2025 Storage Legal Update | Self Storage Virtual Workshop

Gabfocus Episode 78 | Self Storage Finances 101

While it's not the most glamorous part of running a business, managing your finances is essential to making sure you're getting the most out of your investment. Self storage finances can be complex, so we've invited some storage finance pros to give you a refresher course! Whether you’re an old hand or a new operator, these experts can help you get moving in the right direction.

Live Oak Bank and Lumpkin Development have overseen the finances of thousands of storage facilities. Their advice can help you find holes in your storage facility budget, decide where to invest your extra revenue, and even what to do to plan for the future.

Featured Speakers: Amber Crucian & Brooks Lumpkin
Moderators: Tommy Nguyen

Category: Finances
Focus: Owners & Operators
Aired: November 20, 2025
Duration: 1:

Overview

If you don't have time to watch the whole session, here are some of our favorite parts:

00:00 - Introduction

Gabfocus Takeaway

Your

What are Gabfocus Sessions?

Gabfocus Sessions are virtual workshops for self storage owners, managers, and operators. Brought to you by the team behind Gabfest: StoragePug and Lighthouse Storage Solutions.

Each session features hand-picked industry pros who will dive deep into relevant topics surrounding our industry, share best practices, and explore trends in the market. It's our hope that these sessions help you navigate your self storage business better during these uncertain times.

Want to learn more about self storage? Join us on select Thursdays for Gabfocus.

Questions Answered in this Session

How can you tell if your business is healthy?
What are some early signs that you should be worried?
What are the absolute necessities you should be tracking?
What is a rough estimate of the budget percentage that should go towards each expense?
How much of your revenue should be split between expenses, debt service, and profit?
What is a cap rate? And how do you calculate it?
What additional KPI's can help you gauge financial health?
What does it mean for your business to be stabilized?
How do taxes affect your budgeting process?
What percentage of your revenue should your debt service be?
How do you know it may be time to consider expanding or growing your business?
When looking at growth and investment, what are your potential options?
What are the pros and cons of building a new facility vs acquiring a new one?
When looking at purchasing or building, what are your funding options?
What advice do you have for valuations? And how can you improve it?
What date, numbers, and info do lenders focus on?
When might expanding your business include selling one of your facilities?
What's the right time to sell?
Give us your top 3 pieces of financial advice you'd give to any owner or operator?

Amber Crucian

Live Oak Bank

Website: https://www.liveoak.bank/
Email: amber.crucian@liveoak.bank

Brooks Lumpkin

Flex Storage

Website: https://www.flexstorage.com/
Email: brooks@dyoinv.com

Resources from this session

Awesome Quotes

“Once your operation is in place, you can become more dynamic with your pricing, but that requires data. You need some method of being able to record the data that you need to know whether your price is in the right place - whether you need to move it up or start giving some concessions.” - Warren Lieberman

“I never want to downplay to what someone else is doing. I'm better than they are, then I'm going to be worth a higher price. That's what value is. If you go out to a restaurant and get really good service, would you go back? Yes! What if it was pricier? You'd still go back because you got better service and a better product.” - Jim Mooney

"It's good to be informed on your competition. I don't want to ignore them, but I don't want to respond too strongly to them either." - Warren Lieberman

"We did a survey of 10,000 facilities on their pricing. We found out that two-thirds of those operators didn't change the price of a single unit of the course of a month." - Warren Lieberman

“Rate increases and value pricing are the number one ways to grow your revenue.” - Jim Mooney

"Tenants in more convenient units tend to be less price sensitive." - Warren Lieberman

"The size of the unit is only one aspect of what people are willing to pay for." - Warren Lieberman

Highlights

Foundational marketing strategies to have in place - whether leasing up or stabilized:

Website
Set up listings (Yelp, Google My Business, Apple Maps)
Social Media
Establish Local Partnerships

Lease up marketing strategies:

Lead Generating Strategies (like digital ads)
Aggregators (Sparefoot, Storagefront, etc.)
Awareness Campaigns (like billboards, flyers, and sponsorships)

Your average customer value
Find the average stay length of all tenants. Next take your economic occupancy and divide by how many units you have. That will tell you what the average customer pays.

Multiply the average length of stay by what the average customer pays, and that's the average value of a customer.

For example, if a customer stays for 12 months and pays $100 per month, then their value is $1,200.

Your average lead value

Figure out your closing rate (or conversion rate) i.e. how many leads do you turn into tenants? Multiply that by your average customer lifetime value to figure out what your leads are worth.

Pro Tip: see which lead sources are converting the best. It may be that certain sources have a higher conversion rate, so those leads are worth more to you than a source that barely converts.

Typical Lease-up timeline

According to our panelists, it's typical to see a 3-4% increase each month, putting your facility at 36% after the first year, and 72% after the second.

Alternately, you can look at your lease up goals through the lens of your units, aiming for 20 units rented per month.

For Nick and StorageMax, they pro forma their economic occupancy at 85% with their sweet spot at 92%.