Commercial Real Estate Investing From A-Z

It is 100% possible to purchase commercial real estate with no money down, Cody Davis, a 21-Year-Old shares how he already purchased 30 units with no money of his own, with seller financing, following up, and asking for it.Read the entire interview here: https://bit.ly/3iEbGIrHow much money did you use to buy your properties?I had no money of my own in the deals and I had to come up with money. The zero down isn't quite true, because it takes money but doesn't have to be your money. So I had to come up with $125,000 for each twelveplex, that's 250k. And $90,000 for the sixplex, they were all seller financed. So they were lower down payments, but it was no money on my own.How did you convince the seller to carry the first loan?As far as convincing the seller, this is the first time I’ve ever worked with him and ever spoken to him, so I had to learn about his story. I met up with him and I asked him how he got started. He started out with a sixplex, it was his very first property. He bought it for $90,000 around 2004. But he bought it with 10% down, that was $9,000, he traded nine grand for a sixplex, he lived in one of the units, the owner financed for him. He wanted to buy the land next to it, but he didn’t have the $2,000 to buy it. This was all of his money. And today, he has a handful of properties. He is doing brand new developments, single family communities, apartment buildings.I just went through and asked him how he did it, what he started with, what his thoughts were on how to get started. He said, you need to find someone who will seller finance you a property. I said, Okay, will you seller finance me this property? He said, Sure.How did you find the $125,000 second loan?I asked the owner of the firm, I got this opportunity, can you help me out? We looked at the numbers and he said, Yes, it makes sense, let’s do it. He helped fund it. It’s about asking for help, it doesn’t have to be a one person show. You don’t have to be self made because you’re going to grow based off of your interactions with others.What were some of the things that people said no to? And how were you able to overcome that?I had a lot of help starting out. But the objections that I got, and it’s good to know the objections, such as you haven’t done this before, you’re young, you’ve never seen this much money in your life. Those are some of the objections. I am a Grant Cardone guy, I love to study from him. That’s just a complaint. They’re complaining that they didn’t start this young, in my mind. And so I had to flip it, I said, that’s the reason we should do this, because if you were in this position, you would want the same opportunity. Now, this is how I’m going to protect your money. Once the property stabilized, it’s worth $1M. To back that up, I got an offer and I’m going to be selling this twelveplex. As long as things move forward, we’re going to close. The financials are all good with the bank and I helped them sell a couple properties, so they’re 1031 exchanging it, but I got the value up to where I projected it would be. If they had to foreclose on me, I just presented as The property has $560,000 in debt with the seller, if you foreclose on me, you’re getting a million dollar property with a $560k debt for $125,000 in one year, that’s a good ROI, so let’s do this, just like the sixplex I purchased.Sign up for our newsletter here: www.montecarlorei.comCody DavisInstagram: codyd2020Facebook: www.facebook.com/michaelmccann.davis--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

What are some good numbers to syndicate? Do you need experience? How would you go about it? We are answering questions from one of our podcast listeners about syndications and Billy Keels, a long distance real estate syndicator and investor, who syndicates US properties from Barcelona, Spain answers her questions.You can read this entire interview here: https://bit.ly/3ynC4voWhen it comes to the number of partners in a limited partnership, how many is too many?There are two questions that you want to ask yourself. Number one, who is it that you want to serve through the syndication? And number two, what type of systems do you currently have in place, because that's going to have a direct impact on the number of partners that you have. You want to be able to have the right people that you're serving. Sometimes you may want to serve people that are only accredited investors. And that is going to make sure that you're serving someone with a specific type of syndication tool. If you want to be able to serve other people that are more sophisticated investors, then you will want to use a different type of tool, you have specific names. And I know you've talked a lot about 506(c) for accredited investors or a 506(b) for sophisticated and accredited investors.I am in my mid 20's, and experienced only on the brokerage side of commercial real estate. However, I am taking a commercial real estate financial modeling course to thoroughly understand the numbers, what kinds of qualities, experiences, achievements would make you feel confident enough to invest your money with someone like me, and is direct investment experience an absolute must?It sounds like you already have lots of experience, even in your mid 20's! I think this is such an individual question. You want to ask yourself what is the right experience for the individual for the person? At the end of the day, each one of us are very different. And we need to make sure that you as a syndicator and your team, you need to be able to understand exactly what each potential investor is looking for. As far as having direct investment experience, I'm more interested in her and her team. I want to understand if the team that she is representing has the experience on that asset class. It's not just about the individual, it's more about the team and their overall experience, to make sure that if I'm investing time, energy, capital, that the team will give me as the investor the highest probability of getting the return on whatever it is that I'm looking for. And that could be an ROI, it could be tax benefits, or whatever the case may be.When you consider your most successful deals, what was different?As a syndicator, it was being able to spend the appropriate time with each of the investors getting a very clear understanding of what each of the motivators were for the individuals that were part of the syndication. And being able to help them get a very clear picture of not just what the project was, meaning buying a certain asset. But what were the benefits and the impact, that that particular investment of their time, energy and capital was going to return not only to them, but also to the communities in which they were investing. And the impact that it was going to make on the syndication's team.And some basic things like making sure that there's a return on their trust and energy, which means that the transfer, the ACH, or the checks were arriving to them on time, so that they advocate to others about the positive experience, and invest again.Join our Goals accountability calls here: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/regoalsBilly Keelswww.billykeels.comwww.linkedin.com/in/billykeelsPodcast: https://apple.co/3A47Fmu--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

What should you include in your pro-forma when doing a real estate development? Renat Yusufov, Managing Partner at Bullpen shares his detailed pro-forma, how should you think about it, and why. He also shares his top asset classes and markets to be in.Watch this deep dive here: https://bit.ly/3y9SHukWatch Part 1 here: https://bit.ly/3xWrZ8pRead this entire interview here: https://bit.ly/3wRbFViWe have a non pro-forma here for stabilization. This is where it's dealer's choice, being an office product, being multi tenanted, chances are you're going to go through Argus software, you plug in your assumptions, you plug in your rent roll or your expected rent roll, and it basically does the pro-forma for you. Some people have an aversion to it, because it doesn't allow for more flexibility, however, it does allow for more detail, it's the double edged sword. My personal opinion, the more complex your office product is, meaning the more tenants you have, the more nuance you have about leasing, and staggering timelines, the more likely you prefer to go with Argus. It's a little more painful in terms of editing on the fly. But the flip side of it is that it's definitely more accurate than anything you would probably be able to build an Excel. This is a summary of where you expect to land. And a lot of this is actually pulling from Argus, Argus lets you pull in Excel tabs basically as outputs so you can integrate it back into your Excel on both the assumptions, the leasing summary, and the base rent.And you can change all of these numbers based on various specific locations of each property?Exactly. And that goes back to your building, and the south side of a certain city and state, you'll talk to the brokers who have experience there, and they'll tell you what the rents will be, they'll tell you how long it'll be on the market before you'll find a tenant, what the terms are, and the big terms being free rent, TILC, so that's tenant improvement leasing commissions, and the time it'll take to find a tenant, as well as the credit. This is really a summary. You'll have different audiences for this model, it's better to have it here than for them to have to run around the tab looking for the specific month, when you stabilize, and what the rent looks like then. I show it as a total dollars per net square foot, and dollars per gross square foot, because this is a construction project. You're building grows, regardless. But you want to show how that rent looks both net and gross.The goal here is, if I want to exit as an investor or as a lender, what is my risk of waiting until before stabilization? At what point during lease up do I hit the yield that I need to be? Or at what point am I operationally profitable? And the last part, the exit, the biggest toggle here is obviously cap rate, you're stabilizing a property and you're selling it for a certain yield. I put at least 6%. In a post Covid environment that we're living in, office is an interesting subject. A lot of opportunity, and a lot of hurt in some cases is happening in the office space. We're seeing a cultural revolution, frankly, on terms of office.The project I picked here is an open layout, high ceiling, shared amenities. I think this is where office is going, and we are just showing what kind of concept you'd probably be wanting to build today. I was reading the news today and I think 19% of New York City offices are on the market. It's a double edged sword.Renat YusufovBullpenrenat@bullpenre.com--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

What should you include in your pro-forma when calculating all of the details of a real estate deal? We deep dive into a pro forma for an office development. Renat Yusufov, Managing Partner at Bullpen reviews every item, how should you think about it, and why.Watch the youtube deep dive here: https://bit.ly/3k6Wp3YWatch Part 2 here: https://bit.ly/3y9SHukRead this interview here: www.bit.ly/2VCl8TBWhy don't we dive into an example of what you guys are doing for this particular side of the business.I created a template so to speak for an office development of what it would look like in today's day and age, I come from the philosophy that no two deals are ever going to be the same. Naturally, you will have certain changes. But the core of the model should more or less look alike, it's not just a financial model, it's really a weapon for when you go into battle for a project. It should be flexible, it should be something that you can present relatively simply to either your lender or any kind of investors or limited partners, etc. It should be able to adapt to whoever your audience is, the structure of a model, in my opinion, regardless of what asset class, regardless of what the business plan is, I like to always start with the dashboard. The dashboard is where most of the toggles will be, anything that's an input. And the reason for this is as you're going through the project, regardless of where the onset underwriting starts, along the way as you're talking to GC's, as you're talking to other contractors, architects, lenders, investors, business plans will be adjusted, they will be tweaked, they might be entirely revised, so it's easier for any kind of user, whether it's the partner, the principal, all the way down to the analyst, and company, or even if it's a third party looking at this, to be able to see it all in one place, the Summary tab.Does it typically end up being more expensive and a longer timeframe, or the opposite, when you say that none of them end up being the exact same numbers?In this environment, it's a mixed bag. I've been on the advisory side where people would send me a model of what they want to get done. And I'd go to the market for both a loan and the equity to figure it out with them. I've been on the private equity side, on the buy side, where somebody sends me a model, or I build it initially, and then I say, This is what we want to get delivered, this is the returns we're looking for. I would say, generally speaking, and this isn't true of everyone, people's underwriting tend to be on the aggressive side. Whether you're on the buy or the sell side, whatever model you receive, you're probably reining it in, in the sense of you think the rents may be too aggressive, or the rent growth is too aggressive, or the expenses need to be buffered up a little bit.One place where a lot of things might be hidden or misinterpreted, is any kind of capital expenses. People underestimate what it costs to repair or repaint the hallway, or common space in an office building, if they're buying it already built. The best way to go about this, whether you're just in the beginning of building your model, or you're trying to flesh out your business plan and get it to market, I would say is contact as many professional as possible. This is obviously a networking business, talk to the brokers about the rents what they can reasonably achieve, as you're going through your process of selecting a broker, talk to several GC's about your costs, what they can reasonably get you as far as a budget, and where you could land in terms of construction costs.Renat Yusufov: www.linkedin.com/in/renatyusufovwww.bullpenre.com--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

What did I learn at the Real Estate Guys Summit on Sand event this year? A whole lot, and I'm sharing all of it with you today.You should read this entire episode here: https://bit.ly/3qEBczvReal estate strategies:Donate land to the city to build stadium, and you will still own all the land around the stadium.Buy two properties that are next to each other so you can combine operations and expenses and increase NOI, therefore you increase the value of your properties right off the gate.One thing they always say is for you to purchase 5-10% of your net worth in gold, just in case something really bad happens. If you are like me thinking that that gold isn’t producing any money, so I’ll just purchase stocks or real estate instead, the good news is that there are firms that will loan against gold and silver (at Prime + 2 points). What you need to keep in mind is that if gold or silver goes down in value, the firm will ask you to come up with the difference. When that happens, another strategy around that is that you can just buy more gold at that time because gold will go up later either way.Turn your liabilities into assets!All the fun expenses have to make money, your thought process should always be “what am I going to get in order to pay for X”.For example, Ken McElroy wanted to buy a Ferrari, he has something like $1B worth of multi-family investments, he has all the money he needs, but he still said, what can I purchase that will pay for the Ferrari. He ended up purchasing a piece of land that had a billboard in it, the piece of land cost $300,000, the billboard was making $40,000/year. He created an easement on the billboard section, which is the right to use that piece of land for however long you decide (since you're the land owner) and sold the land for $300,000! He now has $40,000 income free and clear yearly that is taking care of his Ferrari.Kim Kiyosaki wanted to buy an airplane. She ended up buying her airplane, the entire purchase can be deducted, plus all of the expenses of the airplane. Not only that, they are chartering the airplane when they’re not using it! So the plane is either going to be free, or they will make money off it. You can do the same thing with a boat!Have no money for a down payment? There are plenty of options:You can get money from most major credit cards, with zero fees for 10 months.Ask your bank lines of credits, ask to increase the lines of credits every 6 months.Pre-sell a product to create income (in the real estate example, for the down payment).Don’t ask “When should I get started” ask “How can I get started”.Even very successful people still get nervous when buying properties, Ken McElroy said himself that he still gets nervous when closing on a deal!Important things to do next:Create a Trust before end of year - make sure you get your CPA and an attorney together to put your Trust in place.Read the minutes of the Fed, they put it out 3 weeks after each meeting.DISC profile, have every employee take the test: https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/Sign up for Simon Black's newsletter.Learn about the repo market: George Gammon.--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

Gen Z is anyone born between 1997 and 2015, they are now getting into the workforce and were the generation that was born with a phone in their hands. How are they shopping? How are they interacting? We have a discussion with four Gen Z'ers that live in different parts of the country to find out.You can read this entire interview here: https://bit.ly/3qktjiyWhere are you guys shopping today?D: I use Amazon quite often, whether it’s anything electronics, shirts, clothing, whatever that may be. I don’t shop in too many other places because it’s convenient.J: We grew up with the ease of online. So if we need something, it can be at our doorstep on the same day, one day shipping. Personally for me physical shopping and malls and retail stores, etc. has turned into a day trip, or I go and hang out with my friends. And we still shop and buy. And if we need things, maybe we’ll go out. But a lot of the time if I’m by myself and I just need a cheap pair of flip flops I’ll go on Amazon and get them the next day.C: I usually go to Target if I’m going to buy anything. The biggest thing for me is I that have a very unconventional sleep cycle. I’m up really late, and usually up really early as well. I’m working through the day, pretty long hours, and I need to be able to go somewhere physical, that is open later. And I’ve noticed a lot of smaller shops are restricted hours, they close at seven or eight. That doesn’t work for me because I’m working past seven or eight. And Target is open until 10, 11, or 12pm depending on the area and that’s convenient for me, I don’t like to order online.A: When I was younger, it was just a way to pass time, you went and you walked around Walmart and you would play with the toys and all kinds of stuff. So when it comes to actually shopping now, I just see brick and mortar stores as just ways to pass the time. If I really decided that I need something, or that I want something, I’ll go online or it because I know if I go and look and touch it feel at the store I’ll be, Oh, I don’t need it today. I’ll put it back and go and find it either online when I have a coupon, or when they’re running a sale or something like that. I can wait and I don’t need it today.If you owned a piece of retail today, what would you put in there?C: I would section off a corner of it for virtual office. As far as other retail, I would put something just for me because I have a weird living scheduling as far as when I’m up, and out and about and shopping. I would try and resonate with that because I know there are other entrepreneurs and folks like that, that live a less conventional daily schedule. I would put something in there that’s open 24/7.J: on popular online marketers like Lululemon or Gymshark.D: Warehouse for Amazon items where I'd be a seller.A: People think of these certain brands like Gucci and Prada as making it. I would want to come up with a way to get as much of these different brands more accessible to these people because I’ve also learned through different ways, it’s very niche to be able to go in there.Cody Davis: instagram.com/codyd2020Jake Pinkerton: instagram.com/jakerton.22Daniel Finnie: instagram.com/danielfinnie_musicAdrienne Wilson: instagram.com/_adriennelouise_--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

What is happening with the car wash and self storage investments? This is an update on the portfolio of properties that we purchased about seven months ago.You can read this entire episode here: https://bit.ly/34J3LlmThe first 2 months:Within nine days of closing, one of the roofs caved in one of the car washes because of snow. Thank God for insurance, Nationwide in this case, was phenomenal, it’s during those hard times that you don't want to be dealing with an insurance company that does not want to pay out. They released the funds within two or three weeks of the incident. About 20 days later, my main employee quit without any notice. And at that time, I thought this was potentially a blessing in disguise because we thought we found someone much better within a day of the main person quitting. And it turned out that this new person was actually not a great solution for that particular job. This person was just not doing the job. So within a couple of months, I was able to fire that person. A lesson reminder is that you should hire slow and fire fast.3 months – now (total of 7 months)I want to give it one full year before deciding if this asset class is an interesting asset class to invest in or not. It has a lot of moving parts. We are in the process of automating as much as possible, delegating as much as possible, and creating processes as much as possible, and want to see what the results will look like once all of that is in place. And then we’ll make a decision on, is carwash a good asset class to invest in, or not. In terms of time, I today spend at the very least one to two hours a day working on the car washes alone, the tasks vary greatly, it can be anything from ordering a test of the mud, all the way through what chemicals do we need to purchase, all the way to issuing refunds to customers. The way to be very successful is for you to have a system in place so that anyone can come in and do the job. The goal is not only if something happens with me, but also if something happens with any of the employees because everyone has to be “replaceable”. The business has to run without us in case something happens to anybody.The returnsWe are at the moment averaging about 36 to 48 percent cash on cash return. This is counting our mortgage expense that also is building equity for us, which is how we’re supposed to calculate cash on cash. We expect this to only grow with time because of all of these implementations that we’re going to be doing. These properties do not have any outside investors, we don’t need to do any distributions.Should we continue or not?Our time is so limited in this world that is this an asset class that you want to be working on? Do you want to be dealing with employees that might not be as professional as someone you might work with in the corporate world? Do you want to be dealing with zillions of moving parts, we literally have, seven months in, about 40 different SKU’s for things that we need to buy for the carwash. And that’s not counting anything that is not carwash specific. When we compare this with the self storage, that is probably one to two hours a week worth of work.There were several other things that I dealt with during these last seven months:1. The roof still has not been fixed because the construction company took many months to get the things approved by the city2. We had theft3. We went through the freeze where some pipes froze4. We had employees putting more hours than they were working5. We had one very bad vendor experience6. At one point, I was actually fearing for my life7. We had money missing from the people that were collecting the cashWhat do you want to hear in the next episodes? Let me know here: admin@montecarlorei.com--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

What are some of the best practices for raising funds? How to go about finding a partner? AdaPia d’Errico, principal and VP of strategy at Alpha Investing, shares her experience with us.You can read this entire interview here: https://bit.ly/3fiThiBWhat are some of your best practices for raising funds?The best practice is going to be to be a genuine person, I often use the word authentic. Even though that can be a bit of a strange word, what I really mean by authenticity is being genuine, being a real person. And a lot of that comes with humility. And for me personally, that means being myself, there's always this expectation that somebody should have all the answers and be an expert and be able to make guarantees, which of course we know, in any kind of investing is just not something you want to do. You can't make guarantees.And I think a real best practice is to take the time to get to know somebody and to be a real person when you're knowing them, not like an old 1980s style of sales. Simply, this is who I am. This is this is my background. This is what we do in a really specific scenario. For example, this was our worst deal. This is what went wrong. This is what we learned from it. Because we get things wrong. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that every project that we've invested in has knocked it out of the park, including senior living, we've had a couple that aren't performing to pro forma. Why did that happen? Those are important things for investors to understand and to know. Especially having conversations with people, there's a lot to be said for automating the process, for letting people almost be without needing to talk to you. And you can do a lot of that, but there is something to be said about taking some time to have phone calls with people.We always require an initial phone call to understand who would like to work with us, because we are referral based. We're very highly selective even with our investors. And that's important to us, because having the right kind of investors allows us to bring better investments. Building those relationships with those investors helps because they need to know that they can ask me a question. Because if they can't ask me a question, then it means that I can't help them earn trust, if they can't ask a question, they might not invest, and they might miss out on an opportunity. So those are really important things, just running people all the time through a chat bot, or Zendesk, while it is potentially more efficient, it's not as effective as just picking up the phone or spending some time giving bespoke answers, especially in real estate, especially on the equity side, right? It's there's complicated things to talk about. And there's, there's a lot of moving parts to be able to explain to somebody.What's important is really being holistic in your approach to an investor, being a real, genuine person and being willing to speak about the things that went wrong and not trying to put on a facade of expert, or perfection, or we're the best, nobody's going to believe you.How did you find a partner?When my whole life broke down, I had to get super clear on who am I, and what do I want. I wanted great business partners and I manifested them. I have been in the most amazing partnership with them for the past three years.AdaPia d’Erricowww.alphai.comwww.linkedin.com/in/adapiaProductive Intuition: Connecting To The Subtle--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

Why is senior assisted living an interesting asset class? What makes for a good operator? What are the challenges in this space? AdaPia d'Errico, principal and VP of strategy at Alpha Investing, shares her insights.You can read this entire interview here: https://bit.ly/3vZkDjqAs the firm that is fundraising and looking for an operator and a really good property. What do you look for in the operator to partner up with?What we're looking for in an operator is a lot of experience. The operator that we are currently working with is a national company, they have the reach, they have the operational capabilities they have in house management. Vertically integrated is really important. Not just a sponsor that wants to purchase the building, because they think it's great cash flow, or they're going to flip it at a profit later, the management of the operations is really important. So we like sponsors that are also operating, because that vertical integration is really important to fully realize the value that's in the transaction. Because it's not just the real estate, and yes, there's cash flows, but you can really add value, and you can maximize those cash flows through a reduction of expenses, through making sure that occupancy is stable and steady, which is one of the biggest challenges in this space, occupancy, in addition to labor.There has to be an understanding of how to operate it, of the local area as well, because although you might think that you can just apply one big giant national brand, to something like senior living, the truth is that you actually can't and that's just proven out, it's very localized. There needs to be an understanding of that local market, how it operates, who's there. A lot of research needs to go into that. What are some of the biggest challenges in the space?Some of them have really been highlighted because of COVID. Some of the challenges arise from maintaining the expenses within range. And COVID really exacerbated expenses in multiple ways. Just PP alone, was a much bigger expense, like all the extra safety and medical equipment that was required. Labor is a big thing. There are some some facilities that really were unable to keep it all together because they couldn't keep staff for various reasons. And although COVID was a very acute thing to happen to the industry, it did highlight some weakness there and the importance of labor, the importance of the staff and their safety. You have your nurses and your people walking away because they don't feel safe. Your residents are not getting care. This is a people business at the end of the day. We're investors and everything like that. But you need to place a primary focus on the quality of life of the residents. And that's something that we know our operator does. And it's really important to us when we invest with somebody, because that piece is what's forgotten, is the people that are there. And that's not okay.It sounds like an asset class with a ton of moving parts. And also at the same time, it sounds like a great time to get into it, from what I'm gathering.Historically, Senior Living has some of the strongest performance relative to other asset classes. Senior living has actually outperformed every other asset class over the past 10 years, except for industrial. Industrial has actually generated higher returns in a one, three, and five year period. But senior living has outperformed everything over the past 10 years.AdaPia d'Erricowww.alphai.comLinkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/adapia--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

With so many people interested in buying or building self storage facilities, how do you find one, and add value to a facility? How do you differentiate from the competition? Clair Hoover, an experienced operator with over 20 years managing self storage facilities shares some golden tips.You can read this entire interview here: https://bit.ly/3vv9eYqThe cap rates are very compressed for self storage, how do you go about purchasing them nowadays?You do what everybody has had to do in tight times and in every part of real estate, you end up looking at more properties and bidding on less. A year ago, for every 20 properties we looked at, we would put an offer on one. I’m guessing right now it’s closer to 100 properties that we look at before we find one that we think to even barely buy. It’s a challenging time. I think patience is part of it. But also we want to keep growing. So we keep sorting through every haystack we can find, trying to find some bargain buys.What are some value add methods for self storage facilities, since you have so much experience there.When we buy a property we like to see what we call the triple play. We like to see upside on rate management, we like to see upside on occupancy, and we like to see upside on expansion opportunities. We will settle for two out of three, but we rarely would buy something that doesn’t have those opportunities available.The biggest mistake we see today would be under-managing rate management, there are so many opportunities there, you will actually find people in self storage who brag about 100% occupancy. They’ll brag about the fact that they have the lowest price option in their market. Think through the math on what I just said and what they’re laying on the table. I love meeting people like that I love making an offer on their property, a lot of upside on rate management.Another one is, a lot of people are missing admin fees, it’s become customary, in our markets at least, to be charging admin fees. It covers some of your costs to put a client in and it’s accepted by the market. So again, you’re just letting money on the table. And you mentioned cap rates, when you started talking about $2,000 a year or even 10,000 in admin fees, you take out a five or even a four percent cap in some markets, that’s serious cash being left on the table by not maximizing that.The other two other upsides I mentioned already were occupancy. If you’re low occupancy, I would invest in marketing, you’ve to fill that facility up, that’s dead dollars on the table. The last one, a lot of people say is not available to them, but it often is, and that’s expansion capability. If you’re on a five acre parcel, and it’s maxed out, you’re not thinking outside the box, there has to be some land within a mile or two of you somewhere that you could add more storage to and you probably don’t need to increase your labor costs. You can probably run both facilities out of one office if needed.Another one is tenant insurance. If you’re not selling tenant insurance, there’s a good chance your tenants aren’t covered. And it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when you’re going to have an issue whether it be a fire, or a flood, or wind damage, something’s going to hurt your tenants belongings.How do you differentiate yourself from other facilities in order to increase your occupancy?It can be different in different markets. I would say automation today is probably the best way to differentiate yourself. You’ve to be one of the strongest digital marketers in your market. If you're not, you're probably alienating anyone under the age of 40. And quite a few of us over 40 are going to write you off.Clair Hooverclairhoover@comcast.netwww.freedomstoragemanagement.com--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support