066: Building a Legacy Through Self-Storage with Travis Baucom

Investing in traditional forms of residential real estate isn’t for everyone. Tenants may not pay, HVAC units break, and a litany of problems can arise. If you want to invest in real estate but don’t want the hassle of regularly dealing with tenants, there are some asset-class alternatives that may be perfect for your particular willingness to deal with the hassle. One of those is self-storage units.

Self-storage units today are often mostly self-managed, making them an ideal investment for someone who wants a low-maintenance investment opportunity. You can increase rents, and tenants will often stay anyway because they don’t want the inconvenience of moving their stuff. In the right locations, there are great deals. For these reasons and more, self-storage can be an appealing way to get into the real estate investing game.

In this episode of Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing, Jonathan welcomes Travis Baucom to the show. Travis shifted his focus from investing in multifamily and residential real estate to self-storage a few years ago. It quickly took off, and as a syndicator, he helps others get into the self-storage investing game.

Travis has learned a lot of lessons about what works and what doesn’t in self-storage, and he explains to Jonathan why it’s perfect for someone who wants to avoid the problems that can come with residential tenants. Don’t miss his wisdom about what to look for in a self-storage opportunity.

In this episode, you will hear:

What drew Travis Baucom to self-storage after a long stint in residential real estate
The benefits of self-storage
How he staffs his facilities, and why some of them aren’t staffed at all
Some of the different types of self-storage units and Travis’s preferred types
Why mom-and-pop self-storage facilities make it easier to add units
His first self-storage purchase and why both low and high occupancy have benefits
The ability to raise rents on self-storage and why most people will stay despite increasing rent
The data Travis considers about the area when he’s looking to buy a self-storage facility
Why he prefers not to do ground-up construction and instead add expansions
The average occupancy rate of the facilities Travis takes over
What he looks for in a unit--from size to location and what his investors are looking for
How storage facilities are more recession-proof than other investment vehicles
Travis’s advice for someone looking to invest in self-storage

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