If you missed today’s Small Bay / Basecamp networking call, make the next one. Not because anyone was pitching. Quite the opposite. We had people openly sharing what is working, what is not, and where deals are breaking. A few things I took away: - Ground-up construction is getting punished by cost. One developer walked away after the spread dropped below a point and cash-on-cash fell under 6%. - Several experienced operators are shifting toward existing value-add assets instead of trying to build everything from scratch. - Phasing matters. One operator is building only 12 units first — with LOIs already in hand — before deciding what the market wants next. - Capital structure matters as much as the real estate. - Sometimes the answer is not figuring out how to build cheaper. It is figuring out what already exists and putting it back to productive use. And then you get the stuff that never shows up in a webinar: contractor relationships, entitlement lessons, financing problems, marketing systems, mistakes, local market intelligence and actual numbers. That is the value of these calls. Exposure. You hear how other people think. You hear where they got hurt. You hear what they are testing. And every once in a while, somebody says one sentence that changes how you look at your own deal. No presentation. No polished case study. Just operators talking to operators. If you were not on this one, be on the next one. The conversations after the introductions are where the value is.

Harvey's post about the 170+ mph wind load requirement catching him by surprise near the Gulf got me thinking - underwriting a small-bay deal for the first time, and it feels like there's always one item that doesn't show up until you're deep into design/permitting, not during the initial pro forma. Wind load, soil/geotech surprises, utility capacity, a jurisdiction's specific fire-rating requirement for demising walls, whatever it was for you. For those a few projects in - what's the thing you now check before going under contract that you didn't think to check on your first deal, and how much did skipping it cost you the first time around?

One thing this acquisition reinforced for me… I think we’ve (as a company) been asking the wrong underwriting question. Most people ask: “How long will lease-up take after closing?” I think the better question is: “How much recurring monthly revenue can we have committed before we unlock the gate?” For me, due diligence doesn’t begin when the PSA is signed. By the time we put a property under contract, we’ve already spent weeks—or sometimes months—studying it. We know the market. We understand the infrastructure. We’ve looked at zoning, utilities, operations, competition, and replacement cost. The contractual due diligence period is there to verify what we’ve already learned. But once we’re under contract, something changes. We now have control of the process. That’s when execution begins. Now we can walk into the supply houses, introduce ourselves, talk to prospective customers, build referral relationships, schedule move-ins, and begin assembling the business that will operate on Day One. The goal isn’t to spend 60 days wondering whether to buy the property. The goal is to spend 60 days proving we’re ready to operate it. Closing shouldn’t be the beginning of leasing. Closing should be the day you unlock the gate for customers who already know you’re coming.

One of the biggest lessons in commercial real estate is that the best opportunities rarely look like the best opportunities. The property we just put under contract wasn’t the newest. It wasn’t the prettiest. And it certainly wasn’t the one everyone else was chasing. It was an existing operating business in North Carolina with infrastructure already in place, existing customers, and a seller whose objectives extended beyond simply getting the highest price. The lesson? Great deals aren’t found by looking at listing prices. They’re found by understanding what has already been built, what it would cost to recreate it today, and—most importantly—what the seller is actually trying to accomplish. We didn’t structure this transaction around price. We structured it around solving a problem. When both parties leave the table feeling like they won, that’s usually the beginning of a great investment. There’s a lot of overlooked value hiding in plain sight if you’re willing to ask better questions.

I’m pretty settled on what outdoor space to offer to the flex tenants I’m starting with a building at the edge of the property where there will be access to their yard and back of their unit from the road. The next building facing that one would have none. I made some progress designing the section of stand alone storage yards. I have a section that will be 80 ft deep from road to tree line and a good 550’ long so I came up with 65’ deep yards. I explored the Longyards model and thinking about using the same type of covered temporary fence panels and offering up fenced to suit in 25’ wide increments. Longyards is offering just the fenced yards starting at .18 sf up to .46 so they have a range. I have designed a 500’ long x 30’ deep carport so the back of the yard is partially covered. Another available option will be shipping containers. I’m wondering if the 30’ carport deep is too shallow. I’m not trying to compete with RV storage or I’d make it 45’ but 30’ ought to be good for more sensitive equipment that you want out of the sun. I don’t think I could have made so much progress without AI to help me stay organized. The real question on this of course is what will they be willing to pay. This is kind of a hybrid so comps aren’t just at a keystroke. Most of the covered storage I see is boat and rv and most of the contractor yards are just fenced pens or acreage. I welcome any comments or feedback.