Lessons from a Wholesaler Turned Self Storage Pro with Alex Pardo

Mike Hambright (00:01.356)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m with my buddy Alex Pardo. We’re gonna be talking about his transition from single family into self storage, really from a lot of wholesaling into self storage. And a lot of you guys know that I also have kind of made a transition from single family into doing a lot more multi-family. Maybe it’s an age thing, maybe it’s a wisdom thing, but you just eventually want to do bigger deals that are a little more passive. But we’re gonna find out, we’re gonna crack the code today. So Alex, good to see you buddy.

Alex Pardo (00:27.911)
Mike, always a pleasure seeing you, my friend. Love what you’ve done with the show, how you’ve grown throughout the year. So yeah, man, I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

Mike Hambright (00:34.83)
Yeah, you too. you know, a lot of people don’t, I’ve said this before, but like I use the podcast as a way to just like hang out with my pals. Like I, I mean, it is a show that people are watching, but it’s like a way for you and I to get back together. We’ve been friends for a long time and you know, talked a little bit more here recently, but sometimes there’s six months or a year periods where we don’t catch up very much. And I’m like, you know, it’s a great way for us to just catch up. And I guess let the world peek over our shoulder a little bit while we’re talking, huh?

Alex Pardo (01:02.471)
I love it, man. I love it. Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel the same way. So I’m really excited.

Mike Hambright (01:04.95)
Yeah, yeah. And for those of you that don’t know, Alex also has a podcast. I remember back when he started it, we were talking a little bit. So we’re kind of OGs in the podcasting space. So he’s a pro. It’s going to be like a professional podcast.

Alex Pardo (01:18.121)
Which by the way, I need to give you publicly a lot of credit for that because I remember a few conversations we had prior to launching the Flip Empire show back in 2016. And I remember just asking you some questions, man. Like, hey, like this and that, and you were a big help, man. So I really owe a lot of my success really to guys like you and others that I like looked up to, asked questions, and you guys, you always had an open heart to be able to share. You never like withheld information. And so really, really appreciate that, man. Those are the conversations I’ll just never forget. So thank you.

Mike Hambright (01:46.382)
Yeah, there’s a lot to be said and I think one of things that I told you when we talked back then was like…

you have to have a clear plan, like how this is going to impact your business and what the goal is, because there’s a lot of carnage out there. People that start podcasts and do, you know, two, five, 10 episodes, and then all of a they stop. And I was like, if you want to stick with this forever, you got to be committed. And I think, you know, you could say this about your business and my business as well is, and for hopefully a little lesson here for everybody listening here is I use this phrase all the time, like play the long game, because business is hard. And I’m not saying

Alex Pardo (01:55.209)
Yes.

Alex Pardo (02:04.127)
Yeah.

Alex Pardo (02:19.199)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (02:22.032)
that it gets easier, but your mindset of being able to stick with something for a long period of time and kind of fight through the times when you’re like, why the heck am I doing this? And it’s like, well, you’re doing it for the good times, which you have to go through some bad times too, or some challenging times or whatever. So glad you stuck with it, buddy.

Alex Pardo (02:41.545)
Yeah, man. And look, what you just said, I want to kind of quickly highlight and underscore because oftentimes Mike, you and I have conversations amongst each other with like our peers and students prospects and people are always asking, like they’re looking for like the shiny bullet. I feel like people want to know what is the thing that unlocks whatever they’re after. And honestly, like oftentimes I don’t have a very sexy answer for you, but I know that consistency is a big part of the formula. And to your point, I think when you decide and you commit,

and you say, hey, I’m gonna play the long game. I’m not just in it for the short-term results, but I’m really gonna play the long game. And you have that mindset going into whatever it might be. It could be storage, which we’re gonna talk about. It could be single-family wholesaling, building a rental portfolio, or just any business. I think you gotta have a mindset that you’re in it for the long haul, man. And I think you just set yourself up for success that way.

Mike Hambright (03:29.422)
Absolutely, absolutely. so Alex, if anybody listening right now doesn’t know you, tell us a little bit about your background and then let’s kind of get in from your, how you transitioned after a long period of time from wholesaling into self storage, but tell us a little bit about your background.

Alex Pardo (03:43.683)
Yeah, I’ll do my best to just keep the background and my intro, all that pretty short so we can kind of get to the meat of the call. But you know, born and raised here in Miami, I didn’t come from a family of entrepreneurs, Mike, as you know, but I always had that wiring inside of me to want to go out and create, produce something. I’m big on building genuine, meaningful relationships with people. And so I’ve always had a desire to really want to help and impact people, which is part of the reason I started the podcast back in 2016. But

something happened when I got to college, I started interviewing with big companies and ended up getting a job in general electric and their financial management program. And, you know, I’m not good at a lot of things, but there’s a few things I’m pretty good at. And one of those is, you know, I always tell people when you’re not clear what you want, ask yourself what you don’t want. And then you can back into what you ultimately want. And that’s exactly what I did in my corporate job. It’s, wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted to create something, but I didn’t know what that looked like.

But I do remember looking at my boss all the way up the ladder and telling myself, know I definitely don’t want that. So I finished that two year rotational program in general electric. went backpacking around Europe and it was on the train that I just started to immerse myself in the personal development books. And while I was in an internet cafe in Ibiza, a friend of mine invited me to a, a gentleman by the name of Dave Lindahl, who I’m sure you probably know he was, he was doing an event. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (04:44.398)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (05:02.178)
I know Dave. He’s been on my podcast before. Yeah, it’s been a long time, but yeah.

Alex Pardo (05:05.887)
Yeah, he’s the apartment house guy right way back in the day. And I think he still does it. But anyway, he was doing a marketing for deals bootcamp. This was October of 2005. was 997 bucks. That was might as well have been 997,000 bucks to me at the time, but I ended up committing. I paid that money. And then I essentially took out a letter from a manual. I got at that bootcamp and I started a pre foreclosure direct mail campaign.

and ended up doing a little bit less than three months later, ended up doing my first deal. And so, yeah, man, I’ve been a full-time real estate investor since late 2005.

Mike Hambright (05:42.542)
That’s awesome. And let’s talk about the transition. at some point you, you know, I think, well, I don’t want to any words in your mouth, but at some point you made a transition to do less wholesaling and more self storage. And then at some point you went all in on self storage. So tell me a little bit about that, where you were at mentally and kind of why you decided to do that.

Alex Pardo (06:01.875)
For sure, man, I think it’s a great question. think one of the biggest challenges and mistakes I made in my journey is, and I’m very open about that, ironically, Mike, I got into real estate because I time freedom, I wanted cash flow, I wanted obviously financial freedom and all the benefits that we know and love about real estate, but I ended up playing the transactional game and I felt like I almost got addicted to the revenue and the income you generate wholesaling. So here I am, I look up.

10, 12 years later. And I remember having a conversation with my wife. said, where’s the cashflow? Like, yes, we’re generating multiple six figures every single, every single year. And it’s, it’s, it’s great for the family and it provides for us and all that. But it’s like, it just started to feel like a grind and a hustle. And maybe people listening or watching us can relate to that feeling of like starting the month from scratch. And I said, you know, I need to switch what I’m doing. so kind of similar to what I did in my corporate job, I said, well, what if I’m still.

A wholesaler 12, 24 months from now, how would that make me feel? And I almost had that feeling dude in my gut. Like it was Sunday evening and I was getting ready to go to my corporate job. And I’m like, something’s broken here. Like this is the business that I’ve built and created yet. don’t want to continue to hustle deals. So I started building a rental portfolio, thinking and buying into the myth that that was passive. And you and I know that, you know, owning a bunch of rental properties is not very passive.

And so after a couple of years of doing that, I said, okay, well, this isn’t the path for me. And I ended up, I was coaching somebody at the time that owned a storage facility and I got a real inside look into not just their business, but that asset class. You know, I always assumed Mike that whenever I kind of evolved and grew out of single family, I was going to kind of go into multifamily and I love multifamily amazing asset class, but I had already experienced some burnout from tenants and toilets and being a landlord. I’m like,

I don’t know that I want to go into multifamily that just, yes, you have the economies of scale, but I don’t want to deal with that. And in storage, I quickly learned that, you know, you have customers, you don’t have tenants and I don’t have toilets and plumbing. By the way, I was never a good rehabber, which is why I did wholesaling. So in storage, I don’t have these crazy renovations. So yeah, man, I think this was right around the time of COVID. I had already decided I was going to wind down the business. And when COVID hit, was like, you want to know what to me, this is like a blessing from God.

Mike Hambright (08:13.389)
you

Alex Pardo (08:26.591)
Um, and so I took a team of eight, nine people at that time. We had our overhead was about, I don’t know, 40, 45 grand a month. And over the next three to four months, I just, I kind of wound it down. Um, took some time off and then late 2020 is when I committed myself to get into self storage.

Mike Hambright (08:44.75)
you

That’s awesome. I would say my story of moving into multifamily is similar in the sense that I, had a single family rental portfolio and for the first, you know, many years we had them. was like, these things suck. Like I hate them. hate them. And then I started to see like the appreciation, you know, we paid off some debt early and we like started to have more cashflow. And I was like, it got to a point to where, and by the way, I’ve been buying rentals for 15, 16 years or so. And then like 10 years into it, I was like,

Okay, I can see the value of this now like I’m you know getting wealthier on paper like we’re getting You know, we’re real estate kind of rich and cash poor or whatever But it was like the realization of like, okay I get it now because I’ve we’ve been doing this long enough where I can see the value But it was like if I want to 10x this I’m just thinking about how hard it was to 1x it, you know, it’s like my gosh, I got to go buy these one at a time like that would be so hard and then it was just this realization of

Alex Pardo (09:39.273)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (09:45.534)
like, okay, we got to do some deals that are have more zeros behind them because, you know, we can move the needle faster. And I think also was a realization of, you know, once you’re in business for a while, probably like me, I had coaching, had rental income, I had other income streams for kind of what I’ll call kind of today money, right. And it’s like, what I really need is more

more long-term investments. And it was like, okay, if I go buy these one at a time, I can do it, but it’s gonna be a grind. And maybe I just need to get a couple of multifamily deals that would be the equivalent of me 10Xing my single family, you know?

Alex Pardo (10:20.797)
Yeah. And that’s exactly right. I think what you just said is spot on, right? Like you get leverage and I don’t mean leverage in terms of the debt type of leverage, but I’m talking about like when you do multifamily or you do other commercial like storage, you get the economies of scale. Like one deal I would have had to have done numerous, like numerous single family homes to give me the equivalent of what one good storage facility can give me. And I think the older I got and as my girls have gotten a little bit older throughout the years, like I just.

I value my time that much more. And I just, want to be doing things that are meaningful. And I didn’t, I just wanted to get off that hamster wheel that admittedly I had created for myself. And I think a lot of people find themselves stuck and not really sure how to transition. So what I wish I knew then that I know now, cause I would have gotten started much sooner is that a lot of the skillsets that we’ve acquired throughout the years in the single family space, as you know, many of those skillsets,

translate over into the commercial world, whether it’s multifamily and storage. so I think oftentimes what holds people back from doing bigger deals in my opinion, and maybe you have a different take Mike is number one, a limiting belief. Sometimes I find that people are a little bit intimidated because it’s just a larger property. It maybe has an extra zero or two. And then number two, it’s just a knowledge gap. And, and quite honestly, like I think if you can overcome the first thing, which is just opening your mind to the fact that like,

Oftentimes I think these bigger deals are actually easier to do than the smaller deals. know, and so, so I’ll kind of pause there, but I hope that if anything people take from this, just borrow my belief that if you desire to do bigger deals, you absolutely can. You just have to tweak a few things and then it’s a knowledge gap.

Mike Hambright (12:02.114)
Yeah, and think part of the difference too is I’m guessing you had some…

had some similarities to me in the single family space. Even when we were rocking, it was like, you know, I was still working really hard. And even though I had a team, I was doing a lot of it, right? I was doing a lot of the work, like the buck stop with me and I was doing everything. And I have my hand in everything. I’ll say, even if I had a good team, I still have my hand. I was micromanaging everything. But I think when you start to do commercial deals, you realize that you only have to be good at some aspects of it because you have a team involved, right? It’s very much a team sport as compared to single family.

Alex Pardo (12:31.027)
Yes.

Mike Hambright (12:36.042)
And so like, you know, even on the multifamily side, like I’m not actively managing, I’m not property managing like my partners are. I’ve just played more on the financial side. I’m helping raise money. I’m kind of doing more of the investor relations type stuff. I’m putting my own money in. I’m evaluating the deal upfront, but I’m not out looking for deals like somebody else would bring a deal to us, right? And so there’s usually, it’s more of a team effort. I mean, it’s the same thing for you on the, on the self storage side, right?

Alex Pardo (13:03.305)
You’re a hundred percent right. I think what you said is so valuable because if people here just got crystal crystal clear, Mike, on what assets and resources they have. And by the way, when I say assets, I’m not only talking about money, but I’m talking about like one of the exercises I take people through is just writing down like literally what are the assets and resources that you have at your disposal? That could be time, that could be money, that could be your network, that could be your knowledge or a particular gift or skillset that you have.

get crystal crystal clear on that and then figure out how you can leverage those assets and resources to get a part of these deals, right? Like Mike, you’re a networker, you know how to build relationships, you know how to raise money, you know a lot of people. There would be no reason for you to do operations of multifamily unless you just love that and I don’t think you do, but why not, yeah, why not double down on what you’re really, really, really good at?

Mike Hambright (13:55.214)
you

Alex Pardo (13:58.663)
And then that’s very valuable to bring to a deal or to bring to a multifamily operator. And that’s one of the things that I share with people now, storage is no different. So you’re listening to this and you’re in the single family space. Maybe you’re a really, really, really good marketer and you know how to generate leads. That’s extremely valuable to a self storage operator like myself, right? Because you might come across opportunities that maybe I haven’t come across and that’s worth something, right? You can get equity, you can get cashflow in these deals.

obviously the more that you can bring to the table, then the bigger piece of the pie, might be able to carve out for yourself, but, storage and commercial in general, the pie is big enough, generally speaking, where you can bring something to the table and participate in deals. Right. And that’s one of the things I didn’t know when I was in single family. Like I thought I had to wear all hats to all parts of the deal. And that’s just not the case.

Mike Hambright (14:51.374)
you

And I think one of the myths too, and I don’t know how you structure your deals and whether it’s multifamily or self storage or anything commercial, there’s a lot of ways you can structure the deal. But I think there’s a lot of folks that don’t focus on commercial because they need that faster money that wholesaling might provide. But there are ways to make faster money. Like a lot of people, like the reason I’m in commercial is more for the long term. Like I’m willing to forgo today money for long term wealth building. But there are ways and I don’t want to put any words in your mouth because I don’t know exactly

Alex Pardo (15:00.564)
Yes.

Mike Hambright (15:21.754)
structure years, but there are ways to make money upfront on commercial deals as well for those that are staying away from it because they don’t think that’s possible. That is possible, right?

Alex Pardo (15:30.911)
Mike, I’ll give you a perfect example. My very first storage deal, and here’s the irony of this story, right? Is that here I am, I’ve been wholesaling for 15 years and I completely do like a hard pivot from wholesaling into storage. My very first storage deal was a wholesale, right? Now here’s the cool thing about the way that we structured this particular deal is between myself and two other partners, we ended up splitting a $99,000 assignment fee. So my portion was one third of that, 33 grand.

which was cool. made 33 grand on my first storage deal, but here’s the kicker. We kept 15 % equity in that storage facility, which we still own today. So I was able to get cash upfront, right? And it was about, instead of it closing in two, three, four weeks, I think it took about two, two and a half months to close. So it took a little bit longer, but I was able to generate money upfront. And then I still have equity in that deal today. And I would venture to say that 15 % equity is probably worth somewhere between 40 and 70 grand.

based on how the facility is performing today. So at some point when that operator decides to sell or refinance the property, like I’m gonna see some additional cash coming in from a deal that I did, what, three, four years ago at this point. I’ve wholesaled other storage facilities and there’s a few nuances, but it essentially works the same way. And so you can absolutely make cash up from commercial. I think one of the things that would be insanely valuable for people is to like define your buy box.

right? Get, get really, really intentional about what you want a storage deal to do for you. And then the way that I kind of approach it is my model is anything that fits outside of that buy box to me, if it’s a deal, it might not be a deal for me, but it’s a deal for Mike or for somebody else. Those become wholesale opportunities for me.

Mike Hambright (17:17.614)
There you go, yeah. And I know there’s definitely some commercial people that I know that are like, if you bring me a deal, I’ll allow you to, know, like, I guess finding the deal is like finding the deal on single family might get you 40, 50 % of the deal, right? On single family, but on commercial, there’s a lot of other moving parts.

Alex Pardo (17:36.212)
Correct.

Mike Hambright (17:36.642)
mean, the deal isn’t as weighted as heavily as it might be on the single family side typically. But every commercial person I’ve worked with, like if somebody were to bring us a good deal and they don’t want a piece of the back end and they just want money upfront, it’s like, I mean.

Alex Pardo (17:42.431)
That’s right.

Mike Hambright (17:50.54)
Let’s talk about it and figure out how to make that work too. that’s all you want is just the today money. For those of us that are playing the long game, like, well, that’s more for us in the back end if that’s how you really want to structure it. We wouldn’t probably advise that, but if you would rather get paid more upfront and less on the back end, we could find a way to make that work.

Alex Pardo (18:07.113)
Yeah, correct. Look, I’m currently coaching people right now that are in nine to five jobs and their, their desires to get out of that. And they’re in storage and their primary aim now is to find undervalued opportunities, what we call value add in the commercial world and wholesale those because they’re in a season right now where they’re looking to generate a couple hundred thousand dollars so that they can make a decision. Then I have others that have assets and they have portfolios and they’re not looking for the today money. They’re playing the long game.

And so they’re not interested in the wholesale opportunities. They’re interested in finding the right deals that they can buy for cashflow and then future equity upside, right? upside whenever they sell a refi. And so it really, think just depends on what are your goals, what season of life are you in? But regardless of what season you’re in, there’s an opportunity for you to get involved. You just have to know what you’re looking for and that’ll help kind of shape the initial path that you take.

Mike Hambright (19:03.128)
Alex, so why did you choose, of all the commercial things out there, why specifically did you settle on self-storage?

Alex Pardo (19:11.283)
Yeah. So when I started to research it and we didn’t have chat GPT back then, but like when I was doing my, my, my research, one of the things that really jumped out at me is that, I kept coming up with facts and figures and stats about of all the commercial asset classes, self storage is one of the most recession resistant, right? And, self storage has the lowest default rate. I kept coming up with that, right? And then I’m like, okay, that that’s interesting. I like that. but really what was the clincher for me was not having to deal with tenants, toilets.

trash. And because of technology, Mike, like brother, when I had up until four months ago, I owned 104,000 net rentable square feet of storage across, I think it was 813 units. I might, might, and this is being very conservative, spend an hour to an hour and a half a week on that portfolio. And that’s because technology has allowed us to run what we call an unmanned model. So I don’t have any employees. People rent units online. They get text, gate code,

We have a local boots on the ground person that deals with unit cleanouts and things of that nature. And then we have a third party management center and a call center. So that three-prong management system really allows for a lot of time freedom, right? I can focus on finding really, really good opportunities, plugging in the right third party management company, finding the right boots on the ground. And because of technology kind of keeping it all together, it just allows me to not have to spend so much time in the operations of the business. So.

those are a few reasons, but more than anything, it’s just, it’s, it’s an asset class that I think really lends itself to cashflow because it’s such a sticky product. Right. So think about the time, energy and effort it takes to move contents out of a storage unit. Right. So on average, our, our, customers stay with our storage facility, like a little bit over three years on average. So when they move in, they tend to stay.

and keep in mind, like what a storage cost, right? Anywhere between let’s say 50 bucks to 300, 350 bucks a month for a lot of people that’s, that’s not going to make or break you. Right? So if, if the rates are bumped by five, 10%, you’re not going to be like, well, let me just move my stuff out and go find a competitor, especially if the rates are the same. So it’s got a lot of advantages that, provide for just consistent cashflow month in and month out.

Mike Hambright (21:36.59)
you

Yeah, and I like the idea of no tenant right issues, right? Like there’s a lot of people, a lot of states where it’s very hard to evict people and these are just created much like commercial leases, right? So if you don’t pay, I mean, every state’s probably a little bit different and you know this better than me, but you don’t pay, you’re out. And instead of somebody, instead of having a 10, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 make ready sometimes, it’s, if anything, you’re sweeping it out and filling a dumpster probably, right?

Alex Pardo (21:52.627)
Yeah. You nailed it.

Alex Pardo (22:05.905)
Mike, you’re speaking my language. like, let me ask you this with multifamily, you guys, would imagine have year long leases with your, with your tenants. Is that right? Okay. So we don’t have that. We have month to month leases and you might think, I don’t want month to month leases. Well, keep in mind what I just shared about how sticky this product is and people move in. tend to stay long-term, but here’s the other thing, brother. It’s when somebody doesn’t pay, I don’t have to go through a three to six month eviction process and storage or something called lien laws.

Mike Hambright (22:07.852)
Hahaha.

Mike Hambright (22:14.252)
Right. Yep.

Alex Pardo (22:35.837)
which means that to your point, every state is a little different, but generally speaking, within 60 to 70 days, as long as I’ve like given proper notification, as long as I’ve dotted certain I’s and cross certain T’s, we auction off their stuff if they don’t pay, right? We generate a little bit of revenue from that. And then our boots on the ground goes in there, cleans out the unit, takes some pictures and puts it back online so we can rent. And so that process can take

On average, no more than 70 to 80 days. If somebody doesn’t pay, we’re making a little bit of money because the most expensive thing in storage is a vacant unit. That’s an opportunity cost because we’re not generating revenue on that vacant unit. and so I just liked the fact that, I can also raise rates at any point, right? I’m not stuck. If I have a year long lease with the tenant and you’re collecting 1300 bucks a month from that tenant, that’s what you’re going to collect for the next X amount of months.

In storage, we can vary the rates based on what the market is doing.

Mike Hambright (23:36.238)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And I’ve heard you would be able to tell me this, but that during good times, people tend to buy a lot of junk and they can’t fit it in their house. During bad times, even if they’re starting to downsize, hey, let’s get a smaller place to live, what are we gonna do with all this stuff? Well, let’s put it in self storage. So I’ve heard that the market actually does, maybe even does better during bad times versus good times. I don’t know if you know that or not.

Alex Pardo (23:44.745)
You

Alex Pardo (23:57.684)
It’s better.

Yeah, a hundred percent, man. Like, look, I don’t know about you, but like my wife, I have three, four or five Amazon packages at my door every day. And, and I’m not right now. We don’t rent storage, but we have rented storage. And the thing is, think about Americans, just the way they consume the way that they don’t want to like get rid of things. and to your point, like when the market contracts and things get tight, because people don’t want to get rid of things, they downsize into typically smaller, like dwelling units. And then they go rent storage for a hundred, 200, 300 bucks a month.

Mike Hambright (24:06.168)
Yeah.

Alex Pardo (24:29.755)
And man, would venture to say, this, don’t know for fact, but now I’m speculating. If you were to appraise the contents of the average storage unit, it is probably worth far less than what they pay every single month on the aggregate. Like if you take the 36 months, three years of 150 bucks a month, then you, and you do that math. That’s probably a lot more money spent than what the contents are worth. Right. and so that kind of tells you people’s mindsets about like not wanting to get rid of things.

Mike Hambright (25:00.226)
Yep, yep. Awesome. So what’s your vision for the future? do you, if you have a crystal ball, like we’re, I had somebody on the show here recently and we were talking about a crystal ball for, and we’re looking at interest rates and you know, what’s going on with building and stuff like that for the single family space. But in the stealth storage space, I don’t imagine there’s a scenario where people are gonna start.

buying less crap that they need to store. what do you see going out, if you were to go out like five or 10 years even, like what does this industry look like?

Alex Pardo (25:30.973)
Yeah, I’m very bullish on self storage, Mike. think it’s just, it’s, it’s a needed product and service that, that I think is not going away. In fact, I think it’s getting bigger. Now is it, or like, look, somebody, sometimes people ask me, Mike, like, Hey, like what, what do I need to be aware of when it comes to storage? Like it sounds amazing, but like, so let me be super transparent. Like sometimes people, especially if you buy a storage facility and not such a great market, sometimes people will tend to use storage units as their house.

And so sometimes people might move in, right? We’ve dealt with that from time to time. sometimes the automated gate breaks and you have to go get somebody out there. So those are some of the things that at times can be a little bit of a headache with storage, but they don’t happen that often. Now, in terms of the longterm, look, storage is very much tied to housing, right? Like I want to be in markets.

where the population is increasing, where jobs are coming in, no different than multifamily. I’m sure those are some of the things that you look for in the demographic side and choosing markets. Storage is no different. So I want to be where people are moving in. like to be in secondary and tertiary markets. So as an example, I live in Miami. I’ve never spent one minute looking for self storage in Miami. I’m looking for markets that have a population 5,000 to 60,000 people, you know, where the population is increasing.

I like there to be an average medium household income of at least 50,000 or up, right? Because people now have the ability to pay for storage and continue to pay for storage. But, yeah, look as rates have gone up in the last couple of years, has it been a little bit more challenging to get financing for storage? Absolutely. Like now we have to look through more deals just to get these deals to pencil for the numbers to make sense. by the way,

one of the big, big reasons I love, love, love seller financing and just creative deal structuring. Like that’s one of my favorite ways to get storage deals done. And it’s a lot easier because these storage owners, they’re business owners. they oftentimes they understand it. And I actually find it’s easier to pitch, create a financing, seller financing to a storage owner than it is to a single family homeowner. So,

Mike Hambright (27:40.504)
I bet, More logic and less emotion typically, right? Yeah.

Alex Pardo (27:44.243)
That’s it, you nailed it Mike. They’re not emotionally attached to the asset because it’s a business for them. By the way, you had asked me earlier why self storage, it’s that very thing. It’s a business with the benefits of real estate. So you kind of get the best of both worlds there. yeah, but no, I’m very bullish on storage long term.

Mike Hambright (28:04.002)
Awesome, awesome. Good stuff. Well, Alex, thanks for joining me on the show today.

Alex Pardo (28:08.861)
Yeah, brother. Hey man, I really appreciate the opportunity. if anybody is interested in, in learning more about storage, actually Mike, is it cool? Can I share some resources with people that awesome? Yeah, look, if, send a text, send the word storage and then put investor fuel in parentheses so that I know that you came from Mike show. so text the word storage investor fuel to three five three one eight.

Mike Hambright (28:18.264)
You sure can. Yeah. And we’ll have some of these links down below in the show notes as well. But go ahead and tell us where you want people to go learn more about you, Alex.

Alex Pardo (28:38.202)
6213 and then we’ll send you a Dropbox link with a bunch of resources like nothing for sale, no strings attached, training, my contract, the letter that I’ve used to wholesale, know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of storage. So it’ll include all that information, 100 % for free. So just text the word storage investor fuel to 305-318-6213 and we’ll send you over all those resources.

Mike Hambright (29:01.282)
Awesome, thanks for sharing that Alex. Guys, we’ve got some other resources down below in the show notes. So Alex, thanks again for joining us today, buddy. Always good to see you.

Alex Pardo (29:09.553)
Amen. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you.

Mike Hambright (29:11.682)
And everybody, we’ll see you on the next episode.