Saturday 13 September 2014

What You Need To Know About Self-Storage Investing

Filing for bankruptcy can leave you numb and practically stalled to do much of anything. This is especially true when you are fully aware that a decision you made on a crucial investment deal was the direct result of your financial ruin. Yet bankruptcy is not the end of everything. No one knows this truth more than a self-storage business expert.

Bankruptcy actually played a significant role in the success of most business owners today. Many of these business owners recount how a deal they invested in led to bankruptcy for one of their companies and how the experience taught them more than any other investments they made. Although a business owner has accumulated more than enough experience in the real estate industry, particularly in self-storage investment, to be considered as one of the nation's leading experts, his expertise truly lies in helping businesses or other investors avoid investment mistakes.

While this person's businesses include managing different construction projects as well as a number of development projects, he considers self-storage facilities to be one of the best business investments you can make today.

One of the best reasons has to be that self-storage investment works in a good and bad economy. He notes that in a good economy people normally buy more stuff, which means they will need storage units to keep their excess belongings. In a bad economy, companies are likely to downsize, which means they will be requiring storage units to temporarily hold their equipment until things get good again. Here are two important mistakes you should avoid when investing in self-storage:

1. Treat your self-storage business as a cash cow. It's not an ATM. It is still a business and you need to treat it the way it should be treated. Get a process-based management in place; use Web-based software to help you run it; dominate the competition by having an effective marketing plan; and consider expansion once your business becomes stable, think about offering value added services like truck rental and moving supplies to gain more revenue.

2. Invest without doing relevant analysis. Never go into self-storage investment (or any investment, for that matter) blind. Guesswork will help you lose money even before you get started. So know the value of the self-storage facility you want to invest in before you put some money down. Check out the local competition. And determine the overall demand in the market. Doing your due diligence will allow you to cut down, or even eliminate, the risks associated with any investment, and it will give you the biggest returns.