Remote property management can and is being done in a very professional and efficent manner. I got started in the self storage industry just a few years ago with a 150 unit facility 90 miles from my home. After commuting 6 days a week for about a year I developed a system to manage remotely. I now have 4 facilities and I'm building my 5th now. Curently, we have 850 customers. By the end of this year that number should exceed 1,250. My facilites are spaced out over a 200 mile radius.

Thanks for the response Monica! I think there are a lot of locations that remote management would be ideal.....but I don't see it working for everyplace, or every customer. As I said, we move in and move out close to 100 tenants a month. Without someone on site most of the time, this place would be overflowing with trash, old worn out furniture and mattresses. We heard some noise coming from downstairs Saturday night, and one of our vacating tenants had dumped almost half of his 10x20 full of furniture in front of our locked dumpster area. He had rented a small truck, and had loaded up what was important that would fit, and was leaving the rest.

We caught him in time and he ended up removing all of his property from the facility. Even with us here most of the time, we still end up with about 10 old mattresses a month, and our trash removal company won't take them away.

the other big factor here is the language barriers. With lots of practice, we have become adept at determing unit size and renting the unit with "sign language". A big metro area like Orlando has people from all over the world, and I'd say about 30% of our tenants speak little or no English.

And I can just see my little old lady customers who have to look at every single storage unit size we have before making up their minds which size to get, renting from a kiosk. I think part of the reason they stay half the day here is just because they enjoy the personal attention.

The other thing I hadn't thought of before is our business customers. They get deliveries regularly from UPS, Fedex, Roadway, etc. How do you handle that remotely?

Remote Management is great for a smaller site (say under 250 units) but with 650 units there is always something going on that needs attention.

Maybe in my next life I will get lucky enough to manage a small facility in the Florida Keys, but for now I will deal with all the crazies we have here in California!!

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Wayne
All American Self Storage
Palmdale, CA.
webmaster@all-americanselfstorage.com

Sorry Autodoc, we are keeping a very close eye on any storage job openings in the Keys, so you'll have to get in line behind us!!!

I agree with you on the facility size, and also location.

Here's the highlights of our week:

Tuesday, one of our business tenant's employees runs into the gate, he's late for work and punched in the gate code and stepped on the gas....wasn't thinking about waiting for the gate to open....$302 worth of damage to the gate. Fortunately, my husband was outside talking to the landscaper so he saw it, plus it was caught on camera. We called the gate company immediately because the gate was stuck halfway open, and wouldn't open or close, it was off track and had some other minor damage. They came out and fixed it the same day, the customer paid the bill (with much grumbling). Seriously doubt he would have paid the bill if there wasn't eye witnesses and if we hadn't gotten a signed statement from the employee before letting him go.

Then husband goes on the facility walk, because we are off Sunday and Monday...Tuesday is usually the big day for catching all the weekend stuff. Three tenants had accessed their unit and had left their unit locked open...didn't slide the bolt in before putting their lock on....so anyone could open the door. We called the customers to tell them to come over and lock up their unit properly. One customer has oil leaking out from under his unit...for the second time.

Wednesday....had a bus plate (I think that's what my husband said) on one of our climate controlled area circuit breaker boxes burn up....All the power to that section knocked off. No airconditioning or lights in large section of climate control. Husband calls electrician, open doors to other climate controlled sections to cool area off....electrician drives all over town trying to find part, finally pulls it off another box in their warehouse and fixes problem. After the electricity is fixed, it's just gotten dark and husband walks around closing doors and catches 2 college students smoking a non-tobacco product between the buildings.

Thursday...customer in giant U-Haul pulls into parking lot at 6:30 at night (after closing), beeps horn....in desperate need of a 10 x 20 climate controlled unit. Has to turn U-Haul in before 7 am or pay penalty...drove down from Virginia all day and just arrived in town, no other storage facility he has been by is open. We go downstairs and rent him a unit. He unloads U-Haul and we check it in the next morning. He flies back to Virginia that afternoon. Stuff will be in storage here for at least 2 years while he goes out of country working for the government overseas.

We now have a total of 4 empty units out of 661. We would probably have pretty good occupancy if we weren't on site.....but right now we are able to move out units and move them in the same day because we are here to take care of it. I moved out two 10 x 10's climates yesterday morning the moment the customers got the last piece of furniture out and rented them both within the hour. Today we moved out a 10 x 20 and had it rented in 8 minutes.

Remote management would work fine in a perfect storage world where everything runs smoothly and all customers behave ideally.....unfortunately around here, that's a rare day when you get that.

I hear what you are saying Lisa -- these places will keep you hopping some days, and then you get those days where nothing happens ALL DAY!!! We have had days where we had nobody in the office and maybe only two people on the lot all day and you keep checking the phone to see if it is actually working!

Other days the phone wont stop ringing, the lot is full of "problem children" and you need a revolving door in the office for the heavy traffic!

Man I love this business!!!

And by the way -- you already live in Florida -- give me a chance to get away from all the crazies here in California!! (I promise you can hae the second opening! Or take my place when I win the lottery!!)

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Wayne
All American Self Storage
Palmdale, CA.
webmaster@all-americanselfstorage.com

yes, such owners do exist and some own multiple facilities, all of which are unmanned. A call center handles incoming phone traffic and a kiosk is used for payment, issuing codes, etc.

It can be done, but this doesn't mean it should be done by everyone. Like most things, remote is not for all owners. On a smaller scale, the ones I work with who have it typically have an HQ site that IS manned, and a couple of other facilities that are remotely operated. Access, video, and management software allows them to remotely keep up with day-to-day activity, and there are communications tools that bridge the distance.

It's not magical or mystical; it's just an alternative business model for a segment of the industry.

I may be there or I may be going to Vegas for the SSA, I'm not sure yet. If we are at one or the other, I would certainly like to talk to you as well.

But I have to say, we just ran some numbers regarding our kiosk, and as of June, 33% of our tenants are now using it to make their monthly payments. We installed the kiosk in March.

Lisa,
All I can say is wow. I had to laugh after reading your post. Not that's its that funny, but..wow. Good for you guys! Seems like you've dealt with every possible situation


I can see how a kiosk would not work as your only management option. It could be a great addition, but again, the cost of it would have to be justified by how much it would be used. It's not for every facility.

I certainly don't have those crazy stories. But I can say that we had to remove 100" of snow on our property from Nov-March. And now we're experiencing what weather experts call a "500-year flood". Where's all this precipitation coming from?

Monica, I wouldn't mind having a kiosk, but I would bet that upper management would consider it a redundancy, since they have us living on site.

I rented a 5 x 10 unit to a mother yesterday who came up from Ft. Lauderdale to move her daughter out of her apartment into storage. She rented the unit at 5 pm on the way to her daughter's apartment, with no idea how much stuff her daughter had.

They show back up at 8 pm with a 14' U-Haul truck loaded down, and beeped the horn below our living room window, asking if they could rent another 5 x 10 right then so they could finish unloading the truck.

I turned off "So You Think You Can Dance", and came down and rented them my last
5 x 10....all the time thinking "Wouldn't it be really nice to have a kiosk!!!!!"

In the plus column, we haven't had any snow here in Orlando since we've been here!!!! lol...