Day 15: Site Access and Egress Getting Off the Road and Into the Gate

Howdy folks, welcome to day 15 of the Boat and RV 100 series. I'm Joe Downs with Storage Moguls, and today I'm going to show you why site access and egress is the second most physical constraint that kills deals, and why a facility that fights its own tenants at the entrance is a problem you can't fix with better operations. This isn't theory. We've walked facilities where the location was great, but the entrance made it nearly unusable for Class A vehicles. And folks, if you want more information like this, and for instance, full site evaluation framework, join us at storage mobiles dot ai. We're a community made of storage information. We talk about it, we kick it around, and we use AI-powered tools to help us learn, help us grow, help us level up. Our community is made of real people. Actual operators just like you. Nope, nobody's here is selling you a fantasy from a stage either that they haven't stood on in years. We're a network that actively evaluates real deals that are financeable and digestible. The kind of deals that someone with a W-2 and a serious mindset can actually close. And we're about real results too. I mean, members in our community are becoming storage moguls every day, not someday. They're doing it now. So remember, you can start for free. It doesn't cost anything. Just go to storage moguls.ai and register. We actually are launching a new platform in about a week or two, and you can advance after you register. You know, soak it all up, soak it in, advance at your own pace. But back to today, because like all the other things we talk about in the Storage Moguls community, we talk about stuff like this. All right, we— yesterday we covered what happens inside the gate. Today we're going to cover how you get there. And why that matters just as much. Site access is a deal filter for the same reason drive aisles are. It's a physical constraint that's largely permanent. You can upgrade amenities, you can add covered structures, sometimes you can repave aisles, but you can't move the road. Let's look at a tenant— let's look at it for the tenant experience. So tenants who struggle to enter or exit your facility talk about it at the marina, the campground. The dealership. That place on Route 9, it's impossible to get in there with that— with a fifth wheel. That's the kind of reputation that follows a facility for years and keeps your waiting list shorter than it should be. How about vehicle damage risk? A facility with a tight turn at the entrance, poor sight lines, or inadequate staging space is a facility where accidents happen. A tenant who clips a post or gets cut off trying to back out onto a busy road has a claim. And a story, and it's not a good one for you anyway, but it's a story they'll repeat forever. A permanent problem is a permanent problem. The road grade, the distance to a traffic light, the shoulder width, the turning radius at the entrance— these are determined by the parcel and the road. You're not adding a deceleration lane, or not likely, after you buy the facility. So evaluate this before you underwrite it. All right, let's go over the 5 elements that, that make this work. If a facility has all 5, site access is not a constraint. If it's missing 2 or more, you have a problem worth pricing in or walking away from. And preferably, you want to be off the highway on one road. The, the best boat and RV facilities are close to a major roadway but set back one turn. They're easy to find, easy to approach, but the tenants aren't pulling a 40-foot boat trailer directly off a 55-mile-an-hour state road. Or there's a deceleration lane on a shoulder or, or shoulder. A tenant pulling a fifth wheel at 45 miles per hour needs room to slow down and signal before turning. If there's no shoulder or decel lane, they're stopping in the traffic lane while the car behind them has no warning. That's a regular occurrence that creates real risk. You need to give them a straight approach to the gate. A sharp corner immediately at the entrance means every Class A vehicle has to make a difficult turn at low speed, often blocking the entrance for other tenants. You want to straight pull in. Even 30 or 40 feet makes an enormous difference. Ideally, for Class A facilities and vehicles, you need 70 feet, a 70-foot staging area beyond— before the keypad. So a fifth wheel and a truck combination, you know, they want 70 feet to stage without the back of the rig hanging into the road. If you have less than that, fifth wheels can't really safely enter. And then you want to have clear sight lines on the exit. Tenants pulling out of the facility need to see traffic in both directions. So a bush line, a berm, a building, or a curve in the road that blocks sight lines means every exit is a blind pullout. That's a liability event waiting to happen and a tenant complaint that'll appear in every Google review. The road type matters as well. A secondary road off a highway is the ideal scenario. Tenants take the highway to the area, turn onto a lower-speed road, and approach the facility with room to slow down and navigate. That's a winner. That's the cleanest access pattern for large vehicles. A suburban commercial road is generally workable. You have lower speeds there and often maybe a shoulder, and tenants are used to making turns in that traffic. The risk there is the peak hour congestion when everybody else is turning off the same road at the same time. So a state highway at 45 to 55 miles per hour is marginal. It's workable if there's a deceleration lane or a wide shoulder. Without one though, a 40-foot trailer slowing from highway speed while looking for a gate entrance is going to be a safety hazard and a regular source of tenant complaints. Rural roads are variable. Low traffic is a plus, but that's usually where you find sightline problems. A rise, a curve, vegetation are more common on rural roads, and exit visibility becomes a real concern. Also check the pavement condition. Rural roads that aren't maintained well create a rough experience sometimes for trailers. Industrial access roads are often underrated for boat and RV use because large vehicles are expected there. The turning radii are, are typically very generous, and the road is built for heavy use. So The watch item is whether the industrial character of the area is consistent with the income demographics you need for Class A rents. You can do a meaningful access evaluation before you ever schedule a visit with the owner, and here's the sequence. Start with Google Street View. Put yourself at the entrance and simulate the approach from both directions. Is the turn clearly visible from a quarter of a mile away? Is there room to slow down? Is the entrance well marked? This takes 5 minutes and tells you a lot. Satellite view for the staging area, it's a great tool. You can often estimate the depth of the staging area right from the— you can actually measure using a Google Maps— there's a tool in Google Maps you can measure it right there. It's a very simple and easy tool to use. If the gate appears to be 15 feet from the road edge, you already know fifth-wheelers won't stage safely. If it looks like it's 80 feet, You're in good shape. Check the road speed limit. The county GIS or Google Maps will usually show you the posted speed. A facility on a 55-mile-an-hour state road without a decel lane is a known problem before you arrive. So look for traffic signal proximity. Traffic signal within 300 feet of the entrance means vehicles back up past the entrance during red lights. A 40-foot trailer trying to turn in while traffic is queued is exactly the kind of daily friction that generates tenant complaints. When you do visit, arrive as the tenant would. If you drive a truck, use it. Make the approach from the direction your tenant, your typical tenant would come from. Feel the turn radius, check your sight lines, and actually try to stage in the area before the gate. This gives you the experiential data that no satellite view provides. Here's 5 red flags. For each one, I want you to ask yourself, is it fixable? And what do you do about it? So, 55-mile-per-hour road with no decel lane might be fixable, but adding a deceleration lane requires a permit from the state or the county DOT, engineering work, and you might be looking at $50,000 to $200,000 or more depending on the road type and jurisdiction. Check the feasibility before you price the fix into your model though. Some DOTs won't approve it regardless of the cost. So What if the gate's too close to the road? If there's land available on the approach side of the property, extending the staging area is often feasible. If the parcel line is immediately adjacent to the road with no buffer, it's gonna be harder and may require acquiring an easement from a neighboring parcel. Sharp 90-degree turn at the entrance? That's just a geometry problem. Walk it with a tape measure and have someone familiar with large vehicle turning radii assess whether Class A vehicles can navigate it. If they can't, the facility is functionally Class B or C regardless of how beautiful it looks and what amenities it has. And then you get the blind exit. Vegetation clearing may help if it's trees or shrubs are the obstruction, but a building, a berm, a road curve, a little harder to solve that problem. So check whether clearing is permitted under local ordinances before you model that fix-in. Traffic light or signal immediately adjacent. This is infrastructure you don't control and definitely aren't changing. So if a signal, traffic light, a signal backs up traffic past the entrance on a regular basis, you need to model in that operational friction, factor in the tenant complaint risk, and reflect it in your offer price because it's not going away. Here's how site access quality translates directly into your underwriting. Clean access with all 5 elements present, you got a Class A occupancy assumption. That's fully supported. There's no access-related capital expense required. The facility can serve the highest value tenant mix without friction. If you have a workable access with minor friction, you can still underwrite Class A or even B occupancy, but note the friction in your lender package. Proactive disclosure builds credibility. Small CapEx, better signage, entrance lighting, minor grading that might be warranted. With marginal access where a decel lane or staging area is missing, cap your Class A occupancy assumption because you're going to lose fifth wheel and Class A tenants to facilities with better access. Budget the improvement costs and either reflect it in a lower acquisition price or model it in as CapEx in your pro forma. Poor access, poor access with a blind exit or unsafe approach, that's a significant risk discount, in my opinion. Either walk from the deal or model the cost to fix the access constraint and negotiate the purchase price accordingly. A lender who sees the access issue and no mitigation plan in your package will ask you hard questions and probably start to question other elements of your underwriting. If the access is improvable with capital expenditure, treat it exactly like any other value-add CapEx. Get estimates, build the cost and timeline into your pro forma, and negotiate a purchase price reduction that reflects the constraint. The seller knows the access isn't ideal. You just need the data to support the negotiation. Days 14 and 15 are the 2 physical filters that come before any financial analysis on boat and RV facility. So that's yesterday and today. Measure the drive aisles, drive the approach, then you open the rent roll. Go to Google Maps first. 5 minutes of a street view and satellite tells you whether the approach is workable, whether there's a staging room, and what the road type is. That's your pre-visit screen. Drive it on site if you can. Arrive from the direction a tenant would come from. Bring a truck if you have access to one. Make the approach, check the sight lines, and stage in the area before you— before the gate. Write down what you feel. 'Cause tenants are going to feel the same thing every time they visit. And then price it honestly. An access constraint that limits you to Class B tenants in a Class A market is not a footnote. It's a real number. You're going to want to cap your occupancy into a rate assumption, model the CapEx if it's fixable, and negotiate the price down by the amount the constraint is worth. That's how storage moguls operate. All right. Tomorrow, day 16, we're going to shift to the Uh, to the conversation that comes after you found a facility you like and how to cold call a boat and RV facility owner and open a door that a broker would never find. All right, please like and subscribe to this video or hit the bell. I learned recently, hit that little bell reminder. Uh, if you've ever pulled into a boat and RV facility and immediately understood why tenants complain about the entrance and And finally, share this with someone who's about to make an offer on a boat and RV facility without ever having driven the approach or even talked or thought about it. They'll thank you later. And remember, access is not an afterthought, it's a filter. A facility that fights its own tenants at the entrance is a problem you can't solve with better operations, better amenities, or better pricing. So evaluate it first and then price it honestly. Again, if you want the full site evaluation framework and deal analyzer, Join us at Storage Moguls Community, storage moguls.ai. Free to join, level up at your own pace. All right, again tomorrow we're going to cover that cold call, how to approach a facility owner you've never met and open a conversation that a broker would never find. See you tomorrow.