down. Is it weeks or months?

brandonlee36 · Answer

Five hours a week is the average, and the average says nothing about the week the gate motor fails. Picture access control going down on a small facility. That is three days of phone calls and a repair in the neighborhood of $2,800, while every tenant who cannot get to their unit is calling. Delinquency chasing is the steady drip. On 180 units you might have 10 to 15 people late in any month and someone has to actually call them.

karen_whitfield · Answer

Lien and auction timelines are set by state statute and they run more like 45 to 90 days from first missed payment in a lot of places. Ask him what his write-off percentage is.

diane_kowalski · Answer

Ask whether there's extra dirt on the parcel. Half the small facilities I've looked at have an unpaved back acre the seller calls an expansion pad, and that's the piece that turns into a two-year entitlement project if you decide to build on it. If you only want the five hours a week, buy the one that's already fully built out and don't kid yourself that you'll phase in more units later.

Is five hours a week a realistic owner workload on an unmanned 180 unit storage facility?

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