Supnick Real Estate

It’s the Manager – It’s the Economy

We often times hear from Managers that auctions do not produce significant cash because no one wants to buy the junk anymore, IT’S THE ECONOMY. Our Manager was convinced that auctions were a waste of time from a financial standpoint, and her results in conducting the auctions proved it.

We hired a new manager at that same store who has become extremely successful with her auctions. Our Manager puts notices up on community boards throughout the town such as the library and supermarkets. As many other facilities of course do, she now has “regulars” but she is going one step further and e-mails the regular auction atendees information about the upcoming auctions. She also posts on Craig’s List which is free in our area.

Not only has this generated significantly more revenue for us, her auction results enable us to deal more effectively in the whole collection process. Since we now are far more confident of our auction results, we are now less likely to make poor deals with deliquent tennats to get them out of the space as we often did when we assumed that the auction would not produce meaningful dollar results.

The main take a way in all of this is that the same positive attitude displayed by our Manager in the example about auctions will produce extraordinary results in almost every aspect of your day to day operations and chances for sucess.

Rember the presidential political slogan, “it’s the economy stupid”, well I am not calling anyone stupid here but IT IS the MANAGER and his or her Attitude.

Jeff Supnick
Supnick Real Estate
www.supnick.com

Informing Managers of a Planned Sale of Their Facility

One of the most controversial questions we are often times asked when we are brought in to represent a seller of a self storage facility is should they inform their Manager that they are considering selling? Our usual response is to in fact inform the Manager.

We do this for several reasons:

From the standpoint of fairness to a loyal employee it is the right thing to do.

The Manager will eventually learn of the impending sale, particularly if we aggressively market the property.

The Manager’s cooperation is a great asset in the sale process.

A good Manager who knows the store and its customers is a value added feature and makes the property more attractive than it would otherwise be to a future buyer who would need to find a new employee who would be starting out from scratch.

More often than not there is not a threat to the Manger. We have found that the new owner does not have a Manager that they are prepared to place at the store. Self Storage is a local business, so for national or regional buyers particularly, their existing employees would not be a fit. Only in rare occurrences, do the new owners themselves wind up operating the property from behind the counter.

The manager will more often than not become the buyer’s new employee. During the Due Diligence that the buyer undertakes prior to Closing both the manager and the prospective new owner will get to know each other.

We ask the owners to pay their Managers a bonus upon the sale, which works out well for the Manager particularly when they also keep their position with the new owner.

Despite al of this it is difficult for owners to agree with the idea of telling their employees. Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

Jeff Supnick
Supnick Real Estate
www.supnick.com

It’s the Manager – It’s the Economy

Informing Managers of a Planned Sale of Their Facility

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