American National Self Storage Inc. sold its Homestead, FL self-storage facility last October for $1.75 million. The buyers, a group of investors from South Investment Property, decided to form a new self-storage business, Homestead US 1 Self Storage, thinking that they could harness an untapped market in Homestead and increase occupancy in the facility. A few days ago, they finally got their chance to try, when Homestead US 1 Self Storage opened to the public. The facility celebrated its opening with a barbeque party attended by a large crowd of customers, local officials, members of the South Investment Property group, and other guests.
At the time of purchase, Homestead's facility was about 50 percent occupied. South Investment Property made a plan for increasing occupancy. Investors hired contractors specializing in self-storage to significantly renovate the property. They rebranded the exterior using Homestead's corporate colors, designed a new logo for the business and new signage, and set up a website that could not only handle the marketing of the property, but also its property management and accounting software. HOmestead's building was originally built in 1986. It has been renovated once before, in 1993.
"This property needed quite a bit of effort from our staff to address deferred maintenance left by the former owners," said South Investment Property partner and owner Matt Rotolante. "Occupancy has increased by approximately ten percent since we purchased the property in September 2009. The entire ownership group has been pleased with the property's performance so far and we are looking forward to an excellent 2010."
South Investment Property is a Miami-Dade County boutique commercial real estate brokerage firm. It specializes in site acquisition analysis and disposition solutions. The company works with banks to repossess and dispose of assets that are not performing well. Consequently, it quickly learns of many opportunities in commercial real estate. At the time when South Investment Property acquired American National Self Storage, several other self-storage facilities were also being purchased by various investment groups. For example, Simply Self Storage of Crawfordsville, Indiana was acquired by Storage Express the next day. Citigroup also began advising investors to invest in self-storage REITs. Then, in December, Strategic Storage Trust bought two Pittsburgh self-storage facilities, St. Thomas Self Storage of Hesperia was purchased for $2.7 million, and Equity Based Services (EBS) bought a Colorado Springs, Colorado and a Missouri City, Texas facility from Access Self Storage.