The Storage Investor Show
Learn how to turn your cash into cash flow with self-storage and small bay industrial. If it has a roll-up door, The Storage Investor Show covers it. Your host, Kris Bennett, will ask the right questions to help you find, fund, and close your next deal. New episodes every Tuesday.
The Storage Investor Show
The Growing Demand for Industrial Outdoor Storage with Greg Gosselin
Do you need storage data? TractIQ has you covered! Book your demo using my link and save 10% on your subscription! www.tractiq.com/kris
-----
IN THIS EPISODE
I sat down with Greg Gosselin, Associate Vice President at Colliers in Charlotte, North Carolina, breaking down the dynamics of Industrial Outdoor Storage.
Discover how specific zoning requirements and the high demand for storage of materials, trucks, and equipment have positioned industrial outdoor storage as a lucrative investment opportunity.
We dive deep into the ramifications of this shift and its impact on available industrial outdoor storage land, driving up demand and rental prices.
Greg provides a nuanced perspective on the typical features of desirable industrial sites and introduces innovative solutions like utilizing trailers on properties without buildings to meet ever-growing tenant needs.
You don't want to miss this exclusive interview!
CONNECT WITH GREG
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorygosselin/
BOOK A CACTUS DEMO
Cactus will save you hours per deal with clean comps, rent data, and intuitive analysis tools—all in one sleek platform.
Book a free demo using my link and see why top investors are switching to Cactus: https://www.trycactus.com/
NEWSLETTER
Get tips to help you turn your cash into cash flow with The Storage Investor Show Newsletter
https://storageinvestorshow.com/newsletter
Hey everybody, welcome to the Storage Investor Show. My guest today is Greg Gosselin. He is the Associate Vice President at Colliers out of Charlotte, north Carolina. He's on the industrial team and we're here to talk about industrial outdoor storage. Greg, welcome to the show. Great Thanks for having me, man. It's awesome. Appreciate it Absolutely. Man. Let the folks know a little bit more about your background in about 60 seconds or less seconds or less.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so on the industrial team here in Charlotte we cover the greater Charlotte market. I'm from Kernersville, an hour and a half from Charlotte. Went to school in Raleigh, nc State. I've been in Charlotte for about 12, 13 years. I've been in brokerage probably for six and a half years I call yours for three a hundred percent industrial uh been gravitating towards uh, what we're going to chat about today industrial outdoor storage. Uh, it's uh blown up on the map and uh, institutional investors are chasing it. Um, and you know been covering that for the last, you know, two and a half, three years and uh really digging deep into the market and and and what's been going on. But I'm really enjoying it. Real estate brokerage has been a great path for me and I'm really enjoying the industrial side of it.
Speaker 1:Awesome man. We're going to talk about what's going on in the industrial space and how people are making money. I just saw the other day Zenith or some group out there raised $750 million it was north of half a billion dollars to go out and buy, obviously, jv's structure, to go out and buy industrial outdoor storage. But for those who don't know, describe what industrial outdoor storage is exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, that partnership with JP Morgan Zenith went out and raised a bunch of money to buy what we're calling industrial outdoor storage. You know it's essentially an area for industrial users, whether an owner, user or tenant of a facility to store materials, trucks, equipment. You know what have you outside that is usually associated with some sort of building on site and also is allowed by zoning. So that's one of the biggest things that we can chat about today is the zoning of these assets that people are chasing. It's a very specific zoning, has to be heavier industrial zoning and usually it's allowed at a very limited case within counties because of the dirty nature of the sites.
Speaker 2:But in a nutshell, it's essentially you're driving down the side of the road, you see a United Rentals and Sunbelt Rentals. You know those types of tenants that are storing. You know equipment that you can go and rent to work on construction sites that are being stored outside in the yard that can then be transferred to a construction site to be installed on the site, like piping or fire hydrants or even wood trusses for residential homes. So all that stuff can be stored outside and then it's more advantageous to the tenant or the owner to have that Next they're building an enclosed spot where they can go and grab it with either a forklift or a you know flatbed truck and then head out and go, rather than keeping it in the warehouse.
Speaker 2:So that's, just in a nutshell, you know what we're seeing for outdoor storage. People typically, you know, when it first came out, thought it was all for truck parking, so they thought it was. Hey, you know all these deliveries that deliver to people. During COVID, everyone thought that outdoor storage was truck parking. It is, but in the Charlotte market we've seen more demand from tenants and other users for, like I mentioned, the construction material storage or equipment storage to help with the development of Charlotte.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I see it. So, first off, I see it now more than ever. Whenever I drive around. It's kind of like when you buy a new car or get a new car or whatever, you start seeing it on the road everywhere. So now I'm sure, as folks are listening as they're driving in their cars, they might notice it. But I see it now. There's one location near me, near're my office, where it's off the highway, so right off the highway, and it's like just I don't know, probably if I eyeball that maybe three acres and it's just packed with construction trucks or like the big bucket thing that like lifts up for, you know, electrical poles or whatever.
Speaker 2:And it's just totally contractor.
Speaker 1:Exactly Like the signs that you see, like where it says you know, right lane closed ahead or something like that, like a ton of those just parked right there off the side of the road. So I'm sure maybe the state uses it. I'm not really sure, but they might have a couple of different users on that particular yard, but that's what it is right. So you touched on a couple of things the supply of it, the demand of it, and then we want to talk about how investors make's a yard. You described it well typically fenced, like what sort of like security or what kind of features are the tenants looking for and the owners provide for these folks?
Speaker 1:If you want to identify, analyze and invest in the best self-storage deals out there, then you need quality data. Tract IQ provides accurate, transparent and vital information for over 57,000 self-storage facilities and 4,000 storage development sites. What sets Tracked IQ apart is their comprehensive data on 70,000 residential and 200,000 commercial construction projects across the US, along with traffic counts, flood zone maps and much more. See why the most sophisticated investors in the industry use Tracked IQ for their underwriting. Visit trackediqcom forward slash Chris K-R-I-S to book a demo today and save 10% on your subscription. The link is in the description below. Tracked IQ analyze more deals with more confidence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what? We've seen the demand. Like I mentioned before, in Charlotte, the outdoor storage site, the industrial site, will have some sort where someone could go use the restroom, plop down with their laptop, with Wi-Fi, you know, be able to charge their handhelds or charge their cell phone and then go back out in the field. But typically what we're seeing it's gated, lit, it's fenced, typically it's graveled, it's paved, that's you know a premium. But in Charlotte we don't see much difference between you know graveled and paved sites. You know as far as charging a premium for rent, but those are the very high level. You can get into a few more nooks and crannies and a few more you know premiums on the site, but that's essentially the basics of what you would need, you know, on an outdoor storage site.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's very simple. If I think of self-storage, for example, you're going to have a whole lot of other moving parts all the way from the rental system, the management company selling other ancillary forms of income and all that. So it seems like it's a lot more simple on the operation side. What are the leases typically like? Is it a one-year lease, a multi-year lease? What does that look like usually?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the sites that I just described, with a building on, like you said, yes, it is very property management less intensive in that sense there's not as much capex that goes into a site and you do turn over a tenant, maybe add a little bit of gravel to the yard, but you're not doing much in the warehouse.
Speaker 2:You're maybe upgrading the office a little bit, but the leases that we've seen are anywhere between three and seven years and you lock those in with annual escalations, which we're seeing about 4% annual escalations in Charlotte market. So it's becoming more institutionalized. Historically, you know a lot of these owners were mom and pops and you know they leased it to their friend for a year and then maybe a two-year lease. You know that kind of thing. But you know as more institutional investors buy these assets, you know they're becoming more. You know three, five, seven-year, seven year leases, which we've seen more on the traditional industrial side as well, and they're all triple net leases as well. So the landlord buying it and the tenants paying for taxes and insurance. They're maintaining the yard, the landlord is responsible for the roof and foundation, that kind of stuff, but the tenant's essentially paying for everything.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's interesting. So typically a Broughy, a three year plus lease. Okay, so that's the supply side of it. So, oh well, let me back up for a quick second. It's not all the supply side of it. You mentioned zoning and we touched on that briefly.
Speaker 2:I'm sure people listening like okay, what size yard are we talking about? Is it one acre, is it 10? And then where do you look for these types of opportunities? Is it like you said, what type of zoning do you need? Can you repeat that part? And then where do you look for these types of opportunities? Is it like you said, what type of zoning do you need? Can you repeat that part? And then you know what size?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're in Charlotte, north Carolina, and I'm sure a lot of cities have seen this with, especially in the Southeast with the population growth. But we have an area in Charlottesville called South End that historically south of town that historically was zoned for outdoor storage. A lot of industrial buildings were down there. It was zoned heavy industrial Since the light rail was added. A lot of multifamily, a lot of office, a lot of multifamily, a lot of office and a lot of retail. Developers have bought these zoned sites that were traditionally zoned for outdoor storage.
Speaker 2:There was a mass rezoning to a more advantage. You know there's multifamily all going up in South and there's cool breweries, all these oldest historical industrial buildings, the wood truss, you know, uh, uh, build it Roofs are now brewery or restaurants or coffee shops, of industrial outdoor storage land in Mecklenburg County because all of those sites were either purchased by, like I mentioned before, the multifamily retailer, office developers and the county and city never rezoned to the industrial outdoor storage or the heavy zoning in Charlotte Because, like I said before, it's kind of a dirty use, the city doesn't really like it. So you know, talking about supply and demand, and I think this is happening all over, like Nashville, jacksonville, atlanta. You know these sites are being converted to cool hip. You know type zoning, which I said before, are helping the city grow and build.
Speaker 2:These types of buildings have nowhere to go. So with supply dwindling, the demand is still high because of all the construction projects with residential and you know commercial development, the demand is still really high. So you know low supply, high demand. You know we can talk about. You know getting into how these investors are making money. I think we all understand what happens. Then you know an investor buys a site.
Speaker 1:The supply is very low.
Speaker 2:You know they're charging pretty high rents for these tenants to stay and lease these industrial outdoor storage sites where you know there's very few, you know few opportunities and they're essentially charging you know three times the amount that you know they were paying before. So, um, that that's kind of a very high level of what's happening in Charlotte and I'm sure other Southeast um, you know major cities, the supplies dwindling, the city doesn't like zoning to it. Uh, it's essentially impossible to get a zoning, a rezoning to um, industrial in Charlotte because the city doesn't like it. So it's, you know, I think it's happening all over the United States, honestly, which is why these institutional investors are chasing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. So I remember South End. If anybody has been to Charlotte or whatever it used to be, there was one apartment building built I think it's called the Ashton or something like that and you could stand and the units on the back end and look out and it would just be nothing but like dirt and, like you said, the industrial type use. Now, if you go down there, that's the complete opposite of what it looks like. Now there's almost no view because there's just commercial building, multifamily retail, all kinds of stuff and it's cool.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure listeners are seeing that happen in their own towns where you kind of wrap your head around the story. Right, oh, this place that used to be land or whatever trucks parked on it or whatever was industrial use. Now, like you said, there's breweries there, there's other things and activities and retail. It's become the cool sided town. Well, that is great for the residents and all that, but, like you said, it makes it hard for the. If the town is growing, the city is growing, these construction companies need places to put their trucks and vehicles and all that and you take away that land where they can park that stuff. They have to go further out, or now there's just less of it, and so it drives up the both the demand and subsequently the pricing on it. So the story makes a lot of sense. What's the typical size for a yard? Story makes a lot of sense. What's the typical size for a yard? Is it an?
Speaker 2:acre to you. We did an analysis for all these comps that we collected last year, in 2023. And the typical lease sign in Charlotte that we collected was a 13,000 square foot building with about three acres. So if I were an investor buying a site site, I would buy a site that has a 10,000 square foot building with at least two acres of outdoor stores associated with it. We've seen the most demand from tenants, you know, in that size range.
Speaker 2:But you know, but there's there's not really a you know, a perfect site. You, when you say, hey, what do you think is the best size for a site? You know these sites have been chopped up a handful of times and then there's typically, you know, a stream running through half of it or you know trees on one side and you have to clear some stuff off. So you know all the good sites that you know that were in South and are on the North side of town, which were perfect squares, you know they've been purchased by multifamily developers, so the ones that are left are, you know, you know not, not the easiest to kind of maneuver and big trucks through. So but on average, that was. You know, that was our, that was our, our least comp average last year and we've seen the same type trend this year.
Speaker 1:So can you take a site that doesn't have a building a 10,000 or 5,000 square foot building and just put a like a trailer on it, like a construction trailer? Because I think the reason you have the building obviously is because people want to do work in their vehicles or whatever they might need to store a few things indoors. But if you just don't have it, you have the parking space but you just don't have the building on it. You have maybe two or three acres or whatever. Can you do a trailer? Because do they need to use a bathroom, like what's the? Yeah, so that's that's.
Speaker 2:We've seen success with people that have existing trailers on their site be able to lease it a little bit quicker than someone that doesn't have a structure on site. You won't cast as wide of a net to the tenant base if you have that. The smallest tenant base is a site, no building at all, with gated, lit fence, and you kind of have a gate code to get in to park your trucks or leave your equipment. And then the next step up would be something with, like I said, office trailer, like you just mentioned, with the restroom or be able to work on your laptop, and then the next step up would be, like I said, a 5 or 10 thousand square foot building.
Speaker 2:That's that cast of. Why this? Because it allows users to work in the warehouse, have a 60-foot drive-in door to bring equipment inside, work on it if it has troubles, or to work if it's raining outside, to put some stuff together, assemble some pieces together. So then put it on a flatbed to go somewhere. So that kind of casts the widest net. Okay, got it that flatbed to go somewhere. So that kind of casts the widest net.
Speaker 1:Okay, got it. That makes a lot of sense, Okay. So that's kind of the supply side of the equation. On the demand side of the equation we hit a little bit of that. So, like you said just now, it casts the widest net if you have a building on site and all that. What else are these guys looking for? Or is that pretty much it? Is it that straightforward?
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, it is that straightforward. It's being close as well to rooftops or to the center city, especially if it's a tenant that's working on a side uptown or south end where all the multifamily and commercial development is happening but also being close to the interstate 77, 85, where we are here or 485 is pretty advantageous to these tenants that are searching, just because they can hop onto those highways or interstates and be close to a commercial development that we're seeing, you know, being developed along 85 or 77 here in Charlotte. So that's a big sticker as well being close to the Charlotte Center.
Speaker 2:City.
Speaker 1:Okay and then so it's important to have access to the highway, access to where they need to go. Closer to the downtown or construction areas, the better. Right, I'm curious to know what does land like that cost? I know you can speak to here in Charlotte. It's going to be different wherever you go in each market. But from the investment side, and how do we make actual money on this type of venture, what does that land typically cost if you're going to purchase it and try to lease it to an industrial user?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll give you two examples. We helped sell a site off of North Graham Street in Charlotte last year and then another one as well earlier last year, and both of those have 10,000 to 11,000 square foot building, like I mentioned, 16-foot drive indoors and the sites in total. One was about three usable acres and the other one was about two and a half usable acres. Both of those sold for just north of a million dollars an acre from an investment standpoint, so one had a $3 million price tag on it and one had around a $3.5 million price tag on it, and you mentioned usable acres.
Speaker 1:That's important. What is that I forgot to ask earlier? What does that mean?
Speaker 2:Yes, so it's funny because I've been related to traditional industrial buildings. Right, those are built, the square footage is on them, just like self-storage. You have a square footage, it leaks it, I'm assuming at a price per square foot or you know a dollar per month, right? So that's easy to quantify, that's easy to get, you know a civil engineer to price out or to lay out how large the building is. You chop it up and you say, hey, this is X amount of square feet. And you say, hey, this is X amount of square feet when industrial outdoor storage was initially introduced.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a swag that a broker or an owner, google Maps or the local GIS, and say, well, if you take out the woods, here you got a detention pond, you got a sidewalk, our front parking lot, you know the site's, really only you woods use the detention pond, they can't use the sidewalk other than walk or move to a restaurant to go have lunch or coffee, and then the front parking lot is traditional and just employee parking.
Speaker 2:So that's, quote, unquote usable acres. And advertising has gotten and marketing has gotten, you know, from a brokerage standpoint, but there's still no true, you know, measurement of usable acres. Unless you had, you know a surveyor go out or you know someone actually professionally you know measure the site. So it's kind of still ambiguous on how many acres there are, but we try to do our best to measure what that is and that usually what we've seen is initially it was you know how many usable acres the yard is, and then you add the the yard to have a total usable acres and then backing into the math of what we would charge on a price per usable acre for the entire site.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. I've seen some reports that some states, brokers and others will divide that up or come up with those metrics a little bit differently. So here in the Southeast we'll look at usable acres and with the building and all that, and there's other people who underwrite it a little bit differently. But the point is is that they want to know what can they use, obviously, and that's what they're going to pay for. They're not going to be paying for the detention pond, like you said because they can't use that to park any vehicles.
Speaker 1:They could, but that would cause a problem, so that nobody wants. So that's something important to keep in mind. But so back to what you were saying earlier about the recent sales that you had. So about a million bucks per usable acre is what we're seeing here in the Charlotte market. Is that right, okay?
Speaker 2:And it's creeped up a little bit just because, like I said before, the supply is extremely low and the demand is very high from an institutional perspective, but also from an owner-user perspective. A lot of these owner-users were either leasing on their site and you know they sold their site to an institutional investor because they paid them, you know, an exorbitant amount of money and they said, well, I'll just go find something else. But then they quickly found out that you know that there's really not that much supply out there for it. So we've seen that number creep up a little bit, but I would say it's right around a million dollars an acre especially where our interest rates are today.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so that makes me wonder about the Zenith-JP Morgan partnership to go out and do. I think it was like $ 750 million, let's call it half a million, Okay, 750 million.
Speaker 1:So if you're paying, you know. I mean, obviously I've seen some 10 acre sites like in Texas for sale that were just pretty much raw land but it was something you could turn into industrial outdoor storage. So if you're an investor, that's kind of your spread right. What can I purchase the land for? How much would it cost me to upfit on? If it's a million dollars plus or minus per acre, it's kind of wild to think about.
Speaker 2:It's going to be very tough. And one group I work with. They raised $950 million last year to go buy this stuff nationwide million last year to go buy this stuff nationwide. Charlotte's a very I guess it's a smaller market and the price per acre is a lot lower. So if you think about I mean it could be achievable. You buy sites in Miami, you buy sites in Los Angeles, you buy sites in the Northeast Boston, new York, new Jersey I mean I don't know the price of those, but I'm thinking that you could chop off some 50, $60 million sites pretty quickly, right, especially if you get some of the size. But in Charlotte, like I said before, the average size was 13,000 square foot, three acres. I probably should do an average purchase call over 2023. I'll do that for 2024, but I'm guessing it's somewhere around $3 to $4 million. So if you do the math, if you're just in Charlotte trying to spend $350 million, it's essentially impossible Nationwide. It could be because of some of the major cities where the stuff is trading, for you know five times what Charlotte is.
Speaker 2:But you know, go into, you know larger sites, analysis and, from our understanding, you know back to the zoning also question you asked. You know ML2 is our zoning in Mecklenburg County that industrial outdoor storage is allowed. Are zoning in Mecklenburg County that industrial outdoor storage is allowed? It was formerly I-2. There are sites that are zoned ML-1 as well that are allowed to have outdoor storage in Mecklenburg County and then also the smaller towns surrounding have their own zoning as well. But we did an analysis with ML-1 and ML2, and when it was zoned I-2 in Mecklenburg County there were 15 sites over eight acres that were zoned I-2 in Mecklenburg County that could potentially be purchased for outdoor storage with or without a building. So if you do that math, I mean that's it's really not that much, um, especially upscale. So I get a lot of calls from investors and it's we need to.
Speaker 2:You know we need to buy a you know 10 or 15 acre site with some buildings. And I was like guys, there's 15 in all of Mecklenburg County and you know four of them are owned by I'm making numbers up four of them are owned by Duke Energy. You know three of them already sold to other investors and then you know six of them are owned by institutional investors already. So you know, you know the supply is very low to buy this kind of stuff, especially on scale.
Speaker 1:Wow, so would a group like Zenith purchase a smaller yard, a three acre yard?
Speaker 2:I've spoken to them before. I've never transacted with them, so I don't know the answer to that. But I work a lot with Altera Property Group. They raised $950 million and we're under contract for a $7, $5 million two-pack industrial outdoor storage site. They purchased the other three and three and a half million dollar site. So those groups are buying smaller products, smaller sites, because you know they have to have to spend their money and you know they're obviously good deals.
Speaker 2:They're not, you know, stretching by any means, but you know they have to spend their money and and they're going to get a return on them. So it's, you know, they, they, they've understood that they have to chop away at these smaller sites and you know, hit it, hit a home run on either, you know, either a large portfolio nationwide, like I say, a leaseback portfolio, or, like I said, hit some home runs in Los Angeles, miami, the Northeast, other major markets where this stuff is selling at a premium Interesting.
Speaker 1:So would they ever purchase a site and do the kind of the upfits or whatever you want to call it Like? Let's say it's just vacant land, but it's zoned Like raw land? Yeah, just raw land, but it's zoned properly ML2, ml1, or whatever it might be in somebody else's city, but it's zoned properly. It's for sale. Would they ever purchase it? And then, excuse me, do the improvements themselves?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So some investors that I work with would and some wouldn't. It varies depending on whether they have developed experience or whether it's actually kind of worth their time to do it right. So that stuff takes a lot of time, a lot of manpower. You have a lot of these shops. You know four or five guys you know or gals running around you know, trying to buy these institutional size, industrial, outdoor, shorter sites. If they're buying a site that maybe has a small but has four or five acres that needs to be developed, that takes a lot of time, a lot of power to get that stuff done. It's almost more advantageous for them to buy existing sites, just because it's less time and less headache and less hurdles to jump through.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. If you've got a small shop, you're looking for a way to put out $750 million. It's not worth the time and effort to go through the approval, permitting process and oversight of the construction, the development process of that, even though it is pretty simple. Theoretically I assume you get it done within 60 days put up a fence, put gravel and all that stuff. But it's still not worth their time to do all that. If you're underwriting and looking at sites nationwide said earlier about New Jersey and other places as I was asking the question I realized oh yeah, there's other places that have massive amounts of industrial outdoor storage or zoned industrial parcels that would make a ton of sense and cost a lot more than what's here in Charlotte. So that does make sense to raise that much capital and go out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but to answer your question, I think it still will be really tough on On the traditional industrial side as well. A lot of these investment groups have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to go buy traditional industrial and it's really tough out there to find deals that make sense, especially with where interest rates are today.
Speaker 1:Good point. I'm wondering on the ownership side, so if someone were looking at a parcel, what sort of issues could come up? You don't have to name every single one, but during due diligence I'm thinking environmental could be a problem, right, that you want to check for. But what are some other things that you've seen have come up that owners, investors, should be aware of to try and mitigate on the front end? On the front end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so environmental is the biggest one. Like I said before, this outdoor storage use is a pretty dirty use. Historically I've been in, you know, major industrial areas with underground storage tanks or you know equipment where you're working out in the yard and you're, you know, changing the oil or hydraulic fluid you know, kind of in the yard and that's the biggest problem with these industrial outdoor store sites. It can be overcome.
Speaker 2:Um, I've had a handful of sites that went to a phase who had an understanding with you know the seller and you know figured it out. But other things are, you know, with this, checking to make sure with your locals owning zoning that the site you know 100% allows for the use that either if you're doing a sale, lease back and the change of ownership you know they're going to check you know the zoning on that to make sure it complies. Then also making sure that tenants that you potentially maybe had in your pocket when you're buying the site, or tenants that you think would want to lease the site, it would be allowed in-mouth zoning. So those are the two biggest things that I've seen with industrial short sites.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Okay, very good, man, I think we covered a ton of ground. Let's get to the final four questions as we wrap everything up here. So, greg, talk to us real quick about a high point in your career and what did you learn from that experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it was actually, before I started in brokerage, a high point in my career. I was working in the mortgage industry for about seven years, you know, stuck behind a desk and didn't have much opportunity to get out and go meet people like you and I did over at Starbucks or have even have the ability to do you know, a podcast. But my high point in my career so far has been studying and passing my real estate exam on having the ability to get into real estate brokerage and open my world up to real estate. I was introduced to it by one of my good friends, him and his buddies. A lot of real estate up in North Carolina met with him.
Speaker 2:He's like you, have a pretty decent personality. I like you as a person. I think you'd do all right in this real estate thing you should try and get. And then my dad also told me the same thing you should try and get your real estate license. So that was honestly the biggest, the high point of my careers. Passing my real estate test North Carolina is not easy. I consider myself a pretty smart person and that was honestly the hardest test I've ever taken in my entire life. I mean passing that class test and then passing the federal exam to get your real estate license. That was a high point in my career. I knew that I was 31, kind of essentially started over in my career and it was the high point and I haven't looked back but it's been great.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I just had another guest on Brent and he mentioned the same thing that he said he thinks he has the record for the number of failed attempts. I think he has like six or seven failed attempts at getting his real estate license between North Carolina, I think it was, georgia or somewhere else. He was trying as well and I think he said he failed a number of times there. So over 10 times I think he failed the exam altogether between a couple of different states. So I think a lot of people feel the exact same way. I used to teach the licensing class believe it or not for the state of North Carolina. I did that briefly during the pandemic situation, kind of during the pandemic uh situation. So yeah, it was. It's tough.
Speaker 2:The combination of you know class tests. I don't know it might've changed when I was taking it. You only had two chances to pass that test. Failed twice, you got to take that class all over again, so that there's no. I was like there's no way I'm doing this.
Speaker 1:I mean that was a lot of time and a lot of energy.
Speaker 2:I mean, that was a lot of time and a lot of energy.
Speaker 1:It was. It was tough, so this sucks, yes, okay. So, uh, talk real quick about a low point in your career and what did you learn from that experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was, uh, when I was working in the mortgage industry, you know, going in and um, you know, not really feeling like I had like a goal or purpose of what I was doing, um, and that's when I really, you know, started digging deep with, um, you know what I wanted to do, uh, with my life and and kind of restarting over and really thinking about, hey, you know, do I really want to, you know, continue on this path and, you know, not have an opportunity to go to people and really, you know, kind of shape Charlotte and help out with? You know what's going on in the real estate industry, so kind of, you know had some moments where I was debating whether what I wanted to do and how I wanted to move forward in my life, and that was kind of the low point, just not really understanding where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do and I finally just made the jump and started the real estate exam.
Speaker 2:So I'm sure everyone's been through that in their career, where you're just kind of sitting there in the morning and you're like what am I doing? I'm not enjoying this morning. And you're like what am I doing? Like, well, this isn't I'm not enjoying, this it's. It's not something that I feel good about. You know, it's just you're just kind of going through the motions and doing your thing and, you know, not really enjoying. You know what you're doing on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that gets pretty tough sometimes and you feel like you're in a rut. So it's great that you were able to figure out how you wanted to transition and do something else, and obviously that's worked out really well for you. So sometimes those hard points push us to do things that we wouldn't have normally done otherwise.
Speaker 1:And sometimes those rewards can pay off. That's great man. All right. Share with the folks a business or investing industrial outdoor storage resource, whatever comes off the top of your head there, but share with us a resource, that where folks can go and learn more about the industry, the business or just improve there themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, like I mentioned before, I mean industrial outdoor storage is a pretty new asset class, so there's not many resources out there, but one good one to give you a really high level and I mention Charlotte every once in a while is iOS List. You can just search that online. I think it's been mentioned before on your podcast, but it's a pretty good little resource. And then next Thursday in Atlanta there's actually going to be a conference. People are getting together in person to meet and kind of have some networking and talk about the market and what's going on down in Atlanta. So I'm going to that next Thursday.
Speaker 2:And then, honestly, I mean your local business journal. I know it sounds kind of an odd to kind of point people in that direction, but there are articles that pop up every once in a while about outdoor storage. And then LinkedIn. There's some really good stuff on there. If you search, you know either hashtags or however you search on LinkedIn and follow some people on there, there's some really good information and really good articles that you know you can be pointed to. You know online that have information about it. So I'm excited to see where it goes. We're saying it's where self-storage was maybe 15, 20 years ago. It's really in its infancy stage. Justin Smith and I in our employer's office, we like to think we're in about the third inning of the baseball game right now with Industrial Outdoor Storage. It's just getting started. It's just getting going and I'd like to see where it's going. So it's fun and it's exciting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great man. I forgot about that conference. I didn't realize it was next week. I thought about going, but we'll see it might be a little bit too late, so we'll see. All right, man, how can people contact you if they want to do business, learn more or just connect?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. Shoot me a message if it connects. Also, our Collier's website, collier's Charlotte, has my listings and some articles we put out recently on sales and my email address is on there as well. I'm one of those people that have got my inbox and I'm not going to do it. So if you send me a note in my email, I'll shoot you one back and we can connect. But the contact on LinkedIn and send me a message there would be good too.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Greg, thank you so much for being on the show. Awesome Thanks for having me.