Week 21 Real Estate Investing Update:

Houlton Storage Garages - Finally met up with Xcel Energy to work on getting our pole line buried so we can build our parking lot/driveway. In the end we have to give Xcel an easement along our north property line so they can legally service it. They currently are grandfathered in to be able to maintain their pole line. Basically, if they've been there for a certain length of time, they have legal rights to keep their power lines there. Anyway, because we are asking them to move their line underground, to be able to maintain it, they require an easement. So we had a meeting onsite and discussed that work. Should happen towards the end of September.
Storage Garages of Hudson - Work continues on Buildings 1 and 3. The frost walls are done on both and Building 1 is backfilled. Some excavation on the north stormwater pond has started and it's actually looking like something. Struggling to get my electrician onsite to discuss our needs. Not sure how this is going to work as I feel like we are running out of time to get wires run to our buildings for lights. I'm sure we'll figure something out but it just never happens as quickly as I'd like.
Other - Looking at a few interesting properties. I basically got booed out of the room on one offer and working on putting together another offer on another property in the near future. I felt like most of my time was spent running numbers on different properties and analyzing deals. I think I found a couple of diamonds in the rough. We'll see. Obviously I'll have a full report on FB. Also looking at a bunch of mini-storage facilities on the left coast. This could be interesting and allow us to try to manage a facility from a distance. Not impossible, not overly complicated, just different.
The last interesting opportunity that came up was the potential to work for an education/investing outfit teaching people about self-storage. They have a "division" focusing on developing properties that falls a little more into the category of consulting. It felt like they didn't want to do that as much. I'm kind of have the opposite feeling in which I think that would be fun. The difficulty with developing is that you don't make money during the construction and rent-up phases. Some investors struggle with the idea of that. Anyhow, I'm going to a conference the last weekend in September to meet the outfit and see if this is something I'd like to do. I see it as a way to network with other people who like the self-storage niche. Seems like a win-win.