Building a Self Storage Empire Part 2 – The first month in the books

The first month is in the books in Erie and Pittsburgh at our self storage facilities.

Pittsburgh is cruising right along. We paid $472k for the property with 20% down ($95k). We generated $6,244 in revenue in our first month and had $3,907 in expenses (including $996 in principle) for $2,337 in profit.

Our facility in Pittsburgh

Our Annual Net Operating Income at that pace would be about $40,000 with our cashflows being $28,044. That would be about a 30% cash on cash return on our investment and would put our operating NOI at about 8.5% of the overall purchase price.

Gotta be happy about that!

Our Corry PA Self Storage Facility

Erie is a little messier. We paid $632,000 for the property and put in $126,000 cash.

We went up and cut locks and got ready for the massive self storage auction on the 19th of this month by taking photos and then securing the units. It turns out we have only 25% of the units occupied with paying tenants, another 25% available for rent (empty) and then 50% of them heading to auction. Thats over 90 units!

Just a few of the 95 units getting auctioned off this month

This month we did $4,048 in total revenue. Our interest payment (we are interest only for 6 months) is $1,896 per month and we spend $1000 on taxes and insurance and another $1000 on snow removal. A few miscellaneous expenses as well bring us to about a break even month. Not bad for 25% occupied!

I did some PR this month and got us an article on the front page of the Corry journal about the auction. The Erie Times will hopefully run the story later as well! We also put craigslist ads up for the auctions and have over 100 people who have requested to get notified about the auctions.

Credit to the Corry Journal, Corry PA
Credit to the Corry Journal, Corry PA

All in all – a busy month! Excited about a few more acquisitions in the pipeline in the next few months!

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About Me

I started the Sweaty Startup in December of 2018 because I believe the Shark Tank and Tech Crunch culture is ruining the real spirit of low-risk entrepreneurship.