Jan 19, 2022
Paul Moore is an amazing contributor
to BiggerPockets. Paul has launched multiple investments and
developed companies appearing on HGTV and completed over 100
commercial & residential investments & exits in Real Estate. He has
contributed in Fox business and Real Estate Guys™ Radio
and is a regular contributor to BiggerPockets
Producing live video and blog content. Paul also co-hosted wealth
building podcast called “How to lose money” and he has
been featured on a number, over 200 at this point. Paul is a 3 time
Real estate author. His new book is “Storing Up Profits: Capitalize
on America's Obsession with STUFF by Investing in Self-Storage
Paperback”
In this episode we talked about:
Useful links:
https://www.wellingscapital.com/resources
Transcriptions:
So that's, that's what got me into real estate in the beginning. And then commercial, I ended up building a multifamily and operating it in the buckin oil rush of North Dakota. It was a multifamily quasi hotel. We did that for years. It was a lot of fun.
Jesse (4m 34s): That's great. So you, like, I'm not dissimilar from, from some stories and multifamily is you started with these properties, realize that you can make a dollar to two going that way. And then at what point did you end up going into the commercial space or the multi red space?
Paul (4m 50s): Yeah, so that was 20. So in 2010 we threw a bunch of friends and I threw over a million dollars to the bottom of a hole in the ground expecting about 50 times as much oil to come back out and nothing came out. And so I don't think we, I can almost certainly say we didn't think it through as well as it might sound now, but we thought, well, who made money in the gold rush? Well, those who sold the picks and shovels. So we noticed that there was a massive, massive housing shortage in North Dakota. I mean, like 10 or 20,000 people in a town of 3000, you know, sleeping in their trucks.
So we created this multifamily, which, which we ran as a, you know, sort of an extended stay hotel in 2011. And that was our entree in. And I ended up writing a book on multifamily about five years later and I was off to the races.
Jesse (5m 42s): Yeah, fair enough. I'm sure the, the Western Canadians can, can appreciate the throwing money in a hole in terms of the, so that moved from initially in Detroit, working with Ford motor company, was there an inflection point in your career where you, you said, okay, I'm going to go with the real estate way and, and left, left the job, or was it something that you kind of did on the side and kind of transitioned to?
Paul (6m 6s): Yeah. So when we launched our company, when I left Ford in 92, 93, it was actually, we started a staffing firm and I had only done a couple real estate deals on the side during those years. And honestly I hated real estate on the side, but when I had a chance to go into it full time in 2000 after we sold our company, that was, I I've honestly loved it ever since. Fair enough.
Jesse (6m 35s): Okay. So moving on to, you know, you write this book on multifamily, we're talking today about storing up profits, the, the book I mentioned at the outset, what can you tell us for the, for the average investor that say, you know, I'll give you an example is, is invested in some real estate, maybe it's on the commercial end. Maybe you, you know, whether it's single family or whatever, pick your vertical and keeps hearing about self storage. You know, we hear it, we hear it up here, you know, in the Canadian context, our friends to the south, we hear it constantly being brought up.
I think I mentioned before we had Brandon Moore or Brandon Turner on talking about self storage, but for the average investor, how would you describe the self storage vertical?
Paul (7m 17s): Yeah, so we, you know, we'd beat our head up against the wall for years looking for multifamily. And as I, you probably didn't know I'm old or, and, but seriously, those watching her going, he's really old anyway, but seriously, we, we were w w we're more conservative every year, you know, that I get, and, you know, I wanted to focus on investing and not speculating after making some mistakes in that arena. Hence the podcast name, how to lose money, but we, you know, really felt like it was like we were at the risk of overpaying for multifamily.
And unlike you, we didn't have a great acquisitions team finding those under the radar deals. And we found out that there were 53,000 self storage facilities in the us. That's the same as subway McDonald's and Starbucks combined, but three out of four are run by independent operators. And half, two thirds of those are actually run by single facility owners, which is also known as mom and pop owners.
And these mom and pops typically. I mean, first of all, the cap rates have compressed so much in the last eight or 10 years that they've doubled the value of their facility. And many of them did that by doing nothing except maybe staying the way they were, which is sometimes not always, but sometimes kind of mediocre. And so the opportunity for a medium sized company to go in and buy these facilities with this incredible intrinsic value, which I'll get into in a few minutes is enormous.
And we hadn't seen anything like that in multifamily in a long time. So we transitioned from multifamily to self storage, and then eventually also adding mobile home parks in 2018. And it's just been great. I mean, here's a couple quick stats. I mean, a couple quick issues to consider one would be that, I mean, if I'm renting a thousand dollar a month apartment from you and you raise my rent 6%, I might leave rather than commit to another 60 bucks a month or $720 a year.
But if you are renting me a self storage facility or unit, I should say, and you raise my rent 6%, well, you know, if it's a hundred dollars a month going to 106, I'm probably not going to spend a weekend rent a U-Haul get my buddies together to move my junk. I mean, excuse me, my treasures down the street, just to save six bucks a month. And that's one of the reasons that prices are so inelastic. And what I mean by that is, you know, I mean, they typically users don't leave because you raise the price, especially since most of the tenants think, Hey, I'm only going to be here a few more months anyway, and it's a month to month lease.
Well, that month to month lease has another benefit. And that is, it allows us to capture inflation. Think about it. Imagine my, my friend who has an Amazon sorting facility and has a 20 year lease on it, what's going to happen. If inflation goes way up, well, he's already locked in, or the guy with the warehouse, you know, that rents it for 10 or 20 years or a medical building. But this allows you to capture inflation increases, you know, potentially as much as every month. So we love that. There's also a ton of value adds.
Now, Jesse, the first time I heard value add self storage, I literally laughed. I thought, what are we talking about here? Four pieces of sheet metal, some rivets, a floor and a door. How are we going to do value at where where's the pain? Where's the fake hardwood flooring, where's the bark park. You know, none of that was available. And I had no idea. There were a significant number of value adds in self storage. For example, adding you hall now, adding you hall can, you can put a U haul out in front of your facility and with no cap ex nothing out of pocket, you can generate between one and $5,000 a month in commission, let's say it's $3,000 a month.
That's $36,000 a year using the commercial value at, I mean the commercial value formula, you know, 36,000 a year divided by, let's say a 6% cap rate. That's a $600,000 increase in value just by setting up a U haul operation at your facility. You can also sell locks, boxes, tape scissors, other retail items. You can add late fees. You can throw out bad tenants.
A lot of these mom and pops have a lot of delinquency. We invested in one self storage facility in grand junction, Colorado that had 80% delinquency, 80% of the tenants weren't paying or were paying late. And so there's just a lot of stuff you can do. You can add boat and RV storage, which is really popular. These days, you can add temporary storage like those, you know, storage, those boxes, and you can, there's so much, you can do two. And when you, you know, when you add the value formula and then add a little bit of safe leverage, it can really, really juice investor returns.
Okay.
Jesse (12m 42s): So I have a couple questions to start with, but just, just so I understand that correctly on the value add thing. Cause I, I never heard that concept before, either in terms of, so for example, the U haul, you basically just like you would see some industrial sites with multiple tenants that UCLU haul truck onsite, basically. That would be you, you basically getting the income for having that URL there and having individuals that are, that are tenants of yours renting that, is that correct?
Paul (13m 11s): Yeah. It wouldn't have to be tenants. Basically. You've got to, hopefully you've got a great location with high visibility on a main road you better. And these you halls will be sitting out front. People would book them from your location. And then the one catch is you have to have an employee there to check them out, you know, to sign the paperwork. And then when they come back in to sweep it out. So if you already have an employee think about self storage, how up and down somebody's hours are. I mean, I can imagine them sitting there for hours watching the security screens and Netflix.
Well, you know, it's not really a huge increase in cost to do that, but you get commission from you hall for doing this.
Jesse (13m 50s): It also be fair to say let's loop in Canada. Let's just say Canada is a big state and where you would be similar to New Jersey, New York, California. And I think Maryland in terms of rent control, the ability to remove tenants because of delinquency like you're describing here, is it, does it fall under the landlord tenant regulation in states or is it easier to, to remove them?
Paul (14m 16s): Yeah, that's another benefit of self storage is there's no eviction moratorium from COVID or from anything else, even in the height of COVID we were able to evict tenants. So that is another benefit for sure.
Jesse (14m 31s): I think the reason I bring up those states is those are all states with some form of rent, stabilization or control. And it's, it's a big factor up here, and I know it's a big factor in those states. So another appealing aspect, it seems of self storage, Paul, in terms of, so you talked, you opened the book with these, you know, different reasons that that self storage is an appealing asset class. And then you move into the ability to actually break into self storage. Cause you know, some people, if they're looking at these larger commercial deals and I think you're bringing up seven different paths about how you could get into the self storage space.
Could you talk a little bit about that?
Paul (15m 6s): Yeah. I, I wanted to write a book for bigger pockets on seven unique paths to get into commercial real estate. But instead I actually devoted the last one third of this book to that topic. And so this would apply to most, any commercial real estate. I think it's really hard for a lot of people, including myself for years to try to figure out how do I get into commercial real estate? And so the seven different paths real quick are one, some people call it stacking based on Brandon's a nomenclature there basically it would be buying a small facility, fixing it up, leasing it up, possibly refinancing, but more likely selling it and then going on to a bigger facility and then just rinse and repeat over and over.
I know that works. It's a long and winding road to the top, but it definitely will work. A second path would be being a capital raiser. Now here in the states, you've gotta be really careful with the securities and exchange commission if you're raising capital for other people's deals, but if you're a partner in the deal, or if you can work your way into a partnership with somebody for a raise and you raise the capital, that could be your specialty. And a lot of people do that are really good with people. They might have social media skills or podcasts, and they can raise a lot of money for other people's deals.
Some people have started their whole company by raising money. First Whitney Sule from the real estate syndication show. That's how he started. And he is just a master. Now at multifamily, he's raised a whole lot of money for his own deals, but he started as a capital raiser. Third would be a deal finder deal finder would be somebody who sort of serves hopefully legally in the role, similar to a commercial real estate broker and somebody who basically goes out and finds deals.
And then instead of getting a commission, they'd say, Hey, look, I like to get a piece of ownership in this deal. I'd like to stay involved and I'd like to do this over and over. And eventually hopefully, you know, you get to be a partner in that company or maybe another one. So deal finder is third. Fourth would be go big where you just start out at a high level. Let's say you won the lottery or, you know, retired from the NFL or you just have access to inherit it or your own money. You sold Bitcoin or something. And you can just start out at a high level and people do that.
It's, there's some challenges with that. Of course, path five would be, get a job. Now, most of your listeners probably thinking, I'm wait, I'm listening to Jesse to get out of my job. I don't want to get a job. Well, there are some benefits, especially if you're young to getting a job in property management or as a commercial broker or a commercial mortgage broker, possibly an asset manager, there's different things you can do to learn the lingo, learn the business, meet the people, get the connections and work your way into a career.
Six path would be taking the passive path. And that would be, you know, just becoming a professional or even a non-professional passive investor. Let's say you've got the money, but you don't have the time. You just need to do a great job. Vetting a great syndicator, check out several of them, use Bryan Burke's book, the hands-off investor, and go out. And that an organization that you can invest with and get, you know, essentially sometimes even higher returns than you'd get by yourself.
But somebody else is doing the heavy lifting. The seventh path is finding a mentor or a paid coach. And that would be, you know, finding somebody who will be willing to bring you into their training program or even somebody usually locally who will let you, you know, you trade your services for them, you know, the opportunity to hang around their office, get to know the product, get to know the company and the business as a mentee to that mentor. So those are the seven paths I talk about in the book.
Jesse (19m 5s): Yeah. What a great recap. I don't think I've, I've heard that in one, in one fell swoop, but that's pretty much covers everything. I didn't know that about Whitney. So for those interested, the syndication show, I believe it's called a fantastic podcast with Whitney and Brian Burke. We've had them on a number of times. I can't recommend that book enough. One thing I love about the book that he has is so many books are not from the limited partner's perspective, they're there from the, you know, the capital raiser or the, the GP. So it's nice, even as a GP, you really want to understand both sides of the coin.
So I'd recommend that to anybody that is interested. So Paul, from, from that outset, you know, you have these benefits of, of self storage. We go through this crazy time in the last two years, you know, the world has, hasn't probably one of the biggest health concerns of my generation. At least if not the last century and then various asset classes perform some not so well, some very well, how did self storage perform over the last two years? And maybe it's just in addition to that, what are the risks?
If, if any, with self storage?
Paul (20m 13s): Yeah, let me start with the risks. Cause I don't want to forget that it's really important. The biggest risk in self storage is really during the lease up. That's the time of the risk, at least. So in other words, we invested in a non unstabilized asset in Bradenton, Florida on a main road in a very, very booming area that had 29,000 new residential units being built in that area. Well, it was great until we tried to fill it up and that two new competitors, large national competitors had also built new facilities right down the road and the due diligence people miss this in that process, it just happened to fall right before they were really evident at any rate.
So it was harder to fill up that facility. It took two years longer than planned. And I think that is the biggest risk is large national competitors nearby by the way that eventually sold for an 80% profit to the investor. So it was great, but at any rate it was a hard road. So that's the number one risk would be competition, especially when you're unstabilized and leasing up. Other risks would include, of course, this is true for anything, a bad operator, you know, a great operator can take a mediocre deal and make it good or even great.
A terrible operator can destroy the best deal on the planet. And so bad property management, bad operator, those would be other risks with self storage, overestimating. Your ability to raise rents would be another one. You know, your, Hey it's 20% below market. Yeah. Well, there may be a reason for that. So really just, you know, things like that would be the major risks. I think if we drive around a lot of us, see just self storage in the, in the states everywhere.
And we're wondering why this has gotta be overbuilt. Well, I can take you to Nashville and show you, drive you around Nashville and show you why it is overbuilt. There's too many self storage facilities in too many locations around the city, but then I can drive you 20 minutes south to a suburb, a nice suburb Bellevue or Belmont they're neighboring suburbs. And they're completely underbuilt in fact, there's huge under supply there. And so this is why it's really important to invest with a great syndicator who uses tools like radius plus to check out, you know, the number of square feet of self storage versus, you know, the market, you know, the demographics, the number of people there.
So that's some of the risks as far as how it's done since COVID, it feels like you threw me a softball there, but I don't think you did the wall street journal, New York times, business wire and others have recently written articles basically saying that co that self storage is the big star in commercial real estate. Since COVID during COVID, we had students moving out of their dorms and their apartments, not knowing. I mean, the first weeks of COVID in March of 2020, what's going to happen.
We got to put our stuff in storage. Will we come back in two weeks when they flatten the curve or will it be two years we don't have. And so that, that was a nice little initial bump. Then there was the eviction moratorium that didn't happen, self storage. And then we have these unfortunate situations. I'm not making light of this, but a self storage thrives during the four days that's downsizing, dislocation, divorce, and death. And we had some of all of that going on during, and since COVID, let's look at dislocation, I mean, people have been moving in droves from places like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and LA to smaller towns or different places like Utah and Texas and Florida and Charlotte and well, a lot of them need self storage along the way.
And so let's take dislocation as an example, Jesse, I mean, look in the last year at the massive number of people who have moved from places like New York city and Chicago, LA San Francisco to places like Utah and Texas and Scottsdale and Charlotte, a lot of these people need self storage along the way other people, you know, are moving for different reasons. There's been a lot of stress. There's been, unfortunately, a lot of divorce, there's been some death.
And so there's a lot of, you know, reasons that self storage is actually, you know, doing better right now. And another factor most people don't talk about is the price of steel and other building materials. Plus just the labor is in massively short supply. And so it's held up some self storage projects from coming to fruition. So the competition is actually lower, at least in these last, you know, let's say six to 12 months or more. And so really nobody would have dreamed, we thought self storage and we said self storage would do well in recessions.
Nobody had any idea how well self storage would do during this pandemic.
Jesse (25m 37s): Yeah, it makes sense. And just kind of from an anecdotal point of view, I can't, I can't remember a time where I've kind of put something in storage and I haven't used that storage for an extended period of time. I feel like, like you said, I believe you use the, the word inelastic. My, my very technical economic term would be sticky. It's just that aspect where once people store something in an area, like you said, you know, if you go from a hundred to a hundred, $6, is that going to make me move it probably not. You know, if you go up some crazy amount, then you might move the needle.
One thing I'm curious about I've, I've always been curious about the underwriting when it comes to self storage, because we always talk about self storage in the real estate context. I'm curious if that translates to the underwriting of the deal. And for example, you know, I somewhat of a rule of thumb when it comes to looking at multi-racial properties is an expense ratio of 40 to 50% know it'd be a good rule of thumb to do a back of a napkin calculation. Is that are the metrics with self storage?
What would they be most similar to in the real estate space?
Paul (26m 44s): I mean, that would be very similar to multifamily, but the operating expenses would be, I think about, I believe they would average something like 32% on average for most facilities, as some of the automated facilities have a lower expense ratio, but at the same time they can't have you all, they can't have showroom items like, you know, the retail items we discussed. And so their revenues might be a little lower as well. But yeah, other than that, you know, the, the revenues and certainly the value formula is quite similar.
Jesse (27m 20s): Fair enough. I just want to be a little bit mindful of the time. We do have four questions. We ask every guest when we wrap up here, but before we even get there, I'd like to get your thoughts on 2022 and maybe beyond in the relatively short term. And maybe we could talk about that a little bit in the context of self storage. And then, you know, if you want to opine on the broader real estate market, I'd love to get your thoughts.
Paul (27m 45s): Yeah. I used to make predictions when I knew nothing. And now that I know a little more, I don't, I mean, I've noticed that Charlie Munger, Warren buffet, Howard marks, those guys won't make any predictions of the cycle. Howard marks of course reminds us to, even though we can't know when the cycle is going to change, we should act appropriately for where we are in the cycle. So one thing we have here is this is a 10 real $10 trillion bills from Zimbabwe. And it just reminds me as I'm sitting here, you know, that we are in a real inflationary time and it might not be transitory.
And so I think that is something that, you know, self storage has going for it. Like I mentioned, it allows you to capture that inflation real time. And if it, you know, if deflation hits, it would allow, you know, you, that happened as well. I guess
Jesse (28m 40s): I would just say, I heard one of the best definitions from Howard marks when he said, if you want to define the, the cycle and in this could go for real estate as well. He said, stage one couple forward thinking. People realize that they think the market's going to get better stage two, a broader economy, and people realize it is getting better. Stage three people think it's going to get better forever. And he's like, I don't know why you need a better definition of that. And it it's people, you know, listening to this, they know I'm a big Howard marks fan, but I mean, it's a great, it's a great point.
And one thing I've, I've said a number of times is when my mentor, he said, you know, real estate is one of those few industries where you can actually charge your customers are downloaded inflation to your customers. I E tenants. And it sounds like self storage is a continuation of, of that. If not in more real time, given the fact that sounds like you could, you can do it on a monthly basis.
Paul (29m 35s): Yeah. Right. That's exactly right.
Jesse (29m 37s): All right, Paul, we, before we get to the final four questions here, I thought I would ask you why it is important for investors or entrepreneurs to find their, why.
Paul (29m 47s): You know, I woke up at 33 years old on October 7th, 1997. And I had a couple million dollars in the bank, which was completely unprecedented for a, you know, for me and I wasn't any happier. I wasn't any more, you know, like I didn't, I felt a little more successful than I did the week before, but not a whole lot. I think it's really important for people to find their big, why, you know, studies show that if you make over $95,000, I mean, let's say you make 950,000 or 95 million a year.
You're not any happier than you were at 95,000. So we really need to have something else to live for. I think we were created for more. And so I really would recommend people find a big why for me, it's a it's it's regarding human trafficking. You know, if you took the record profits, not the average, the record annual profits of apple, general motors, Nike and Starbucks, and you added those together, double that number. That's the approximate profits projected from human trafficking every year.
And I'd like to believe if I was alive in the 18 hundreds, I would have been an abolitionist fighting against slavery. And if I was alive or if I was an adult in the 1960s, I would have been fighting for civil rights. Well, this is a civil right. And it is slavery and it's happening right under our noses. So my company Wellings capital is dedicating ourselves to try to free 5,000 slaves in the next five years from human trafficking. And I'm just recommending, you know, on a broader point that everybody finds something you're passionate about.
That's bigger than yourself or your business,
Jesse (31m 28s): Dear. And I think it's important as you know, we do or individuals get successful individually or with their companies in our case, in real estate that you CA you figure out what those things are and you know, that human element of, of being, being successful or prosperous. Okay, we are going to switch it up to a four questions. We ask every guest, if you're ready to go, I'll fire them out. Yeah.
Paul (31m 51s): You bet. What's
Jesse (31m 52s): A one thing Paul, that you know, now that you wish you knew when you started investing in real estate.
Paul (31m 58s): I wish I hadn't known the difference between investing and speculating and investing is when your principles generally safe. And you've got a chance to make a return. Speculating is when your principal is not at all safe and you've got a chance to make a return. You know, they say low risk, low return, high risk leads to not high return. It's actually the possibility of losing all your money or making a high return. I wish I'd have known the difference when I started and lost a bunch of money early on.
Jesse (32m 27s): Yeah. I mean, it goes back to Howard marks where, you know, you have that curve where he's like, well, if high, if high risk means high return by definition, that is not that's impossible. It's it's, that would mean that it's certain it's, it's obviously the higher, the risk, the higher expected important expected piece there a return. Right. Okay. Number two, your view on somebody that's entering our industry, a younger person, what would you say to them in terms of mentorship and, and getting started?
Paul (32m 59s): Yeah, I would actually. So bill gates became the wealthiest guy in the world through three simple steps you can take right now. Number one, I'm sorry. I had to do that. Number one, he decided at a very young age, what he wanted to do, and he's stuck in that lane. He did not very, he said no to 10,000 distractions to stay focused. Number two step, he, all he partnered with, or he actually found a company that would partner with him who was the biggest wealthiest, most influential company in that business, the tech world.
And that was IBM. Then third, here's the surprise. He did everything in his power to make them successful. When he did that, he quickly became the wealthiest guy in the world at a pretty young age. And so I would say following bill gates steps, you know, try to figure out what you want to do. Say no to distractions, find a big organization. Who's willing to partner with you and do everything you can to make them successful. That's great. Okay.
Jesse (34m 3s): Number three, what is one book you just are constantly recommending to people?
Paul (34m 9s): Well, I was going to recommend Howard marks mastering the market cycle, but since your listeners are already familiar with that, I would go back to my second one by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller. The one thing, yeah,
Jesse (34m 21s): That's a great book. And you know what, it's funny with mastering the market cycle. That is one book that's fairly hard to find on. I think it's on audible. If you want to listen to the audio version, but maybe, maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I books, I, it was more challenging to find. All right, Paul, I think we're going to get an interesting answer on this one. My favorite Bloomberg question, first car, make and model
Paul (34m 46s): 1969, black Ford Mustang with the hood scoop
Jesse (34m 52s): 1 64, a oh 69, sorry, 69. I was going to not quite as cool. I was going to say the, would that be similar to the a, was it the 1970 was Mach one with the, with the kind of riveted Fastback.
Paul (35m 8s): Yeah. Well, interestingly, my hood was an aftermarket hood and somehow or another, I ended up with a Fastback hood with the turn signals out on the hood, you know, with my 1969 car. So
Jesse (35m 23s): Yeah, and I think that car was a, it was an Evie electric. Now I'm just joking. I feel like, I feel like this question is slowly, slowly going to get phased out as more and more people that come on just never had a first car, which is just the paradigm. Awesome. Well, for listeners that want to either, we'll put a show notes for the book for links to reach you, but where would the best be the best place be to, to connect with you? Paul
Paul (35m 51s): Jessie, I'm sure you can relate to this. When I, all those years, I wanted to transition from residential to commercial. I didn't know what to do. And so I've written a guide for people, free guide for people who want to learn, how to make that transition. And it's at Wellings capital.com/resources. That's w E L L I N G S capital.com/resources.
Jesse (36m 14s): My guest today has been Paul Moore, Paul, thanks for being part of working capital.
Paul (36m 20s): Thanks, Jesse. It's prey to be here.
Jesse (36m 29s): Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you liked the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five-star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one take care.