When people think of real estate investment, their minds often drift to residential or multifamily properties, maybe even commercial buildings bustling with tenants. Yet, beneath the radar, self-storage has quietly established itself as one of the strongest and most resilient asset classes available. In a recent episode of “Raising Private Money,” host Jay Conner sat down with seasoned developers Bill Kanatas and Benjamin Salzberg to unpack what makes self-storage such a powerful and reliable investment — and why astute investors and lenders keep funneling capital its way.
Simplicity and Security: The Self-Storage Advantage
Unlike sectors like multifamily housing, self-storage benefits from a much simpler operating model. Managing self-storage units doesn’t require dealing with traditional tenants, midnight maintenance calls, or lengthy eviction processes. Instead, storage facilities operate with a customer relationship that is more transactional and less risky. When a customer stops paying, owners initiate a lien process rather than a drawn-out eviction, streamlining revenue recovery and reducing legal headaches.
This streamlined setup not only boosts operational stability but also mitigates unexpected costs or drawn-out disputes. For many investors, this lower barrier to operational complexity is a strong attractor, allowing them to benefit from a stable cash-flowing asset without the typical headaches and liabilities present in other real estate ventures.
Data-Driven Development and Value Creation
Building a profitable self-storage portfolio requires more than just buying the nearest vacant lot and erecting some buildings. According to Bill Kanatas and Benjamin Salzberg, successful development hinges on a meticulous, data-driven approach. Their process starts with analyzing key indicators like population density, income levels, competition, and traffic counts. Barriers to entry, such as restrictive zoning or competitive saturation, are also carefully assessed.
Once a lucrative site is identified, the team works closely with local authorities and communities, often negotiating tax incentives or revitalizing underutilized properties to unlock additional value. For example, they have transformed blighted properties, like a closed-down retail space, into vibrant, income-producing self-storage facilities, breathing new life into both the property and its surrounding area.
Raising and Protecting Capital
A major focus of the conversation was about ensuring investor safety. Bill Kanatas and Benjamin Salzberg shared that their group invests its own resources upfront to handle entitlements, secure permits, and conduct necessary due diligence before any outside investor money enters the deal. Only after the groundwork has been meticulously laid do they invite private capital, thus protecting investors from unnecessary risk.
Transparency, trust, and consistent communication are the foundation of their relationships with investors and lenders. When issues arise, direct and timely communication ensures that challenges are addressed together, fostering strong, long-term partnerships. Their approach has attracted capital from family offices, funds, and private individuals who want the security of knowing their investments are handled with care and guarded by experience.
Operational Excellence and Long-Term Profitability
Once a storage facility is up and running, operational efficiency becomes key. Many smaller operators, especially those managing just a handful of locations, lack the robust systems and processes needed to maximize profitability. The self-storage leaders featured in the podcast emphasize the power of process — ensuring seamless customer onboarding, fast responses to inquiries, and rigorous property maintenance. By instituting clear, repeatable procedures, they close the financial leaks that can gnaw away at profits over time.
Additionally, by partnering with large, institutional management companies, they benefit from economies of scale, tighter cost controls, and enhanced purchasing power that further boost long-term financial performance.
The Future of Self-Storage: Resilience and Innovation
Self-storage remains an attractive sector in both strong and challenging economies. It is fueled by persistent life events: downsizing, dislocation, business transitions, and other major changes create steady demand regardless of market cycles. Even as concerns about market saturation arise, there are still untapped areas — especially tertiary markets — that require new facilities to meet continuing demand.
Looking ahead, innovation is on the horizon. Mixed-use concepts and partnerships, such as combining storage with residential or commercial uses, are expanding possibilities. As society evolves, so too does the role of self-storage, ensuring it remains a pillar of real estate investment.
10 Discussion Questions from this Episode:
- Jay Conner opens the episode by questioning the “boring” reputation of self-storage. Why do you think self-storage is often undervalued as an investment, and what qualities make it stand out compared to other real estate assets?
- Bill Kanatas claims self-storage is a “simpler solution” compared to multifamily properties. What are the biggest operational differences between self-storage and traditional rentals, and how do these impact risk and workload for investors?
- Benjamin Salzberg emphasizes that self-storage provides an essential service during life events like divorce, downsizing, and moving. How does serving these life transitions give self-storage unique economic resilience?
- The guests talk extensively about being “data-driven” in site selection. What are the most critical data points they consider when evaluating new self-storage sites, and why do you think these are so important?
- Bill Kanatas and Benjamin Salzberg mention both ground-up development and value-add conversions. Which approach do you think has more potential for today’s market, and why?
- Finding the “diamond in the rough” is a recurring theme. What processes do Bill Kanatas and Benjamin Salzberg follow that help them discover standout deals in a crowded marketplace?
- The team discusses red flags that passive investors should watch for. What do you consider the most important factors or warning signs to look for before investing in a self-storage project?
- Both speakers reflect on their mistakes, especially around construction and contractor selection. Why is specialized experience in self-storage development so crucial when choosing a contractor?
- Operational excellence is a major focus for Benjamin Salzberg, who references saving over $50 million through streamlined processes. What operational weaknesses might cost self-storage owners the most money, and how can they be avoided?
- The guests predict that self-storage will remain a strong asset class, potentially integrating with residential and mixed-use properties in the future. What trends or innovations do you foresee revolutionizing the self-storage industry in the coming years?
Fun facts that were revealed in the episode:
- Bill Kanatas and Benjamin Salzberg have transformed a former Burlington Coat Factory, which sat vacant for three years, into a thriving self-storage facility—showing their knack for turning blighted properties into valuable assets.
- The duo’s development approach is extremely data-driven, taking into account factors like population density, income levels, competition, traffic counts, and zoning restrictions to pinpoint ideal self-storage locations.
- Operational excellence is a major focus for Benjamin Salzberg; their systems and processes have saved over $50 million, proving that efficiency and customer service can go hand in hand with profitability in the self-storage sector.
Timestamps:
00:01 Profitable Real Estate Strategies Unveiled
05:31 Strategic Site Selection Explained
07:52 Key Factors for Facility Location
11:02 Mitigating Development Risk for Investors
14:21 Cost-Effective Architectural Redesign
20:22 Optimizing Operations and Tenant Retention
21:32 Why Invest in Self Storage
24:27 Future Innovations in Self-Storage
25:35 Connect with Bill and Ben:
https://www.Self-StorageDevelopers.com
28:06 Free Private Money Guide
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Inside the World of Self-Storage: Profitable Deals, Risk Mitigation, and Raising Private Money with Bill Kanatas and Benjamin Salzberg
Jay Conner [00:00:00]:
What if the most boring asset class in real estate was actually one of the most profitable? Well, actually, it’s not all that boring if you’re making a lot of money. What if the key to raising millions in private money was not hype, but precision partnerships and process? And what if you could scale faster and safer at the same time? Welcome to Raising Private Money. I’m your host, Jay Conner, and today’s episode is a masterclass on how serious developers think, build, and fund at a high level. Well, today I’m joined by Bill Canidis and Benjamin Salzberg, theco-founderss behind a platform that’s quietly dominating Class A self-storage, multifamily, and mixed-use development across the country. Now, Bill is the visionary deal maker driving site selection, capital strategies, and partnerships with the biggest names in self-storage. Now, Ben is the operator. He’s the engineer, strategist, thinker, brain, systems builder who’s delivered over $50 million in operational savings while scaling assets designed to last. Now, together, this duo has built a development machine that investors trust and private capital follows.
Jay Conner [00:01:21]:
Now, if you want to understand how sophisticated operators raise money, mitigate risk, and win long-term, this episode is for you. You’re going to meet my special guest right after this.
Narrator [00:01:38]:
If you’re a real estate investor and are wondering how to raise and leverage private money to make more profit on every deal, then you’re in the right place on Raising Private Money. We’ll speak with new and seasoned investors to dissect their deals and extract the best tips and strategies to help you get the money, because the money comes first. Now here’s your host, Jay Connor.
Jay Conner [00:02:06]:
Hello, Bill, and hello Ben. Welcome to Raising Private Money.
Bill Kanatas [00:02:11]:
Thank you. Welcome.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:02:14]:
Thank you so much for having us on here.
Jay Conner [00:02:16]:
You got it. So excited to have you guys on. So let’s go ahead and dive in. You know, I’ve got some really good friends who are in self-storage, and when I hear them talk about self-storage, on the surface, a lot of people just think it’s boring, but for goodness ‘ sake, you all have built an entire platform around it. So my first question is, what makes self-storage such a strong investment, say, compared to some other real estate classes? And secondly, why do sophisticated investors, private lenders, keep allocating even more capital to it?
Bill Kanatas [00:02:53]:
Excellent. That’s a great question. So I come from a multifamily background. I developed a lot of real estate in the past, single-family homes, et cetera. And I have a lot of respect for multifamily operators. But the reality is, tenants come with turnovers, toilets, trash, and a lot of legal risk as well. In self-storage,e we do have customers, but it’s a much simpler relationship than signing a lease with along-termm tenant a year or so. There are no midnight maintenance calls, there’s no eviction court, and there are no laws that stop you from evicting a customer who stops paying.
Bill Kanatas [00:03:25]:
It’s a lien process, not an eviction process. It’s not a six-month legal battle. So, as much as I love multifamily, this is a simpler solution in my personal humble opinion.
Jay Conner [00:03:38]:
Excellent.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:03:39]:
You know, we really are, we really are helping people. You know, I did this whole self-storage thing. You know, people when they get divorced, they have to put things, you know, into place, they have to put their self-support. People downsize. People die, unfortunately, and people get displaced. So we are offering a, a product to help people out.
Jay Conner [00:04:03]:
I love it. I love it. Well, you know, you’re in the service-oriented business, that’s for sure. Now I want us to talk about how it is that you actually create value. So this can be a multifaceted answer. I’ll let you address it any way you want to. But I’d like for you to take us step by step through your development process from identifying a site all the way to turning it into a stabilized, cash-flowing facility.
Bill Kanatas [00:04:35]:
Sure. I’ll take this, Ben, if you don’t mind. So we’re really data-driven, and you know, we look for population density, income levels, competition, saturation, traffic counts, things like that. I also come from developing car washes, and one of the things that you want for car washes is looking for traffic counts. Right. So we look at the traffic counts also. Barriers to entry. The last thing you want to do in Texas is famous for that.
Bill Kanatas [00:05:01]:
You build a self-storage facility, and you’re about to open, and down the street, another one opens up. So barriers to entry are something very important. Important zoning restrictions, obviously. But we work very closely with the villages and the cities. Sometimes we negotiate tax incentives like a TIFF or a 7B that’s attractive not only to us but also to the village to be able to bring in the tax dollars that they may not be getting from a property that’s just been sitting vacant all these years.
Jay Conner [00:05:30]:
Ben, you want to add anything to that?
Benjamin Salzberg [00:05:31]:
Yeah, yeah. This is like the bill said, this is very dad-driven. And I spent a lot of time analyzing analytically, you know, what areas we should go into, you know, looking at the demographics, current existing self-storage facilities. But this isn’t something that we just like, you know, choose, say, oh, you know, put a dart into a dartboard and say this is what we’re going to build. A lot of work goes into it. There’s a lot of analysis. Me being a Six Sigma master black belt, I understand the analysis and statistics, what needs to be looked at, and what the proper numbers are. And so this is a real, a really hard process to locate and to identify a successful area.
Jay Conner [00:06:16]:
So you all have raised millions and millions of dollars in private money, private equity for your real estate deals. And with that, you know, you’ve worked with institutional-level operators, private investors, and private lenders. What do you all like to lean towards? Do y’ all like to lean towards investing in an existing storage facility and then, you know, upgrading that, creating or increasing value, or have you done any actual new construction of self-storage?
Bill Kanatas [00:06:53]:
So both. So, actually, as we speak today, we’ll be breaking ground next month on a new facility that is outside of Chicagoland. And this one’s going to be 114,000 square feet of gross rentable square feet with about 873 units. And all the units are climate-controlled. It’s a three-story facility that’ll be operated by Public Storage. And another one that we have in our portfolio right now was a closed-down Burlington Coat Factory that we bought. It was blighted in the area, closed down for about three years, and we came in and breathed life into it and created another facility. So we look at all opportunities.
Jay Conner [00:07:33]:
I got you in your experience, and you’ve got a lot of it. What would you say are the key elements that differentiate or sseparatea great self-storage deal, say from an average self-storage deal, before the first dollar is even raised for it?
Benjamin Salzberg [00:07:52]:
I mean, I think the location, first of all,l is number one. You know, you have to, you know, choose a proper location and if it’s an existing facility, you know, looking at the numbers and see how that pencils out, you know, a great facility would be, you know, some good demographic, great demographics, you know, the need and the demands and all the studies are there. That’ll be a fantastic substrate facilities a lot of facilities in the Midwest that we concentrate on, and we do it all over the country. But right now we’re concentrating on the Midwest. The rates are pretty stable and looking pretty good. And so that’s a very successful facility. And so we want to start on a really good foot bill, and I do a great job doing that, and I’m really happy with the turnout so far and the future that holds for us. So you Know really, it starts at number one, which is the identification of where you’re going to put and build these developments.
Jay Conner [00:08:52]:
Bill, anything to add to that?
Bill Kanatas [00:08:53]:
No, I echo what he says, it’s very important. You know, we always like to say you’ve got to find that diamond in the rough, right? They’re out there; you just have to look for them. It’s, it’s, it’s very common for Ben to be looking at 20 or 30 properties in a week that brokers from around the country are sending to us. And we do all of our analytics in-house. And we have a very good, trusted executive council that works with us, that’s been in the business for 25 plus years individually. Collectively, we’re over 100 years in self-storage. And we rely on our executive council and people like Public Storage and Extra Space that look at these deals with us to make sure that we’re, you know, going to develop in an area that we all believe in.
Jay Conner [00:09:33]:
Right.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:09:34]:
And we’re not. I’m part of the elected self-storage association in Illinois here. And so we have a lot of experience in identifying and giving back to the industry of self-storage. So we’re pretty much on the top of the diamond, per se, right, the triangle to understand and look at what’s going on, the heartbeat of the industry. And we have many people that are part of our executive panel committee, and that we really understand what’s happening,g and that’s really what makes us, kind of differentiates us from the rest of the group is having that great family of professional people that have been in the industry for a long time. And we love people. I mean, I think the number one thing to be successful is about people. And we love people, we love working with people, and we love what we do.
Jay Conner [00:10:30]:
Well, I can already tell that for sure. So let’s say someone is interested in investing in a self-storage facility as a passive investor. Not, not an operator, not a visionary, but a private lender, a private investor. And they’ve never done it for, never done it before. What should they look for in a deal before putting money into a self-storage deal? And maybe what are some of the red flags that they should avoid? Avoid.
Bill Kanatas [00:11:02]:
So, all investors that we brought into any of our deals in the past, we try to mitigate as much of the development risk as we can. So Ben and I and our company will spend all the money up front to get it entitled, tying it up, spending money with your architects, your engineers, obviously your phase one studies, and in some cases, you might even have to do some cleanup as we did on our last project. The investor should come in when it’s time to fund and go vertical on the deal. And usually at that point, the sponsor should have his proceeds, his loan, his sources and uses, all put in place, secured the financing, and secured the money that’s coming in as the equity, and obviously goes into an escrow account, and it funds like any other real estate deal. Would I be cautious of spending money before the sponsor has the property either under contract or is about to close on it?
Jay Conner [00:11:58]:
Gotcha. Anything else on that, Ben?
Benjamin Salzberg [00:12:01]:
No, I think that he summed it up pretty well. You know, there’s always a process that we go through, and you know, that’s, you know, if you think about it, you know, every step of the way, you know, we look at those particular processes to make sure that everything’s understood.
Jay Conner [00:12:19]:
Y’ all been doing this for a long time, what, over 30 years, I think.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:12:25]:
Yeah.
Bill Kanatas [00:12:25]:
On the development side. Yeah. Not necessarily in self-storage, but on the development side, yeah.
Jay Conner [00:12:29]:
Right. So on the self-storage topic, if you’re like me, you’ve made your share of mistakes. I’ve. I’ve rehabbed and flipped over 500 houses, and I still make mistakes. I still make mistakes. Hopefully, I don’t make the same ones over and over again. But as you all look back to when you started in self-storage, what were some of those early years mistakes that would turn into advice for someone that might be interested in becoming a developer themselves?. And what would those mistakes be to avoid, and what lessons learned?
Bill Kanatas [00:13:13]:
Sure. I think for me it’s really important to choose the right general contractor that has experience specifically in self-storage. You know, when you’re talking general contractors, they may say, oh, this is nothing more than a vanilla box. It’s an industrial building. It’s really simple. It’s the H Vac; it’s an elevator. There’s really not too much behind that. And really, that’s not entirely true.
Bill Kanatas [00:13:36]:
I mean, there is truth to that. It is a vanilla box. It is an industrial-type building, but there are a lot of nuances in there. Right. Where does the fire sprinkler go? If you’re going to have a little cage above your self-storage facility to be able to hit it. The doors, you have 833 doors or 900 doors that are all revolving. They’re like little garages. So if those aren’t installed properly and something goes wrong, you certainly don’t want to be, you know, chasing your tail later, and you find out that you’re a month behind or two months or even three months behind on construction because everything is timing and everything’s a dollar, right? If you don’t open up in time, you’re losing revenue.
Bill Kanatas [00:14:15]:
So it’s important to have the right general contractor to make sure that they’ve made the mistakes. So you don’t.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:14:21]:
Ben, I agree. I think also when you have a design, you know, you want to engineer that design from an architectural point of view, because to build is different from drawing it out. And so you want to put value-added initiatives back in there. And you may want to, you know, not strip out some of the products or siding or what have you, but to re-engineer, maybe lower costs of different types of siding, different types of material, they may save you money. And so you have to look at the whole design and to see, you know, where you can save while, you know, building these particular buildings. And so, you know, being engineer and understand, you know, reprocessing everything, redesigning everything, you know, once everything is done on paper, if they figure out, well, okay, how can I build this now and what can I use to substitute certain things that will make it work and to be more cost effective, not only for the billing itself, but for the investors.
Jay Conner [00:15:21]:
Absolutely, that makes sense. You know, raising private money is not just about returns. It’s about confidence, relationships, trust, clarity, all that. So with that in mind, what do you all believe makes your investors, your private lenders, feel safe sending you six or seven figures into your projects?
Bill Kanatas [00:15:45]:
I think first of all, a coupleof things. One is experience. You want to make sure this is not a first-time investment that somebody’s building self-storage. It’s 100% about relationships. Ben and I talk about this all the time. You’ve got to think of everybody as a family member. You’ve got to think of everyone with your fiduciary duty to make sure that you’ve done your due diligence. Now, like anything else in life, you think you’ve got it all figured out, and something goes wrong.
Bill Kanatas [00:16:11]:
But the most important thing is communication. If something were to go wrong, and you know, I don’t care if it’s your lender, if it’s your investor, if it’s your best friend, or if it’s your wife, if something’s not going the way it’s originally planned, you must get in front of that because there’s a solution to every problem. Hiding from it is certainly never a solution. So we’ve been blessed. We’ve had great investors, we’ve had Family offices, we’ve had funds, we’ve had family members. And the key to that is always communication. Do what you say you’re going to do and mitigate as much risk as you possibly can for your investors.
Jay Conner [00:16:47]:
I love that, Bill.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:16:48]:
Ben, be upfront. You know, if something does go wrong, be upfront with your investors. Include them, not to exclude them. Be inclusive and, you know, have a plan, you know, understand how to problem solve. I mean, I’m the Six Sigma, I’m a problem-solver type of guy. I’ve done this for three to two to three decades already. And you know, I love people. And so I think that’s what it has to do with the basis of everything, it’s about people and telling the truth and what’s going on.
Jay Conner [00:17:21]:
Yeah, Bill, one thing you said really resonated with me. You said there’s a solution to every problem. My wife, Carol, Joy, and I were so blessed to meet John Maxwell last year. He was our keynote speaker for one of the mastermind groups that we’re in. And one thing, I’ll always remember one thing he said in his keynote address, he says not every problem has a solution. He said every problem’s got multiple solutions. Yeah, and that’s, you know, having that kind of mindset is so important in business. And I love what you said as well, Ben.
Jay Conner [00:18:00]:
Communication is key with your private lenders. Be transparent, be upfront, and, you know, communicate. Let people know what’s going on. Now, one very impressive thing, y’all have got a lot of great stuff going on. But one, this one item that’s so impressive is that y’all have saved over $50 million through operational excellence. And so with that in mind, in Y’all’s opinion, where do you think most operators leak money? Where. Where are the holes in the bucket after a project is built or, you know, has been turned around? And how does your systems project profitability, the long term?
Benjamin Salzberg [00:18:45]:
Well, I think a lot of these companies don’t have processes, pr proper processes, or they’re broken. And so in our self-storage facilities, you know, make sure that the customer is contacted right away. What’s going on with any of them? Make sure that the money is flowing properly, the phone calls are being answered at a fast rate, and make sure that the property itself is being kept up. So there’s a lot of process behind that. And so make sure that there’s a process in place and tying that process into customer appreciation, customer focus. So it’s all about process, and so making sure that that process, first of all, ieally exists. So that’s what’s most important.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:19:31]:
That’s what most companies don’t have: a process. And so we make sure that everything is done and everything is dotted and all T’s are crossed. And so, you know, we save a lot of money by understanding, you know, the entire process from A to Z.
Bill Kanatas [00:19:46]:
Bill, I was going to add to that. So some of the operators that we talked to are smaller operators. And when I say smaller, they might have 2, 3, 4, 5 facilities, but they’re not managed by publicly traded companies like Extra Space or Public Storage. And what we do is we have ours managed by institutional operators such as public storage. And they have the systems in place as well as now. Ben works with them closely, and we look at the budgets every month. Could we save something else? Where did that money go? So it’s not like we just give them the reins and they run off. We still watch and manage the process.
Bill Kanatas [00:20:22]:
But when you have big companies like that that have been doing this for, you know, 50 plus years, and they also have the buying power, right? So you can get that landscaper that might be better at our building or the fire alarm system, et cetera. I’m just giving you a couple of examples. So working with the larger operator that does have these systems in place, and then making sure that you do too, and then driving that revenue. When do you increase the rates? Do you wait seasonally? Do you wait after three months, six months? How do you keep pushing the race? What’s the competition? Doing all that stuff is very important to watch because you don’t want to lose that, that, that tenant either, right? Once they’re in, the likelihood of them leaving is not great. However, at that same point, somebody may leave if they see another opportunity down the street and they can save some money, especially in today’s times.
Jay Conner [00:21:09]:
I get it. You know, regardless of the asset class, in real estate markets change, cycles turn, capital loosens up, capital tightens. What trends are you all seeing in self-storage space right now? And are you having to adapt your strategy in any kind of way?
Bill Kanatas [00:21:32]:
So when somebody asks me, why invest in self-storage to begin with? And I like to say this, self-storage really offers something that’s really unique. It performs well in good economies, and it performs even better in bad eeconomies We’re gonna be honest with you. It’s resilient to the recession and scalable. It’s driven by life events that Ben and I always like to talk about. People are downsizing business needs, and more, etc. We always like to say the four D’s: death, divorce, dislocation, and downsizing. Theseare life events. Those are never going to go away.
Bill Kanatas [00:22:07]:
In fact, there are more reasons to use sself-storage So I don’t see self-storage going away anytime soon. It’s been here forever. Some people are saying, well, you know, it’s getting oversaturated. There is truth to that. Just like in the car wash business, when we exited, there was a lot of saturation, but there are still buckets of places that require self-storage. People are migrating, you know, to Arizona or to Florida. People are leaving California for Nevada.
Bill Kanatas [00:22:34]:
So there’s always going to be people moving for a reason. They’re always going to need self-storage. They’re building smaller homes, no basements. Give you an example. Homeowners’ association says you can’t keep your boat parked in your driveway anymore. So everybody, as they’re growing, even the younger generation that doesn’t want a 3,000 square foot home, they want a smaller place. Well, they’re going to need self-storage, too,o at some point.
Jay Conner [00:22:58]:
Ben, did you have anything else on that topic?
Benjamin Salzberg [00:23:01]:
I’ll just echo what he said. You know, the tertiary markets, those pockets that need self-storage, are very important. They’re building, as you can see behind me right here, you know, the condos are 10 by 10, 8 by 10 bedrooms, you need storage. You know where you’re going to put that. And so, as the industry is more welcoming to self-storage now, you know, people are more apt to rent self-storage. I see a huge growth from now to many years from now.
Bill Kanatas [00:23:30]:
Yeah, very true.
Jay Conner [00:23:32]:
That’s sort of answering my next question. I was going to ask you to fast-forward five years. That’s hard for me to do. That’s hard for me to do. But do you, do you see self-storage evolving? Do you believe there’s going to be bigger and more opportunities for private lenders and investors to, you know, come on board with you?
Benjamin Salzberg [00:23:55]:
I, I really think so. I think especially the tertiary markets, I think in those markets that are not saturated, we have a lot of development still out there as they start building these new apartment buildings, condos. I see a lot of sself-storage the need for that, a lot of demand.
Bill Kanatas [00:24:14]:
Absolutely.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:24:15]:
That I don’t think you and I will be here by the time that it’s there, there’s absolutely no demand. I think it’s going to always be in demand right now.
Jay Conner [00:24:24]:
Yeah, excellent. Excellent.
Bill Kanatas [00:24:27]:
I was going to say, I think the Future, I see different uses with sself-storage So to give you an example, could there be a first-floor laundromat where people have extra income coming in by using the laundromat, or potentially have a car wash that can drive through the building? Can you put apartments above and do five, six, seven stories of multifamily and communities? So I think over the years, we’re gonna see more uses. I know Costco is doing a project, I believe it’s in California, with multifamily in there. Our architect actually has drawn up some sketches for Ben and Imefor multifamily above sself-storage I see other businesses being part of this self-storage arena in the future. And at the end of the day, success in storage and in real estate in general, to be honest with you, it’s about relationships. So we already covered execution and obviously patience. And if you can find good partners, individuals, family, offices, funds, and you build a great product, and you stick to your fundamentals, then there’s a lot of opportunity for growth in this sector.
Jay Conner [00:25:30]:
That’s fantastic. Now, if someone is listening here, and I’m sure we have many that would like to reach out to you all and maybe discuss some opportunities in investing with you or whatever, what’s the best way to have a conversation with you?
Benjamin Salzberg [00:25:47]:
Yeah, you can reach out to www.self-storagedevelopers.com. You can, I believe I have it in my background right now. Or you can give me a call back us back at 847-338-5517. I have another phone number as well. Yeah, you just put it up on the screen there.
Bill Kanatas [00:26:09]:
Yeah.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:26:10]:
Either way, we’re very, we love to talk to anybody who is just curious about self-storage or wants to learn more about us.
Jay Conner [00:26:18]:
Wonderful. Again, that website is www.self-storagedevelopers.com, and your contact phone number and everything will be in the show notes as well. Ben, Bill, thank you so much for joining me here on raising private money.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:26:38]:
Thank you so much.
Bill Kanatas [00:26:39]:
We appreciate it.
Benjamin Salzberg [00:26:40]:
Thank you.
Jay Conner [00:26:41]:
You got it. Well, my friend, if you’re listening in here on the show, if you got value from today’s episode, here’s the big takeaway regarding private money. Capital follows clarity, clear communication, and transparency. Clarity comes from the process that Ben and Bill were talking about. Well, Bill and Ben didn’t win because they chased a bunch of hype. They have won because they built a system, as Bill was talking about, reducedrisks,k and earned investor trust before asking for the money. And if you’re listening right now and you’re thinking, well, you know, I want private money to chase my deals instead of me chasing investors, then you’re in the right place. Make sure you follow this podcast, Raising Private Money, because every episode, we break down how real operators like Bill and Ben attract capital in the real world.
Jay Conner [00:27:38]:
No theory, no fluff. And if this episode helped youseeg Raising Private Money differently, do me a favor, share it with another real estate investor who’s tired of missing out on deals because I’m missing out on funding and capital. I’m Jay Connor, the Private Money Authority. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you right here on the next episode of Raising Private Money.
Narrator [00:28:06]:
Are you feeling inspired by the knowledge you gained in this episode? Then head over to www.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide, that’s www.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide, and download your free guide that shares seven reasons why private money will skyrocket your real estate investing business. Right now. Again, that’swww.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide to get your free guide. We’ll see you next time on Raising Private Money with Jay Conner.