Christian Osgood sees a surge coming as baby boomers hit their 80s and need storage. The business runs itself: automatic gates, automatic payments, minimal staff. During COVID, renters kept their units even after losing jobs, proving the asset holds up when multifamily doesn't.
bit out of that conference is they love self-storage. So I'm wondering, what's your thoughts on self-storage? They do an automation model where they get rid of the person that's in the booth. You automate everything, automatic gates, automatic payments, and there's lots of mom-and-pop baby boomers retiring with self-storage. So it's a good time to be heading.
It is a great time. It's a great— the, uh, the earliest set of baby boomers are turning 80. Is it this year or next year? Boomers are just about to start getting into their 80s consistently. We're going to see the biggest wave in my opinion. 55+, and I have data for this, so this is like— it's my opinion, but this one I actually do have a crystal ball for because it's like night and day clear data. We're underdeveloped in 55+ communities nationally, almost everywhere, and we're having the largest wave of them that we've ever had ever in this country. Supply and demand curve is way out of whack. 55+ premium self-storage. I like housing better than I like storage. Storage is probably the second best asset class to be in. It pairs really well with multifamily. I have considered many times buying 100 units in a market and then cleaning up some of the self-storage, offering some discounts to my existing tenant. Like, there's a bunch of synergies. As businesses go, it's a different business, but it's very similar to rentals, and you can automate the daylights out of it. It's a very simple business to run. I have, uh, Eric Boubelle, who I've partnered with on 5 deals. Uh, he's a broker— not true, I partnered with him on 1 deal, he's brokered 5 deals for me. He, he only invests in self-storage. He crushes it. I have never in my life met someone who invested in self-storage and said that they did not enjoy investing in self-storage. It's not as market resistant as housing, especially Class B, Class C, but it does better than you would expect it should in a downturn. It is amazing how long people will hold on to their stuff. Um, astounding, actually. I was very hesitant on self-storage pre-COVID, and then you look at the amount of people who lost jobs and did not get rid of their storage unit during COVID And the data is like, oh wow, this is way more resilient than you think it should be. It's not multifamily. I like it as a complement to multifamily a lot. If I ever did another asset class, that would be it. And lots of people, Multifamily Strategies bought storage. I can think top of my head, 4 or 5 large self-storage deals that people have done in Multifamily Strategies. So they're not uncommon.
Do you coach on that? Any— so I'm picking up—
I can absolutely coach on it. The only thing that I don't like, the only things I won't know is like, I don't know what software or automation systems work best. So I don't have like the nitty-gritty for the business. Underwriting them, super easy. I've underwrote a bunch of them. Structuring the deal, very similar to multifamily. So yes, I coach on it, except that I don't— I wouldn't get into like the software management best model practices because I don't teach where I haven't been. And if you guys need it, I will help you with hospitality. I know way too much about it. I'm in it. I just— I won't do it again. Danny banned me from ever doing hospitality again, but the ramen is doing great and I've learned how to fix really hard problems. So if you guys need that, I can coach on that and I will help you with everything.
