Ep#62 Investing in Self Storage with Ryan Gibson Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast

James:  Hi, audience and listeners. This is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Through Value-add Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today I have Ryan Gibson from Spartan Investment Group. It's an investment group that focuses a lot on Self-storage. They have almost 4,000 units. They have a lot of units in DFW area and a few other States. I think Ryan's going to talk about in a short while, and they recently started to [00:32unclear] in a mobile home parks, which we'll touch upon in a short while. Hey Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan: Thanks, James, for having me. It's fun to get on your show. It's great.
James: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So why not you tell about yourself and your company, things that I've missed out?
Ryan: Yeah, so we are based in Golden, Colorado, and we buy existing and develop self-storage properties. And we do all of our properties and projects through syndication. So we raised capital from private investors and we go out and buy storages that we can buy and get existing cashflow on. And then we can eventually either expand them or just improve operations to make additional income. We also build self-storage from the ground up and we do a little bit of RV park investing as well, but storage is the primary focus. So, you know, previously, we were land developers and built condos and flipped houses and focused on storage mostly just because of the recession resistancy, you know, during downtimes. And when we were first looking at the industry, that really is what you know, attracted us to jump into the business. Was the, you know, kind of how it performed during the last two recessions.
James: Got it, got it. Yeah. I mean, I did a lot of research of different asset classes. I wrote it in my book as well. Like how many asset class, six asset class for the past 15 years and just on my own, this is not from Marcus and Millichap or this is not from CoStar.  I looked at all the asset class and was looking at all the past 15 years report, which that's a report called Integra Realty Resources. That's the report that all the commissioner pays us a report to, that's the organization. And I was looking at self-storage and multifamily and all that. I was surprised to see that self-storage did do well the past 15 years, even during the downturn. I know at the beginning, you know, 15 years back, they didn't really allocate a specific asset class for it, but they did talk about it. And in general, I didn't see any downturn, even though every other asset class goes up and down. So that's very interesting. And why do you think is that?
Ryan: Because it relies on life events and life events never stop happening. No, I'm serious. You get divorced, typically, stuff goes in storage. You renovate your house, stuff goes into storage. In times of good times, stuff goes into storage and times and the bad time, stuff goes into storage. When you get downsized, when you move, when your job relocates, when there's a disruption in the market that triggers self-storage events. And added onto that, businesses use it because not everybody can park their work truck in their HOA driveway, if they're in a covenant restricted community and not everybody can have all their utilities and supplies in their house. And so, you know, simpliest way to say it, you know, for an extra 50 bucks a month, imagine having a whole other room in your house. And that's really been a big driver for demand and self-storage. 
We like it because unlike other asset classes, when a customer comes in, we have a lien against all of their stuff. So if they don't pay, we can auction that off for a profit. So, you know, the revenue loss is much lower for you know, the potential when a tenant doesn't pay. With COVID and everything, there was still a rental rate, great increases. We still had high occupancy. We still can host auctions and have people move out if they don't pay. We held back on that in a couple of properties and a couple of markets, but f