Can Self-Storage Strategies Thrive in the Current Real Estate Market?

Today’s guest is Ben Lapidus.   Ben Lapidus is the Chief Financial Officer for Spartan Investment Group LLC, where he has applied his finance and business development skills to construct from scratch a portfolio of over $500M assets under management, build the corporate finance backbone for the organization, and organize over $200M of debt capital from the firm. In addition to completing over 50 real estate transactions at and prior to Spartan, Ben is also the founder and host of the national Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference and managing partner of Indigo Ownerships LLC.   Best Ever Conference Code Use code “INVEST” for $300 off any ticket type at https://www.besteverconference.com/   Show summary:  In this episode, Ben Lapidus joins Sam to discuss the nuances of the commercial real estate market, with a focus on self-storage and investment strategies. Lapidus shares his expertise on navigating the current market, the importance of robust business plans, and the challenges of finding attractive yields. They also talk about the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference, detailing how it adds value for passive investors and the innovative strategies used to attract them.    -------------------------------------------------------------- Self-Storage Market Insights (00:00:00)   Introduction and Background (00:00:37)   Current State of Self-Storage Market (00:02:03)   Investment Strategies and Passive Investors (00:03:34)   Conversion Deals and Opportunities (00:05:18)   Shift from Office to Self-Storage (00:06:00)   Interest Rates and Debt in Self-Storage (00:07:14)   Pricing Mechanism and Market Response (00:08:36)   Commercial Real Estate Market Overview (00:10:33)   Alternative Investments and Portfolio Allocation (00:11:57)   Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference (00:13:46)   Strategies for Attracting Passive Investors (00:15:41)   Conference Organization and Team Management (00:18:28)   Closing Remarks and Special Discount (00:20:16)   Best Ever Conference (00:20:30)   Contact Information (00:20:50) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Ben: Web: https://www.benlapidus.com/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Ben Lapidus (00:00:00) - If your business plan can survive 2 or 3 years of negative leverage, because you can take a low enough IRR that you can store enough cash on the side, then it is a great time. If your business plan is overly aggressive or you're trying to seek a very high IRR at a at a velocity of capital deployment, that's unachievable, then now is a bad time to make an investment. You might want to wait 12 or 18 months to do so. Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:37) - For those of you that don't know Ben Lepidus, you need to know him. I've known Ben. Now. What? Man? What's been seven, eight years at this point? Yeah. About to go about that. I met you normally, Ben. I love to do a long winded introduction about how great the guest is. You are a great guest. I'm. It's my honor to have you on the show today, but before I give you my own introduction, I'd love for you maybe just to come on the show today and tell us a little bit about who you are, and then we'll get into it from there.   Ben Lapidus (00:01:03) - Yeah. I'm the founder and host of the best ever Real estate investing conference., not the brand, just the conference. And,, was a founding team member of Spartan Investment Group, which bought a half a billion assets under management in self-storage, recently retired, but have a long history of buying single family multifamily self-storage assets over the last 12 years., recently or prior to that,, was in the adtech space, learned a lot about big data, started a study abroad company Costa Rica., and have tried several other startups that failed. So I'm an entrepreneur at heart and can't wait to talk about whatever you want to talk about.   Sam Wilson (00:01:36) - Dude, that's that's a whole lot. I mean, my gosh, that's a lot of moving pieces there. Most recently you were like you mentioned a,, a partner there at Spartan Investment Group where you guys bought an absolute ton of self-storage. Why don't you just give us maybe a high level view recording this? What? Its end of February 2024, high level view of where self-storage is now and then maybe is what you see across the commercial real estate space as a whole.   Ben Lapidus (00:02:03) - Yeah. So self storage still has incredible fundamentals. When you look at the supply demand of self-storage, it's gone from 1 in 11 households to one in less than nine households are leveraging self-storage or consuming self-storage just over the last 5 or 6 years. That's an incredible shift in demand in a 5 or 6 year period simultaneously, construction costs,, going up, interest rates going up have made new supply difficult. So the fundamentals that drive storage is still in a very attractive asset class. That's on the consumption side on the on the,, the consumer side, on the investor side, investors have wised up to it. So it's become incredibly competitive. And the the spread between what you can get on the equity side versus what you can borrow on the debt side, has been radically compressed., and it now mirrors one of the major five food groups. You've got all of this office money, which was the largest component of commercial real estate coming out of office. And it's number one place to place it is self storage.   Ben Lapidus (00:02:59) - And that's just a lot of moving money. So from an investment perspective, the supply and demand,, isn't as attractive as it used to be. So I think what we're going to see over the next two years is do rates compress faster than cap rates?, and do the supply and demand economics on the consumer side kind of create a skyrocket effect of occupancy and rental rates such that it's attractive enough despite the competitiveness on the investment side?   Sam Wilson (00:03:23) - Wow. That's a that that that's an impressive,, impressive insight there. So yeah, I guess, you know, in short, is now a good time to to be investing in self-storage.   Ben Lapidus (00:03:34) - Now, there is never a bad time to be investing in self-storage. To be clear, it's recession resistant. It's always going to go up because of those supply demand economics. It's just is this the best time to generate the cash flow that you need to kind of cross the chasm if you're buying in a negative leverage environment. And so it's really about your business plan.   Ben Lapidus (00:03:54) - If your business plan can survive 2 or 3 years of negative leverage because you,, can take a low enough IRR that you can store enough cash on the side, then it is a great time. If your business plan is overly aggressive or you're trying to seek a very high IRR at a, at a velocity of capital deployment, that's unachievable, then now is a bad time to make an investment. You might want to wait 12 or 18 months to do so, right?   Sam Wilson (00:04:18) - Right. What about what about that conversation with investors like as in passive investors? How does that work when you're looking at deals that may be negative leverage? I mean, is that even a conversation that's being had?   Ben Lapidus (00:04:30) - It is. And that's because you just kind of find a different investor profile as the yield moves from kind of value add to more opportunistic, you have to find the investors who are willing to take the risk return ride with you at the end of the spectrum where those yields are achievable and attractive. If you're trying to get, you know, a 6% cash flow with a 14% IRR on an asset, that's 70% stabilized, that's been in existence for ten years with no expansion potential, that's going to be really tough.   Ben Lapidus (00:04:59) - But if you can find a conversion opportunity or the doughnut hole in a state that is booming with those supply demand,, economics working in your favor on the consumer side, then you can achieve those 20, 25, 30% IRR on a ground up development or conversion deal or an expansion.   Sam Wilson (00:05:15) - What do you say when you say conversion deal? What comes to mind?   Ben Lapidus (00:05:18) - Yeah, conversion is just taking,, a space that is not used for storage today and converting it for,, storage purposes. If you if you like, like a Macy's, a Kmart, a Shopko and just converting it into kind of like how urban air. I don't know if you've got urban air where you are, but I. Here in Colorado, there's an urban air chain, which is like an indoor like,, pre-teen park for trampolines and stuff. And they've just been converting, you know, grocery stores basically into,, urban air adventure parks. It's the same thing with storage.   Sam Wilson (00:05:51) - Same thing with storage. Be it office.   Sam Wilson (00:05:53) - , I know I'm a passive investor in an office to storage conversion project right now.   Ben Lapidus (00:05:58) - Hotel to storage? Yeah, all sorts of things.   Sam Wilson (00:06:00) - Which is wild because you're looking at this. They've they've converted it from,, office to storage and, and just like you're saying, the opportunity in this particular area was unbelievable. I mean, it's leasing up at like 30 or 40 units a month. I mean, it's just flying off the shelves as soon as they got their Co, which was,, kind of kind of crazy to see. So that opportunity exists. You mentioned the money that's coming out of office and going into storage. How are people even getting their money out of office? I mean, talk about something with negative leverage. What's that look like?   Ben Lapidus (00:06:31) - I mean, we're seeing,,, gosh, I'm gonna I'm gonna fail to come up with specific examples, but we're talking like, institutional level, like CRO holdings,, tremble., you know, bam capital, like those, those size of organizations,, dumping their office assets or dumping their office up co partners and selling them off, whether it's at pennies on the dollar or not.   Ben Lapidus (00:06:55) - And they are recalibrate or,,, rebalancing their portfolio to not reinvest that into office but say let's let's find alternative assets. Self-storage being the darling of the alternative asset space inside of commercial real estate.   Sam Wilson (00:07:08) - Got it. Very, very interesting. What's that look like on self-storage right now?   Ben Lapidus (00:07:14) - That is just as attractive in self-storage as it was anywhere else. And now that's a misnomer because nothing is attractive in debt., I just I use that to say it is just as attractive as any other lending rate outside of the agency world. So you're not going to ever beat, you know, government backed loans like you would get in housing. But outside of that,, you can get self-storage. Lending rates are akin, if not better than than office lending rates today, if not better than retail rates today., you can still find like, kind of the needle in a haystack. Sub six low 6%,, interest rate. Although the majority of what you are seeing on average, when you make those phone calls or high sevens, low eights, and then you're kind of getting to the riskier stuff of nine, ten and even double digits, you know, interest rates.   Sam Wilson (00:07:59) - Anybody doing long term fixed rate on that or is it all floating debt.   Ben Lapidus (00:08:03) - Oh, sure. Yeah. You can find long term fixed rate either, either by way of, you know, like doing shorter term or by doing a swap,, or some other derivative that, that, that creates that, that fixed rate despite starting with the floating rate product.   Sam Wilson (00:08:17) - Okay. Very very cool. Have we seen maybe you've answered this already and forgive me. I'm I'm,, I'm riding the short bus here today, but have you seen seller prices come up as interest rates have also climbed or not? Solid prices go down. Rather like have we seen that that sellers become more realistic or is it still.   Ben Lapidus (00:08:36) - Yeah. So? So I drove the acquisitions team and was very familiar with that up until about 7 or 8 months ago. So I've started to fall off of my, you know, a thumb on the, on the pulse of things. But we haven't seen the correction that you would assume,, with, with,, interest rates climbing.   Ben Lapidus (00:08:54) - So number one, we've only seen rental rates correct by 3% with all this inflation maneuver. And that is incremental street rates not in place rates. So revenue is still going up at self-storage consistently in the industry. And you look at the rate level reporting revenue still climbs quarter after quarter after quarter. The incremental customer rates might be decreasing. But you've got one month leases. You can you can do existing customer rate increases after providing that discounted rate almost immediately if you choose to. So we're still seeing rates increase. So it's an inflation hedge. So we haven't seen the pricing correction in response to the interest rates that you might assume. Because you've got investors coming out of longer term lease product like office like retail like industrial, for the purposes of hedging their inflation and going into short term lease product like self-storage, because they see the future potential of that inflation benefit. So yes, we we have seen pricing come down a little bit. But now instead of, you know, pricing to,, a 4.75% cap rate on a T3 or maybe pricing to a 6% cap rate on a year two pro forma.   Ben Lapidus (00:10:03) - So we're just we're seeing a different heuristic to kind of come to the same pricing or margin of error pricing as we were just a couple of years ago.   Sam Wilson (00:10:10) - Right? No, that's very, very interesting. Thank you for taking the time to give us kind of a brief snapshot on where the self-storage industry is today and kind of what's driving the pricing mechanism behind that. Certainly appreciate that. Let's hear what your thoughts are on the commercial real estate market as a whole. Like where is opportunity if that's still one that people are, you know, fighting tooth and nail over to get involved in? Where do you see opportunity today?   Ben Lapidus (00:10:33) - Yeah, I think commercial real estate just doesn't have the spreads that it did for the last decade. I mean, it was if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have a sentiment that there was a time where raising capital was on the easier side of the spectrum if you wouldn't just blatantly say easy. And that's because you could achieve like a yields an IRR just by consequence of of appreciation that was happening in commercial real estate in general.   Ben Lapidus (00:11:01) - , that appreciation has evaporated as a result of interest rates climbing., and maybe that appreciation will return if and when interest rates decrease. But for right now, you do not get the cash flow that you're you're used to getting after the last decade and a half, you do not get the appreciation that you're used to getting after the last decade and a half. So kind of commercial real estate wide, it's just not a very attractive time to be in commercial real estate relative to yields that you can get in other places. And, you know, modern portfolio theory suggests that up to 30, 35% of somebody's portfolio should be an alternative assets, with real estate being the largest segment of it. About 9 or 10% of the average portfolio contains real estate. So there's a long way to go for alternative assets to kind of climb to 35% to get to that modern portfolio theory number. But there's a lot of other segments of alternative assets like precious metals, operating businesses, secondaries,, private equities that have not been tapped into nearly as much.   Ben Lapidus (00:11:57) - And I think that those yields are more attractive today than what commercial real estate offers. And that's and that's probably going to be for the next 18 months at least.   Sam Wilson (00:12:05) - Well, yeah, absolutely. And I'm I'm testament to that. I mean that's what we're investing in right now is operating business simply because it is inflation resistant. It's recession resistant, like it's it's stuff that spins off cash flow at rates that commercial real estate just simply can't. And that's like.   Ben Lapidus (00:12:22) - I'm more interested in the activity of how the space is being used right, right now than the than the value of the space itself. Right. As an investor mindset. Right?   Sam Wilson (00:12:33) - Right. Yeah, absolutely. That makes a heck of a lot of sense. So you've got you've been through,, you know, all of this here with with Spartan here up until, you know, seven, eight months ago. And what do you do with your time now, like when you talk about these things and you think about, okay, alternative investments, operating businesses, what what are people doing with the space? Like what piqued your interest today?   Ben Lapidus (00:12:51) - Yeah.   Ben Lapidus (00:12:51) - And the way that I found my way to,, the partnership at Spartan was through the Best Ever conference, which I founded with Joe Fairless the year before, joining up with with the guys at Spartan Investment Group. And,, that that conference has been a North Star for me because I've been building it to service me as an avatar consumer of the conference. Who do I want to learn from? Who do I want to meet? Who do I want to be surrounded by? And let's just kind of create all of the details of this conference to attract those people, those speakers, those sponsors, those attendees. And, and I don't I don't know if you've seen that consistently year over year, Sam, but you were there at the first year. Every single speaker that I picked was somebody that I wanted to hear what they had to say personally, like myself. And that's still the case today. We don't have anything to sell at the. Conference. We just want to create a community of like minded people who are intelligent, are having a good time, and want to collaborate with each other to get more out of their businesses and out of their lives.   Ben Lapidus (00:13:46) - , and so that's that's the premise of the conference today. And,, I'm just kind of using the small amount of free time that I have,, after prioritizing my family and my kids, which is the major shift that I made this year into growing and improving the quality of that conference., and so a lot of our effort this year, with the conference coming up in April, April 9th, ten, 11 and 12, in Salt Lake City, is to focus more on the needs of the the passive investor. So as our conference has grown, we've attracted a lot of participants on the syndication side of the house, the operator side of the house, the people who have their their fingernails dirty with the real estate. But the passive investor hasn't had as much,,, emphasis at the best ever conference. So we've built a deal list site that we're going to be launching next week that allows all of the passive investors who are going to be in attendance to review all of our pitch slam competitors and all of our syndication sponsors deals in advance.   Ben Lapidus (00:14:45) - We're going to have a scheduling feature where you can, without walking around the conference and being cultured upon. You can establish one on one sessions with the syndicators that you want to get to know, like, and trust before putting your money in. It is the number one place to show up and look in the eyes. Hundreds of potential,, companies to invest your money into, and not just in commercial real estate, but into a growing number of private placement,, opportunities. And so that's that's really our focus for growth this year is just making the conference useful and desirable for the passive investor, which then, of course, makes it more useful and desirable for the syndicator, who's looking to join forces with those passive investors in growing their portfolio.   Sam Wilson (00:15:27) - That's really cool, I like that. What what have been some strategies that you've implemented to bring in that more passive investor? The people like how how do you draw in that ideal clients? The wrong word attendee how do you do that?   Ben Lapidus (00:15:41) - Yeah. So I think the experiments that we've done in the last couple of years are, number one, you know, three years ago we tried out this pitch slam.   Ben Lapidus (00:15:48) - It's kind of like a TechCrunch disrupt where,, a panel of judges decides on who has the best deal of the year. And the first two years was,, kind of pay to play, and it wasn't a very good situation. But last year was the participation by merit. And you were actually a brick and was one of 12 finalists,, put up on stage. And that got to compete for prize money of $600,000 by actual investors who are on stage. And so we're going to be repeating that this year. We had over 80 applicants this year,, and we have 12 finalists selected for the stage. So that's number one. Number two, we've been trying to partner with investor communities like IDC, intelligent investors, real estate community last year, left field investors this year,, long Angle is another great investor community that we're going to be highlighting on our stage this year., 506 group is,, you know, Mark Robertson, somebody that we've highlighted on our stage before. So trying to partner with investor communities, number three is building that directory so that you can in the comfort of your home, review and plan for your time so that you're not just kind of showing up and hoping that something good happens, but rather you're reviewing materials and saying, I actually have an interest in this.   Ben Lapidus (00:16:50) - I have an interest in a laundromat fund or a Texas vineyard fund. Let me,, or neighborhood retail fund that only buys nine caps or a hotel conversion,, into a bed and breakfast fund or something like that. Right. We've got all of these disparate, kind of nuanced data center style, as well as the traditional multifamily retail office opportunities that you could review. But looking at them in advance and determining, I want to interact with these people,, from the site, that's a new feature, as well as the scheduling one on one feature where you can kind of come up with your agenda as a passive investor in advance. And we've got a speed networking session that we've never had before that only qualified, excuse me, accredited investors are allowed to participate in with prevented sponsors who are,, either on our pitch slam stage or,, sponsoring the event so that you can have kind of five minute curated,, one on one rapid fire conversations. So those are some of the features that we're adding to the experience this year.   Sam Wilson (00:17:45) - Dude, that's really cool I love that. And yeah, I've been,, coming to the conference since 2017. And it's been it's always proved incredibly valuable. So if you're listening to this and you've not been to the Best Ever conference, go check it out. It,, is definitely worth your time. You'll get way more out of it than you put in., so yeah, that's,, that's my plug. My shameless plug as well, for the best ever conference I have. I have benefited from that, Sam. Absolutely, man. It's been a blast, dog. Well, you know, it's fun, man. It's kind of like homecoming. Like you go back and see all your friends. You're like, hey, man, what's up? I missed everybody, it's been an entire year. I can't believe it. But you also have, you know, have created an environment where meaningful relationships, relationships. So if I could speak today are formed. So that's,, that's very, very cool.   Sam Wilson (00:18:28) - On the technical side of that, I look at that conference, Ben and I just kind of go, my gosh, like, this is a ton of. Work. How? How have you organized your team, your people, and your time to pull off something of that magnitude? Because honestly, I look at it from the outside and it seems like you've done it pretty effortlessly.   Ben Lapidus (00:18:49) - But I appreciate that. I, you know, the first 4 or 5 years did all myself on top of growing Spartan at the same time., and, you know, we were just starting to have kids then, so it was a little bit easier to do the multitasking, right?, but around your 4 or 5, I got, I got burnt out, you know, we were we had scaled it from, I think the first year we had 170 people. By year 4 or 5, we were at like 800 people. Now we're this year, it's probably not going to grow just because of the challenging macro environment and people having surplus budgets for marketing and travel, what have you.   Ben Lapidus (00:19:19) - But we'll have over a thousand still., and around that year I said, you know what? I, we just gotta have to hire some people. And so we've built a team, and now they're in their third year of doing this conference together. And so they've, they've just got a great rapport with each other and are capable of seeing the bigger picture that's being put in front of them, the strategic plan that's being put in front of them and executing on that. So I'm I'm very fortunate to be in a position where I only spend about an hour or two a week on that conference up until maybe a week beforehand. And I can I can use all of my extra mental load to be creative with. How can we improve the experience and offer more value to everybody participating?   Sam Wilson (00:20:00) - That's really cool, Ben. I've enjoyed our conversation today. As always, it's a pleasure to get to chat with you. I always feel smarter,, after those engagements, so appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today.   Sam Wilson (00:20:11) - Is there anything else you want to cover here on the show? Before we wrap this up? It's just burning a hole in your mind.   Ben Lapidus (00:20:16) - Yeah, I think we're going to have a special discount,, for your audience, so I don't know what it is, but I don't know if you know what it is, but we're gonna have a special discount for your audience that you can put in the show notes, and you can check us out at Best Ever conference.com, and I hope to see everyone there.   Sam Wilson (00:20:30) - Best ever ecommerce.com. Yeah, check that out. I will get that special discount for our listeners to the how to scale commercial real estate podcast. Put there in the show notes. You'll have to find the episode on our website in order to find that discount, but it'll be there and I hope to see you all at the Best Ever conference as well. So, Ben, thank you again. If our listeners want to get in touch with you and learn more about you, what's the best way to do that?   Ben Lapidus (00:20:50) - Yeah, you can reach me at Ben at Best Ever Conference.   Sam Wilson (00:20:55) - Fantastic. Thanks again, Ben. Great to see you. Have a great rest. Your day.   Ben Lapidus (00:20:58) - All right. Thanks, Sam.   Sam Wilson (00:20:59) - Hey, thanks for listening to the how to Scale Commercial Real Estate podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.