Self Storage Investing in 2024 with Ian Horowitz

Self storage has become increasingly popular in recent years, and for good reason. Self storage facilities offer a number of advantages for investors - they tend to offer a relatively low-maintenance, high-demand investment opportunity. This high demand ensures that investors will be able to generate a steady stream of income from rent payments with often minimal operational requirements compared to other types of real estate. Today, we're diving into how self storage investments will look in 2024 with Ian Horowitz of Equity Warehouse.

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Key Takeaways:

• Self storage has benefited from increasing demand driven by factors like remote work, downsizing, and increased mobility

• Technology has significantly changed the self storage industry by allowing for remote management and automation

• While deals may be harder to find currently due to high interest rates, seller financing and creative deals could still present opportunities

• Niche storage ideas like small bay flex space for contractors could be an interesting area to explore

About Your Host:

Tyler Cauble, Founder & President of The Cauble Group, is a commercial real estate broker and investor based in East Nashville. He’s the best selling author of Open for Business: The Insider’s Guide to Leasing Commercial Real Estate and has focused his career on serving commercial real estate investors.

Episode Transcript:

0:00

This episode of the commercial real estate investor podcast is brought to you by cre launch Pro. This online commercial real estate program is designed to take you from beginner to pro commercial real estate investor with access to all of my courses, our online community and monthly group coaching calls. Learn how to confidently buy your first commercial property today at www dot c r e launch pro.com. Welcome back to the commercial real estate investor podcast live from the combo group studios. I'm sitting here with Ian Horwitz with equity warehouse met him at an event I spoke at last year I believe, called the Self Storage rebellion awesome event that came here to Nashville. He is actually from Baltimore. And I guess you're in town for another mastermind. I am in town I came spoke while you were on our podcast, my co host, Jason and Chris from hard money bankers. They do the Hard Money Mastermind and small private lenders from all over the country. They had me come in and speak about how hard money lenders can fund commercial deals, which maybe we get towards the end of the episode, we could talk about how we've done some of our deals with that. But actually, national is a great place to have your home office. And it's a great place to host events. Every time I've been here. Hospitality has been good. food's been fun. And obviously entertainment. You can't go wrong. Nashville. Well, I think the CMAS were last night too. And you know, this town's always poppin so and it's nice. You don't have to go all the way across the country to Vegas, you don't have to deal with all the other crap that comes to Vegas. So Nashville is a nice, clean, fun city. Oh, and by the way, it's real good. Whenever you're watching this, it's fall of 23. The trees are absolutely beautiful. And dude, it's such a cool time of year. I love it here man. I bought a farm up and Gilbertsville probably 15 minutes from my office last year, and 10 acres up on top of a ridge. And I've never experienced fall like that before. I mean, I've been in Nashville my entire life. But I've never been on 10 acres and been in such a remote area that's just heavily wooded. And it really gets you in the holiday season. Like I love it. Yeah, no, it's definitely you could definitely feel it. And it actually makes it fun. So I can imagine, but you guys don't get a lot of snow here. Do you? It's it has snowed the past couple of years, like once or twice. Yeah, I mean, last year was really bad. And we got an ice storm I got I mean, I've got a really steep driveway to my place. I got stuck there for a couple of days. Wait for the ice to melt. But it's we get the worst kind of snow. It's not like a nice like, oh, let's go make a snowman. Yeah, it's no, it's it's like a very wet snow that melts during the day because it gets warm enough. And then it becomes the ice overnight. Yeah. So it's just immediately like unpleasant. Yeah, well, I get it. You know, I'm sitting here talking about snow. I know my wife might be watching or not. But the snow is what makes the winter if it's gonna be cold, because as I was talking about sick, man, it does get cold we were talking about with a few of the guys in the event. I was like it does get cold here, but then it doesn't really snow. It's like, if it's gonna be cold, it might as well snow I completely agree. So if it's gonna be below 30 degrees, like give us some snow so I can get, you know, yeah, get something out of it. But so we met and started talking about self storage investing. And I'm, I'm a big believer in self storage. I mean, especially with the trajectory that it's been on the past couple of years. You guys are the Self Storage experts. How many? How many units do Oh, now. So we unit counts like 4000. But to put it in perspective, we're at like, 700,000 square feet of storage across 15 properties. Yeah. So we've grown pretty quick. Since

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I'd say the end of like mid q4, like 2019, we had a pretty good growth trajectory. But again, with a lot of things, looking back at it. Did you know you had tailwind? I had no clue. But we had good tailwinds at that time and a great debt environment that allowed us to buy a lot of deals in a really quick period of time, which was scale, as you know, things are better by creating scale. So yeah, I mean, I couldn't imagine trying to grow a portfolio of 4000 apartment units, and just the absolute headache that you would have to deal with on a day to day basis. If you're joining us live on YouTube or LinkedIn or anything like that, feel free to jump in the live chat asking and your questions. We're gonna be diving into self storage investing today, next year 2024 and beyond. So in I mean, what do you think has really driven demand and self storage over the last few years? Because when I first got into commercial real estate back in 2013, I would come across Self Storage deals all the time. They were 15 to 20% cap rates, and nobody wanted to buy them. Yep, yeah. So I think there's a few things and I'm not like early. I'm not like one of the OG adopters of it, right? Kind of like what you're talking about. But it was a very mom and pop industry. And you know, you're just talking about trying to buy 4000 apartment units like, we're in Baltimore, and you would think that there's garden style apartments everywhere. You just go buy apartment buildings, you can't. So one of the things that cattle catapulted the industry faster, is that you're able to go in and buy Mom and Pop facilities and get great cap rates. That was one thing that happened. Then as there's more sophistication started to come in tech technology started

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to catch up, you could start to automate facilities, you could run them completely remote technology stack up better and better and better with call centers and gates and locks and allows you to lock people out and all these different technology pieces that came in. Then on top of all that, you know, this is over several year period, then you get COVID, where people are working from home, they're traveling all the time, they're downsizing, they're throwing stuff out of their house to go and put a home office and in their houses, right. Or, you know, a lot of people move, right, there's a ton of transaction volume of buying and selling houses, people needed storage.

5:41

You know, so those were all things that happened in a really short period of time. Sure, over a 20 year period, you're looking at it go and say, Man, that's not a short time, but it is a short time, because most of us are real estate, investing careers, you know, 4050 years on a good time. That's a super short period of time, boom, here you go. 20 years that things move in. And that's what provided a ton of tailwinds into the industry.

6:03

I'm going to skip forward because I know you're probably gonna ask where it is today. But I'm going to kind of like recap all these good things, that there is start to be some retraction as we sit here at the end of 20. Oh, almost ended 2023. There is some retraction in rates, there is some retraction in supply and demand there is retraction due to debt. And we'll get into all that stuff. But all the other things and the other thing real quick, I kind of glazed over this. Another great thing about storage that help people move along is you know, apartments, especially in COVID, you had all kinds of crazy, crazy crazy, and I know you didn't ask me to curse, so I'll skip it. So crazy regulations. I was going to insert a bad word there but crazy consumer protection laws. And I think a lot of dudes just got sick of dealing with single family and multifamily real estate where they couldn't get paid. And nothing ever changed in the storage world with the exception of California for like a week. And then they came in and said absolutely not. We're still doing lien laws, you can still raise rates, you can still charge late fees, you can still operate your business. And I think those were all huge things over that time period that allowed storage to become the forefront.

7:14

You know, hey, this is the cool asset class. Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense because self storage is essentially multifamily apartments without plumbing without people.

7:25

They've got all the other good stuff. But yeah, no, that's, that's 100% it. I mean, like literally right now, my business partner and our operations manager out an apartment building in Baltimore, that we bought in February of 23. Took it back from the bank tenants haven't been paying there for almost two years because they couldn't foreclose during

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COVID. And we got it back from the bank. And we've been trying to evict these people since February of 23. Guess what? The guy got so mad he lit the building on fire. This is like the last problem tenant that we have. Lights it on fire. But here's that's in September of 20. September, they're gonna how many months of trying to evict a tenant. Right. Like it's horrible, dude. I mean, if you've been able to get them out in 60 days, that probably wouldn't happen. Your insurance company probably I mean, dude, I get a lot of that's a if we get to headaches, stories, non storage. We could talk about that one later. But yeah, but again, though, that's like why people start getting attracted to storage or commercial real estate in general, industrial, single tenant use office buildings, those types of use cases, because it's more b2b, right? Like in the storage world, while we're dealing with consumers, we still have a lot of b2b type laws, we got lien laws, I can lock people out after five days, I can still run my business. And in today's day and age, not to make I'm not making this political by any means a lot of businesses are getting crushed, like, Yo, you can't do that, Yo, you can't do that. You can't do that. But in storage, you're still able to operate your business and treat it the way that you can protect your asset. Yeah, I mean, it's, that's where investors are going to flock is wherever is the most business friendly. Right. And, and self storage is definitely one of those asset classes. And let's see, we've got a couple of questions jumping in.

9:04

And the stars are saying I've seen a trend of apartment sized storage options becoming more common has onsite apartment renter space impacted dedicated storage unit facilities. Yeah, so you're talking about like, you know, you'll see it in the south sometimes where they've taken like, you know, they had to cover parking, and they'll go put some like portable boxes out there, they'll do onsite self storage. Not really, because that was kind of taking the place of the basement storage units.

9:30

In the end, most people have a lot of stuff to store. You know, and I haven't seen like a major impact, even though there's some areas where we do deal with that. And generally speaking, people usually want something a little bigger. Or you know, there's stowing grandma's moving from her house to a nursing home and you don't want to throw out your family heirlooms. You want a dedicated place because you're not always going to stay in that apartment unit. So we haven't seen too much of a trend. There. That's been a major issue because again,

10:00

It's only a couple 1000 square feet. Yeah, I was gonna say I mean there's they can't fit a volume of units and you think about your you're probably average self storage facilities. 100 150 units. Yep. Right. I mean, they're in there's hundreds of those within, you know, 50 or 100 miles in Nashville, right? Yeah. So that's a lot of units. So for one apartment complex to have 1020 units, 30 units, a couple 1000 square feet is not going to affect your demand. Now, if you're in a super rural area, you know, I don't know, like West to hear something and you're super rural, a couple 1000 square feet could but in like Nashville, it's used Nashville as an example. Nashville Metro. Someone has a couple 1000 square feet like I mean, how many people are here, but I gotta assume there's millions and millions of square feet of demand in this major metropolitan area. Yeah. So there's a whole bunch of me with that many people moving here, you just got to think especially with, with the trend and downsizing units. If you look at the data behind apartment complexes, the average renter is taking less and less square footage because they don't want 900 square feet for one person. Yeah, I mean, I had my last apartment was 750 square feet, I could have gotten away with 600. And I probably would have rented 600, if that was available to me, but it wasn't out there in the market. Yeah, you mentioned earlier that the technology has changed and self storage, which sounds to me like it is really eliminated the the necessity to run a business, right? Because you used to have to have somebody there all the time. They used to have to maintain it on a day to day basis, it sounds like technology has really disrupted that and allowed you to kind of manage everything remotely, instead of having to be in person. I mean, I've seen things like, you know, vending machines for new locks, you don't have to have maintenance on site and stuff like that. Can you talk through how technology has changed in recent years to really open self storage to broader portfolios? Yeah, and there's, there's definitely some forefathers that have really paved the way. One of the operators out in North Carolina, you know, they they're way ahead of the curve. But like, let's talk about some of the technology.

11:59

You know, you've always had automated gates, you don't need, one of the value adds that we look at is can we remove staff or reduce the staffing cost? And, look, I want everyone to have a job, right? Like, this is America, like, I want people to work, but in the same sense, it's like, you run a 20,000 square foot site, you can't afford a $40,000 a year person, you know, let alone 5060. Right. So the hub and spoke model has become prevalent in the industry, at least in the operators that are sophisticated. Not your REIT size storage facilities.

12:30

So that's been one big thing and the technology that comes with that we don't run them. But some people run kiosks, you know, where you can go up and literally run a unit. I've seen ones where people, I looked at a facility out in Watertown, New York, and they had an old office building. So what they did was they put up a piece of glass. And then they had the different unit sizes behind it. And then you turned around and rented the kiosks and said, Well, which one do you want one, two, or three, and it's like, click one, I want that size unit. But do a lot of people don't understand what they're renting. You know, and I think e comm living online, believe me, I'm very big on getting out in the world and enjoying yourself. But sometimes you just don't want to be messed with like, you just, you just want to like, hey, I need a storage unit. Um, some people can be embarrassed by it. I don't know what it is like, let me just go online and rent like I was sitting my way over here, I got a notification online rental, that means my call center did not handle it. So the online presence, the the customer user base, the willingness to utilize the online features to move in automatically. A couple other like silly like, I won't say silly, but like a technology piece that you might think I'm crazy is like someone came up with a way to use serial coded locks to overlap people. So when we overlap them, we put it on there. And then they get there and say, say they pay their rent and they're able to get in there. Now they need to remove the lock, they automatically get a text that says hey, you were overlocked. Here's the code to that lock, they have an issue. They can literally take a picture, send it to our call center, we can give them the code and they can unlock their own overlock on their unit. And I don't need someone to sit there and say oh, yeah, you didn't 123 You were blip. Pass do thanks for paying me. Let me go walk out and open your unit. Cameras have got so good security cameras. You can actually see things on them now. Yes. While they will get like CCTV footage in the early 2000s Yeah, it's like how did police ever solve crime? Yeah, yeah. Did you'd watch I was like watching like first 48 Or, like, old like, stuff like that. And they're like watching these horrible grainy videos and like, How could you even determine what happened there? But okay, and I mean, look, we had, we've had some of them. But the fact that you can, you know, they're all cloud based now and I can sit at our office in Baltimore, or our operations manager can sit in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and literally watch what's going on and but it also keeps contractors accountable. It keeps tenants accountable. It keeps the police department it keeps everybody accountable, and you're able to remote manage, right again, if you have

15:00

There's just certain asset classes, you might not be able to put up cameras. You can imagine having 100 single family houses. And I mean, Memphis is only a few hours from here, you can't have a camera and nobody would even allow you to have a camera in your house. Right? You could do that at an apartment complex common areas, the main doors, stuff like that, but you can never do it. I mean, we keep we have ring cameras on almost every single one of our properties. Yep. I mean, you know, and people are always surprised when they hear that like, isn't that a residential camera? Yes, it is. But also they have, you know, their tuner box. It takes nothing to install that we put them on all the corners over the doors, everything like that. And it I mean, that meant I can access it on my phone. Yeah, I mean, early on, when we were doing single family construction before like, all these like cameras that are out like bring and all that we wouldn't have electric at sites, we would go buy a I'm not a hunter trail cams. Oh, yeah. And we would have the pictures come to our phone. And we hadn't had prom house where we were getting robbed all the time. So we just dropped the deer cam in there. And we caught the guy, right. But those are the things that you had to do to stay ahead. But technology in general is like, truly advanced it some stuff that's coming down the pike that I'm scared for human society in general in general. Yeah. But AI call centers is a real threat. Like it is a real thing you're probably calling if you call AT and T or delta, or one of these big companies, you probably don't even realize it, you're talking to an AI call center. And it's really freaking humans coming to curse really freaking scary about

16:30

what's gonna happen. But that's a personal issue. But it's better because again, it reduces your operational costs, if I can pay a piece of technology that's alive all the time, willing to work all the time. Another thing where hours a day, and basically infinite capability, you don't have to wait up for 10 minutes 15 it'll pick up immediately. chatbots right. Chat bots is a big one. People are putting them on their websites. I had a friend of mine, he recently just built something out that interacts with Miss calls and automatically chat texts, utilizing chat CPTs, open AI, I was like, Dude, it's over my head. When you figure out how to sell that product, I'll probably buy it. But a lot of these things are coming down the pike that are scalable, because now we're talking about all this technology. And how do we view it is we're basically running an econ business for physical assets, right? Like we're out there marketing and trying to do all this econ type stuff to get people in our front door.

17:24

But as the technology stack gets better, it's only going to make our properties better and better and better. So and really the customer service experience and I think that's what's big. And I know this is a really long winded answer, but it's probably why you brought me on here because I'd love to talk. Is that that is the point of a pot. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Oh, god knows my looks anyway, trying to keep up with the beer game. But the REITs in general extra space cube smart Public Storage. I'm missing one of them are lifestorage just got bought by extra. They are not willing to go away from the man facility model yet. So there's still a ton of opportunity for us to operate the old mom and pops to operate the tertiary markets to build hub and spoke like, what we did was we knew this technology stack was there. Some of this has evolved from operating it. Some of it, we knew going into it. But you we bought one facility in Baton Rouge facility two comes up when we buy six facilities in a 12 mile radius. I have one boots on the ground that handles all 350,000 square feet in that one location. And it allowed the technology allows the actual human being to do more work at more sites. And we can support him from all over the country. I have a call center, though Don who runs our call center. She's in Baltimore or to call center agents there in Hattiesburg, our operations managers in Hattiesburg. And we're able to run all this from one location and manage one employee to handle six sites and create that hub and spoke model just makes it so much more efficient. I bet y'all did not realize just how tech forward self storage was I know I mean, I knew that there was some tech involved but it's pretty wild to think about how actually tech savvy this industry is becoming. But let's let's talk about self storage today. Okay, because it's 2023 We're at the height of interest rates. Inflation is running rampant. everybody's worried about the economy. Are y'all finding deals today? What is that looking like? Yeah, so there's definitely deals out there. And this is an overall thesis besides just storage there's a deal in any market I think you know that you've been in real estate long enough, up, down left, right. There's always going to be a deal. The question then becomes and we were talking briefly before we went live is like Yo, dude, we all can raise equity but like, the banks are ridiculous, man. And I think what it's going to do is create an opportunity. Well, I haven't seen like a deal that I'm like, you know, I need to make some moves and do something on this.

19:56

I did have a broker reach out to me yesterday. Hey, doesn't look like this up.

20:00

If I can complete this transaction, it's teed up the already negotiated great seller finance terms, do you want to hop in? Oh my god, well, it's right in our wheelhouse or financing. So I think the creativeness of what's going to happen here, over the next few years is only going to get better.

20:17

Because in the end, I don't think people realize it like people need to transact deals. In any market. Grandma got old doesn't want it anymore. grandma passed away. I'm thinking moved, yes, somebody moved, I'm sick and tired of the self storage industry, I just want to break, I don't want to deal with the headache, just pay me cash every month, right. And I think as that happens, and operators, the legacy, let's, let's break this down legacy operators, there's going to be opportunity to come up with creative deals, then you got the, let's call them sophisticated operators, like guys like us, and there's not good guys like us that took a bunch of people's money. They took stupid debt, adjusting debt, super short term, type stuff, I owe stuff, whatever it is, they're gonna have some balloons coming up, they're gonna go need to find good operators, or someone that's willing to take on a headache, and make the deal work. So they need to sell. So now we got legacy people willing to sell, we got not the cool guys like us that need to sell. And then you got the guys like us that are like, Hey, we raised the capital, we're coming to the term. What do we want to do? Do we want to refinance this? Do we want to sell it off? What do our investors want to do? Do we want to get flushed with cash, because we think there's more of these opportunities that we can capitalize on. So there's gonna be stuff on the market do the days of going out and finding a deal and buying it for let's just use numbers 500 grand, doing a little bit of work and turning it into a million bucks. They're not there right now. But the deals of singles, hey, 500, let's turn into 750 500. Let's turn into 600 500, let's produce $10,000 a month in cash flow. Those deals are out there. And it's just you need to have

21:59

you need to know what you're willing to buy, and what you're willing to tolerate. And right now, when you're looking at deals, you should be willing to buy something that you're willing to keep for the next five to 10 years. Because it's going to be rocky, some of its tied to politics, some of its tied to whatever else is going on the world. But until rates come down, it's going to be a little weird. And I think you can find deals in any market. And honestly, I don't know about you. But I'm excited to have this type of market, because the deals are only going to get better because people actually really, really need to sell. And I don't have to worry about everyone trying to compete for this deal. Because everybody can get capital. Everybody can get equity, like we can get equity. Oh, yeah, we can get capital from the banks, that might not be the best, but we can. And we have track records to negotiate great seller finance terms. Hey, so and so I owner finance this deal. I own this much real estate, we do this, this, here's our brand. Go check me out on YouTube, I was on Tyler's podcast, you know, like, I talked about all the stuff. And then you have all that firepower behind you to create better deals. I love markets like this. I mean, it's always stressful to a certain extent, right? Because you never know what's going to come down the pike. But it is the is the best buying opportunity that we've ever had. I mean, I think this is the best buying opportunity we've had since 2010. You know, I mean, deals are on sale in whoever's gonna be getting deals done. It's just whoever is going to be the most creative, and whoever has the most grit to get it done. And, you know, it's interesting, talking about the equity side of things, I feel better about our capability of raising equity today than I did anytime over the last few years. Yeah, but we Not a chance. Could we pull most of these deals together if we had to go the traditional route with a bank? Yep. I actually think and I have this theory, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I think that private lending is going to become a much bigger market. I think that you know, historically, you know, private lending, when you think of private lending, you think of hard money, you know, very high octane debt, right 10 To 12% interest, three points. And a lot of people can't stomach that. But I think that there's going to come some sort of private window that's halfway in between the traditional bank and hard money. And it's going to become a much bigger market than it is today, where maybe they're taking a premium on rates, or maybe they're not, they just want to put cash to play because there's a lot of dry powder out there.

24:14

But they'll be able to underwrite deals and fund them in two to four weeks. Yep. And I think that if they can come up with some sort of advertising product, that they're willing, because in the end, the IRR should be a little bit higher for them. And that's what I was literally, I'm in town because we were I spoke at a private lenders conference, you know, mastermind, they were talking about, and I said, look from a borrower standpoint, if you guys could come up with, you know, I know most of you guys are 12 13% 14%. If you can figure out how to be in like the eight to 10% Amateur rising, it's similar type money and give us some sort of balloon. I think it gets really interesting or you guys need to deploy a few million bucks and just have a long term IO at eight to 10% and just have that consistency. I think you're 100% Right. And obviously

25:00

Are those guys that you'll land on a day to day basis? Are they our best target for being, you know, friends and family, someone that's willing to co land with us? Absolutely. And I think there is an opportunity for that exact product of like, hey, talk to your friends and family show him like, listen, we're getting a good deal here today. And as rates come down, right, we're in commercial real estate, as rates come down, the cap rate should follow and the value of our property should increase side by side with that, assuming assuming you're executing on your deal, right? Like that's the it was a God just do this don't make money yet, dude in 2019 to 2023, literally anyone could have made money buy something was worth something more the next day? Yeah, you didn't actually have to run it like a business. Right? Which these are businesses, every single property that you buy is its own individual business, right? I mean, the at the most basic form, you probably have an LLC. Treat it like a business. Yep. Right. I mean, I had Mike taraval on the podcast yesterday talking about third party asset managers, like why you should hire a third party asset manager, essentially a CEO of your real estate portfolio, it only makes sense to treat it like that. Because, you know,

26:08

just because it has done well. I mean, Nashville has seen some 20% year over year increases the last three years. Historically, it's 3%. You know, it's gonna correct and it's go back, it's gonna go back to that 3%. And you're gonna have to understand how to actually operate deals. At that point, we've got a couple of other questions jumping in the live chat, can have the same great topic, what type of lot or community is the most desirable place for storage units?

26:36

Traditionally, if you're looking to build a storage facility, and I think that's kind of what the question is, vehicle count, good. frontage is generally a great place to start. The problem is paying a premium for that land, right? Most cities don't want them in those. Yeah, well, exactly. You see, you got you got land use issues, you got that type of stuff. But if you start to look for some, like flag light flag type stuff, we do own some stuff in flood plains, but that's Louisiana. So I would avoid everything. Everything's literally everything's in a floodplain. But you know, you can find some unique areas to drop them.

27:13

You know, the days of putting them back in an industrial park. It's kind of off the beaten path. And it was interesting on our Facebook community, we were discussing this exact thing of like, can you out market a bad location? And I believe the answer is yes. Just how much of that dollar Are you willing to spend? So the best thing that I would suggest that you could do is go get a feasibility study, try to figure out where the market demand is, where can you get the best piece of land with the best frontage but not have to pay a premium on is honestly what I'd be looking for. To place a new storage facility. It To Me self storage, like if you think about it, from a consumer perspective, it is all about the convenience. Is this between my commute from home to work? Is it you know, five minutes down the street from my house? 10 minutes, I mean, people are really looking for that convenience, just because it makes it easier for them to go by not that anybody ever will. But they they just psychologically want it to be in an easy, easily accessible space. Sure. And think about if you're if you are going to try out market to drive past three other storage facilities, and someone pulls into storage facility number one, and you're like, Yeah, I rented here. No, you didn't. Yes, I did. Now that one's like another mile down the road. You're already here, once you just get a refund, refund from them and just stay here. Right. So I mean, we've had people leave leave reviews, we had people call and yell at us. I'm at the right storage facility. No, sir. You're not. Oh, yeah, I rented at the other one. You know what, I rented this, what like it does happen, like that is legit stuff. So you know, in the end, like, if we had a crystal ball, I would just invite you to my, my private island on a private jet. And we could discuss exactly where to drop them. But I think you could do a pretty good guess using feasibility studies. Understanding where the market and the growth is going like you're in Nashville. So it's a little different than Philadelphia, like Philadelphia, we know where the growth is. But we're also like really built out city. Where for you, this area is growing a ton. You can follow hey, everything's going out towards Clarksville. Or where was I just in Franklin, everything's going out towards Franklin, if I could find a piece a lot in this like area, eventually, these two towns are going to connect. Those are the types of things that you want to look for. Yeah, it's exactly so like, if you're familiar with Nashville at all, Franklin has been popular for quite some time. There's another city a little bit further outside of it called Columbia and Columbia has always been very small. But that would have been a perfect spot to buy somewhere halfway in between because you probably could have gotten cheap land. Columbia was growing and now you know, it's it's growing so much that you're you've got new residential being built all over the place, of course, they're going to need storage. So you really want to, you really want to buy in the path of development, try and get ahead of everything. So that you can, you know, I mean, you may struggle for the first year or two. I know self storage units typically lease up at what, 3% per month or 3% per month. So you you figure that out.

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Three years to stabilization in a good growth market in a place a facility that was placed in the correct location, you're gonna see those type of growth numbers. Yeah, that's not too bad. So what about next year? I mean, what are you going to what do you what do you see on the docket for next year? Are you currently working on some deals? Or how are you going to be approaching deals in the new year? Yeah, judging by my facial expression, if you're watching this on YouTube, you know, the answer is we're always looking for deals again, it's just like, I think right now, as the inventory increases, I get to be pickier and pickier and pickier. And if I'm going to go through the headache of trying to get debt at a crazy number and dealing with all the BS and retreats because the Fed moves rates or the treasuries are moving every single second of the day. I'm gonna go through all that headache. I'm gonna buy a bed like I was just a badass. He's a badass. I made it dude. It's been 30 minutes. All right, yeah, must be forsaken, but a badass deal.

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And I'm gonna go through that headache. I think now's the time that you get to be super, super picky in finding a deal before. It's like, Yo, dude, I think this is right. Okay. There's a lot of competition brokers are calling you Yo, I got six offers, what do you want to do? I called you first you're like, yeah, just, you know, like, you had to make moves. Now. It's like, yeah, I get back to you, dude. And they see I work the burqa network, and they call me all the time. So I think over the next year, it's like, the deals are gonna get, there's gonna be more inventory, allowing you to be pickier. How many deals am I going to do in 2024? I don't know. It really depends. We're dead is I mean, I think my last quote was at like seven and a quarter. And that was like, 10 year money. I was like, do I want to be locked up that long at that high?

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So it really I think it depends on treasuries. You know, there really hasn't been the other problem is, I don't know if you see this here. And like the apartment space. A lot of people are still buying like negative cap rate stuff. You know, you're getting debt at seven, equity at eight, or nine or whatever you're getting equity at. And you're buying a six cap, and there's like no value add. I'm like, Well, how can you lose 3% spread every month. And so again, I think that goes back to what is 2024 look like being very picky and deals. You know, I think if we do two or three next year, we might even be sellers of some real estate over this time period, because I think we have some good product that people are willing to buy. Yeah, I think that that's a California thing, honestly, because so five or six years ago, I went to a mastermind out in California, and met a couple of big apartment investors out there. And I was like, so what, you know, how do you guys structure your deals? Would you guys you know, the typical questions, like Yeah, we buy at a two to 3% cap rate. And even then, I was thinking to myself, I mean, debts What 4% 5% How are you making that pencil? And they're like, Oh, we don't? Yeah, it loses money until we sell it. Yeah. And then add add the level of horrible execution and one of those like, I knew a guy he was buying in San Diego doing all like adu type stuff, you know, you buy apartment building has a garage out back, they convert them to units, to accessory dwelling units. He was buying stuff at like, three, four caps. I was like, Yo, dude, what are you doing? I just heard the other day that he is in all kinds of trouble, of course, because all his debt just started to expire. There's no margin. Like, there's no comfort. Yep. Yeah, I mean, think about this November of 21. When we bought a storage facility, I got 3.125%. Think about that. And that timeframe, you know, so if we don't execute our deal over this timeframe to, you know, we have a three year rate adjustment coming up on that next year, maybe it was 22, whatever it is, next November, I have a rate adjustment coming up. I mean, if we don't execute our business plan, I mean, that's a big swing, you're probably potential double rates. Hopefully, election season coming up helps it but I mean, who knows, dude, it's just,

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it's gonna be crazy, man. It's gonna be crazy to watch what happens.

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I know this is your podcast, but I'll flip it back on you. I mean, what do you think snap in 24? Because I'm looking for insight. Yeah. Which is I'm a giver of insight. I would love to hear your opinion. I love it. Yeah. I mean, hey, that's what it's for it's conversation. So I think that I think 24 is gonna be flat. I think I think we're gonna see like, what we're feeling today is what we're gonna feel all of 24 You know, as much as I would like to think that, you know, with an election season coming on, you know, the President will pressure the Fed to drop interest rates. I mean, the Fed at the end of the day is apolitical rather, neither blue nor red supposed to be supposed to be Yeah. So, you know, do they care? Or do they not care? You know, maybe they focus on the fundamentals and actually fixing the problem, instead of, you know, dealing with pressure or whatever they think is right. So, I don't know, I do think that there is still going to be a lot of deals being done. You know, I mean, I think that we'll put this out on LinkedIn I've been talking about here on the podcast, and we'll be doing a monthly report, every month, next year, on the business on the brokerage, because we're down 50% year over year, next year, our plan is to increase it by 500% the amount of volume that we do, and I think that we're going to be able to achieve that because deals are still going to be transacting, but it's going to be a lot of dealing with clients and helping them understand from the brokerage perspective of us representing them. seller financing is going

35:00

would be a really good move for you. And here's why. And I think that we haven't had a lot of that in the market. The past 510 years brokers actually pitching to their clients on the front end of why seller financing is good for them that they typically are reactive, right? Somebody, you know, submits an offer that has seller financing, and then they go back to their client say, Hey, this guy wants to buy but he wants you to sell finance it? Well, once. Once you get to that, and you're a buyer or a seller that is expecting to just get all of your cash and walk away. Well, then you're gonna go, No, I don't want that. Yep. But if you're already going into it with the expectation of I might be carrying the debt on it. And here's all of the pros that that brings for me. Might do it. Yeah, I think. I think that's a good point. And I think this I've noticed, seller expectations gone through the roof before, I'd always talked to a broker, and just be like, Hey, cool deal. Just out of curiosity, is there any interest in holding paper? No, I don't need to alright. They don't even want to present it right? Because they don't need to because they were getting 767 cash offers right? Now, every time I talk to a broker, it's, Hey, I got this deal seller probably hold paper, like every deal. They're telling me I'm like, Okay, that's cool. You know, another thing as you were talking, and this is why I should have question, but I'm thinking like, I wonder if like, old school tactics are coming back, like I was thinking about Master leases, could be a really interesting one that comes back. Haven't been hot since the 80s. Yeah, do so I'd be interested to see if something like that comes back around. You know,

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what do they call that like installment type deals, you know, similar to owner financing, but like big chunks coming down? I'd be really interested to see at how creative the seller base gets. Because as much as we don't have pressure to buy again, like we said before, there's going to be that pressure to sell for whatever reason that people always need to sell real estate. So yeah, it's gonna happen no matter what. We've got another question coming from NB stars. Are there any interesting niche storage ideas that you've come across recently? Oh, yeah, sure. So there, there's a few out there. I'll tell you my personal one that I'm really interested in. And then we could talk about some other ones. One of our big sites in Baton Rouge. It's 100,000 square feet on like 14 acres. I have giant, they're gigantic units. I mean, the average storage unit, for those that don't know 10 By 1010 By 2010 By 15 150 square feet. I have 15 by 85. I have 13 by 50. It was an RV, boat and RV storage that what happened over time was the old owner was like, okay, business guy, you want to move in here, cabinet makers. So it almost became like a makerspace. Yeah, so it almost became like small bay flex. And while we're operating in this under the storage, guys, because it's all month to month leasing. I can jack the rates when I want I can overclock and all that fun stuff. It's really brought my attention to like small bay flex,

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dealing with businesses looking at larger units building the bigger type condo stuff, what does that look like? That's what really I'm interested in, in from a niche standpoint. Now I've seen what's his name, Brandon Turner, he was he did one I think, where he converted a 10 by 10 unit and put a bunch of Amazon boxes in it to increase the rent per square foot.

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There's guys that do wine cellars and like super high end type storage like that. You know, so there are niche type markets. But like I said, I'm more interested. If you can't tell I'm a relatively blue collar type guy. I like dealing with the contractor. Because it's the heartbeat of your city, right? And you're looking at your plumbers, your drywallers, your landscapers, your cabinet makers, and they're going to be in that space for a long period of time. So that's really attracted my really dream type property would be to have we'll call it small bay flex or contractor type storage tied in with some sort of climate control facility. And that'd be the best best of both worlds for me on one site. So yeah, I like that, because you're diversifying your income, you've got a wide variety of opportunity there. And, and no one else. I mean, we've talked about this on the podcast and on the YouTube channel multiple times. Nobody's building flex space. I mean, nobody's doing it. And I started telling developers five years ago, when I was really big in a brokerage, I was telling them go pill flexpays, because I'm getting calls all the time to brokerage from, you know, the plumber, the electrician, the E commerce startup, they need this kind of space, all of its getting torn down and redeveloped into apartments or office or retail. Or the guys that would be developing it don't building you know, million square foot distribution centers for Amazon. Now, you don't want to do this stuff, the two to three most richest people in real estate in Baltimore, probably richest alongside of that, that's what they do. That is their bread and butter. I was talking to our commercial broker about it. And she's like, if there's any sites left there pick through because these two operators if it don't work for them, like they buy everything because that's what they do. And it's really good. And when you look at that space, it's like man like and again, why would I want to do storage and that on one site, it's like, well

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Excuse me, this doesn't lease up, I can convert it back to storage, right and just operate it. Booting RB type storage flexibility, right? And if it does work well guess what I got long term tenants triple net type leases. And then I still got my fun part. Because what I like about storage, I don't know that we covered this is what I like about it, is you're running a real business up front. And look, you did a very good job of pitching how real estate is a business. But the same side of that is like, Hey, move into my building, I'll see you next year and give you a renders. And that's like it. You know, to me, where this is fun, I get to deal with specials and I get to deal with tenant insurance like a fun thing that I won't say fun thing. But to increase revenue and not implement new rent increases, I added $1.99 admin processing fee every single month to every single tenant across 4000 tenants, that's 8000 bucks a month at a stroke a keystroke. Right? So that's the fun part of like the business side of things that we get to do that we don't really get to express our creativity in the real the real estate side, because after a while once the lease, obviously identical, is leased to so and so I'll keep paying rent, Alright, hey, next year, man, listen, 3% increase or whatever, it's already got it in your lease what you're going to do over here a month, a month, I can literally change people we had, we had an issue, and I'll tell you about some issues. We had a guy buy a unit at auction, then tried to move into the unit like Dude, get out of here called the cops showed him exactly what happened. They arrested the dude, he was gone like that. Dude, if that was a piece of residential real estate, then I would have to file an eviction. I want to go through all the BS that comes along with that it would have taken me several months, right, like, so I that's what I like about storage. And I that's why I like the idea of having both on one site. So like you said, the creativity and the flexibility to navigate the market and do what you need to do. Yeah, man, it makes you. I don't know about you, but I'm fired up to go. Yeah, that's more self storage. Now, let's, we've kind of covered Self Storage quite a bit. I want to take a left turn and talk more about AI.

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Okay, I listened to a podcast earlier today about that. And since it's my show, I guess we can talk about whatever I'm along for the ride. I was hoping we were going to talk beards and like the best way to curate because like I'm always jealous, but God has Gatorade, Nate. Yeah, better beer than I do. So I, I was having a conversation over lunch with a buddy of mine. And we're just talking about AI and I expressed to him. I was like, I don't know, what's going to happen with brokerage. In the next few years. You look at what happened with NAR, and they rightfully? Yes, that in my opinion, I mean are very, very clear. But you look at what AI is doing to brokerage, and you think about okay, well, if I've got a chatbot if I'm a landlord, I've got a chatbot now that will respond to people, it kind of starts to take that take out what a broker does, yeah, you've got AI that can throw together marketing materials got AI that can throw together images that get thrown together floor plans. I mean, we've got a group out of Australia that we can send a video of our property to, and they'll put together full 3d renderings for like, 20 bucks. That's crazy. It's unbelievably cheap. So, you know, I'm looking at this, I'm like, man, what's the future? I mean, is it are we gonna all go back to like physical labor construction? I mean, well, some some human beings need that in their life. But a lot of you

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you know, nothing else for staying in shape. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's scary. Because the other question on the other side of this, again, not to make this thing political, but like, do you end up with ultra wealthy and ultra poor because there's no jobs in the middle? Like, we're talking about taking away copywriters, and all these other crazy things. But that being said, I think there's always a human element that's required, you know, a lot of the guys in that room that I was just sitting in, they're like, Yeah, I use, I use AI for everything. I'm like, Yeah, you know, sometimes I use it, but then I'm like, That does not sound like me. So then what I do is, I really want to edit it. And you got it. Yeah, I use it for framework. So a lot of times what I do is if if I got writer's block, because I'm trying to do something like, Hey, write me a pair, Oh, good idea, then I go back and rewrite it myself. I think if it's utilized as a proper tool, there's a great fit for it. Is it going to wipe out every industry? You know, I don't know, I think we're probably naive to the fact of how much AI actually exists. Prior to chat GBT coming out, and that we're, you know, we're just pure minions out here. And we had no clue and they're like, hey, check out this cool thing. We've been messing with you for a long period of time, but I think that if anything, it will make people more efficient. And then what happens is there's more efficiency, there's less jobs and that's what's scary.

44:23

Do I think you can handle a whole lease in certain you know, I think standard rental leases probably but you know, the the other caveat to that is well it might handle all that type of stuff. There's still going to be brokers or there's gonna be need something to go show the real estate right because that's still emotional, whereas storage well it can be but what if you start taking all of that out of it right like I mean, if if I'm just playing devil's advocate, almost argue argue back against me, but my thought is like, okay, but if I can go in and shoot a 3d tour and put a video together, and I can put a you know, a keypad on the door.

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For that I can change remotely or that automatically changes, it automatically sends out a new code every time and gets rid of the old one. Why would anybody ever need to go do that? I could, you know, list 1000 homes and you know, have 1000 people touring at once. I don't have to worry about dealing with any of that. Because all the technology is an AI is kind of generating it, managing it. All right?

45:23

Well, that's exactly what our storage businesses and I was gonna sit here be like, Nah, dude, that's Harlem. Like, do you just describe the whole storage business? In the same sense, like they tried some of that during COVID? Right, especially where things were heavily locked down. And I think some of it happened. But I still think there's an element when you're going to rent. And this isn't, we're not talking storage, right? We're talking to every asset class out there, you're going to rent a apartment or an apartment, or you're going to buy a house. Like, I still think there's that element of like, people want to go see it, feel it, touch it, have the war, you know, smell the cookies, when you walk in and type moment

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that in theory, it sounds good. I just don't know that humans emotional detachment from that, it's going to go away to the point that you can get completely automated, I think it'll put a dent in the market, I believe you're right. They're much just trying to agree with you. I do actually believe that. But my belief is that there will still be a big tranche of people that are not willing to give up like, this is the biggest purchase I'm ever gonna make. Or I'm moving my business here. Or I want to imagine him walk in and have this like, if you showed me this, like, obviously, I looked at your studio, I've watched your podcast. I've seen you post content about him like, oh, yeah, that's probably what it looks like. Then when I came here. I was like, Holy crap, man, like this is this is awesome. But it's not like it doesn't do the same. And I know you didn't give us 3d tour. But in the same sense, when you sit here, feel it, see it, touch it, I got all I'm like, yo, cool, like, Dude, I can't wait to go on camera. like, Yo, there's just that like, element of like, I kind of do something, you know. So yeah, I agree with that. I mean, it's, it's, it'll be interesting to see where it goes in the next few years. I mean, I've been thinking that especially on the residential side, buyers brokers, or even even landlord reps, like,

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do they really provide 6% of value? No, I mean, you know, I've gotten plenty of good friends that are in residential real estate that earn their Commission's like, 100,000. But if we're being honest with ourselves, I'm sure they would be honest about this, too, that 90% 95% plus of residential agents do not remotely earn their commissions with with the way that they conduct their business. And I've always thought an interesting model would be if you figure out how to like if you're, if you really wanted to crank it and go and I think Redfin kind of tries to do this, but I there's some other brokerages out there, it's like just straight flat fee list and just go and almost become like a fee shop. I think that's probably the best thing that the residential. So in the end, I think what AI is going to do is compress their value and drop what they're able to charge overall, because it's like, well, you did 90% of it online. You just came here for the 10%. And to be fair, you could buy a Tesla online, right? You can buy like a really expensive car online and never see it, feel it touch it to dealership nothing. Right. So yeah, I mean that I went through that process. When I bought my Tesla. I was like, this is really interesting to think that like, just because of the brand and you know, to be fair, I did sit in my body. So I went and went in a ride and has, I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna buy that. Yeah. And you know, here we are four years later, it still was a great decision. But meanwhile, like, I won't buy shoes online. Exactly. We were just talking about this exact thing is like, on Amazon. I'm like, I don't know how much I'm willing to spend there. Meanwhile, when I bought I had a Tesla for a little bit. I literally, I went like this $52,000 or whatever it was at the time, like just like, I clicked the button and spent 52 grand. It was insane. Right, like, so I agree with you, man. So I'd be interested to see what happens with AI and what it does with brokerages. I think you'll see it probably like you said on the residential side first, and then commercial real estate we all know that moves at a snail's pace so you know maybe like when we're like really have white hair. Yeah, it'll be it'll be a thing but I don't know. I'd be interested to see when we're when we're posing as Santa at the local mall. Yeah. I feel that when I'm we're getting there. One day at a time. Let's see Anthony St. Tyler. Please replace Gatorade with quality coconut water amazing for electrolyte replacement and very thirst quenching when ice cold. That's where is that? That's a joke. So I don't actually drink Gatorade out of it on water. I hardly drink anything. I don't even drink alcohol anymore. But I I came up with it years ago because I people all the time. I'm sure you get this all the time. They're like, Dude, that's a great beard. You get that beard man. Yeah, I was tired of being like, I don't know. It just grew on my face. I guess I'm lucky on the genetic pool. So I just like I don't know, Gatorade. Nina was asleep and somebody laughs Alright, that's my job. My job. Everyone's like, dude, how long are you going to grow it? I'm like, well, it's six feet to the ground. So I don't know. And the other one was so those that don't know, I was actually a fireman for the city of Baltimore for 15 years. You ever watched a liar? That's where I worked. It's all true. I promise you. And the day I quit you know, we had to shave every day for work. So if you go and try to find me is Tyler another. Since we're taking left and right turns, I have no headshot.

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sunlight. And if they are they're probably completely clean shaven. When the day I quit, everyone's like, Hey, man, you're because we got drug tested. You go smoke weed. I was like, No, dude, I threw my razor out. That's what I want. Yeah, I'm never shaving again, literally, right out the window. So yeah, that was my big defining moment. And like I said, trying to get to six feet to the ground. So the the funny thing is, like, genetically your beard will stop growing at some point. Yeah, so I feel like some guys, some guys can grow it, you know, way down to their waist, or I mean, really, really long. Mine gets to about here and stops. Yeah, I feel like I'm at like the terminal end. But then like, some days when I come in, I'm like, God is getting longer than other days. I'm like, I don't know, don't feel like it's growing. And every once in a while I get a wild hair at my ass. I'm just like, I'm gonna shave it off. And then I'm like, I don't want to do that. You know, I've made that mistake twice. Yeah, I mean, I know, this is the commercial real estate content everybody's begging for. But I made that mistake twice. When I first started growing a beard, you know, my early 20s. I just, you know, you know, like you said, just one day woke up. I was like, I'm shaving today. And as soon as I did, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was like, What the hell.

51:06

I mean, but these are the good fun problems that you get when you buy good real estate that you free up a lot of your time. And you get to enjoy yourself. And it's like, we love what we do, right? So we get to worry about some of these other fun things. We're not trying to figure out how to make $1 We're not going to work for the man. I mean, I literally I worked for a government agency. And it was literally it was TPS reports. You messed up here. Yo, you messed up here. As like, dude, I'm here to put fires out. And that's it. Like, just leave me alone. I don't want to do paperwork. Yeah. And it's just it was it was crazy. But now that you're free, and it's just like, Man, I literally get to choose so well, it might be an off topic conversation. It is really relevant to buying self storage or commercial real estate in general, because we don't have to answer to anybody to do whatever we want. I mean, yeah, I It's nice, because I mean, I'm covered in tattoos. If you're if you're just listening on the podcast, you probably don't know that. But I'm covered in tattoos. I've got a beard, like I wear T shirts and jeans on a daily basis. And, you know, when I first got started, I was working for somebody else. I had to shave. I didn't raise your shave, but I had to keep a close shave. Every day Santa jacket, I had to wear a suit. And and oh yeah, the whole suit. It was miserable. I mean, in Nashville gets hot as hell. Yeah. So you're we're talking 90 to 100 degree weather. And I'm out here in a suit, like wedding while going on tours. And now I mean, I just wake up, I'm like, That's a nice looking t shirt. I'm gonna wear that today. That's right. Yep, it's so nice. Let's see in the stores are saying 360 tours of the future. Even with apartments, you can look at the 360 tour online, they go on a self guided tour later, don't even need a physical guide. I just did this seamless renting. I agree. I mean, we saw a huge shift to that in the apartment world during COVID. Because property managers, we didn't want to go on tours with tenants, and they still had to show the space. So we started doing 360 tours. I mean, I was actually doing Matterport back in 2018 on all of our spaces. And it's interesting because you can track the data in through Matterport of who is who is touring your spaces, really. And I had people from Chicago, California, New York, that were touring my space from completely remote. And I knew that nobody else was doing that. Because I mean, that was a residential thing. I've always followed the residential real estate world because there's so much more technologically advanced than us. I mean, that's why I started doing things on social media. That's why I started the YouTube channel. That's why I started the podcast. I mean, people just don't do this in commercial real estate for whatever reason, I don't get it. Let's see. Adele is saying Any advice for somebody with $200,000? Cash, no debt 27 years old looking to get into it?

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Well, first off, I would like to commend you the fact that you're 27 and have no debt and have a lot of cash saved. That's awesome. Because that is not the norm in American society. What I would do is I would look to how can you allocate? And this is just my opinion, how can you allocate that cash into potentially one, two to three deals, whether it's through investment you Okay, so let's go back one more step, you need to decide if you want to be an operator of real estate, or you want to be a participant of real estate, because when you go in to buy a piece of real estate, like you need to go in and be able to operate that. Furthermore, past that, I would look to say, Okay, I got 200 grand, let's do two deals, like let's do one deal first, and then have some reserve cash for a second one, just to have some protection, depending what you want to do.

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And I will look at it from that standpoint and try to figure out how can you diversify your risk and not put all your eggs in one basket.

54:32

Other than that, I would look for deals that

54:36

make you happy that like you're proud to own right, like I'm in a room full of private lenders right now most of them ex rehabbers ex flippers ex rental real estate owners and they're like, I just got sick and tired of the BS. And I like lending because there's no drama and I'm like, listen like lendings cool, but like you guys pay taxes to the government. I'm out like I like owning real estate because I don't pay taxes to the government.

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So it's just it's, it's different, right? But then those guys are willing to invest in my deals, and then my IRA cash, I'm willing to give to them to go lend out because I understand the benefit of lending. So ultimately, what I'm getting at is figure out what you like to do and get really good at where we cut our teeth when we first started. And I was about a year or two older than you. I just did not have that much cash saved up and had horrible credit. We started buying subsidized housing. In Baltimore City, we had no clue what we were doing. But I took 15 grand, I bought a house, and then I got rent. And I was like, wow, that was cool. And then I did it again. And I did it again. And then we wound up with 100 houses that we owned and operated. It's not that it's not the sheer scale and size that I'm proud of what we learned in building that 100 House portfolio is our systems, we learned how to hire employees, I learned how to write leases, I learned how to evict people, I learned what not to do really freaking quick. And we got really good at that. And then what happened was as the market turned for us, it allowed us to apply that same skill set to a small apartment building another small apartment building, hey, I need a little more money for this apartment building. Tyler, are you interested in investing with me, I have no clue what it looks like. But I think this might work. Cool. And then allowed us just to grow up the food chain. I truly believe that you can start in commercial real estate. Just know what you're getting involved, know what you're getting into. And really spend time figuring out what asset class you want to get into and dip your toe, decide if it's right for you. And then continue to grow and scale that man. That's some great advice. And that's what we will leave you all with today. Ian, thank you for joining us. And thank you all for staying tuned through the back half of the variety hour. If you actually like some of these more casual conversations towards the end of the podcast, let me know I used to do some of that kind of towards the beginning. But I got a comment from somebody who was like, This is terrible. I had to listen to 10 minutes of y'all, you know, talking to each other before you get into the meat of it. So I was like, Okay, well, that was fair feedback. I mean, we'll jump right into self storage, investing or whatever it is. But I actually actually liked being able to have these conversations. So let me know in the comments. Let me know in the reviews if you're listening on the podcast if you liked this, we'll we'll I'll be sure to keep it in there. Go check out go follow me and add equity warehouse on Instagram. What's your website is it equity warehouse is equity warehouse.com And you can see how our investors co invest with us. And if you don't mind, I'm stealing the mic. Do a complete shameless plug. If you really want to learn more about self storage, go check out Self Storage Secrets on Facebook. We have a Facebook group and we share content there other self storage investors get in there and share content. So if you really want to learn the asset class from your operators, no spam, none of that crap. Come on over. Happy to talk Self Storage everybody. You know it's 4000 units, so I think he knows what he's talking about. Go follow that Facebook page. We will see you guys next time. This episode of the commercial real estate investor podcast is brought to you by cre launch Pro. This online commercial real estate program is designed to take you from beginner to pro commercial real estate investor with access to all of my courses are online community and monthly group coaching calls on how to confidently buy your first commercial property today at www dot c r e launch pro.com