How to Replace Your $100,000 Salary with Self Storage
Three proven paths to earn $100,000 a year in passive income from self storage
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When I built the first Mega MAK storage facility in 2020, I didn’t know I was standing in a gold mine.
There was nothing fancy about it.
Bare concrete floors.
Steel framing.
Empty bays.
It looked simple…almost too simple.
Up to that point, I tried doing big multifamily builds, custom homes, and heavy development work. All of it created money, but none of it gave time back.
But when we leased our Fargo storage facility out and the first month’s rent checks cleared, it hit me: this was the business I’d been looking for.
No late-night maintenance calls.
No staff chasing tenants.
No constant fires to put out.
Just space and people willing to pay well for it.
That first storage facility changed everything.
It wasn’t fancy. Just clean, heated units with wide drives and good visibility off the highway. But it leased up fast. The tenants paid on time. And for the first time in my life, I had an asset that made money while I wasn’t working.
That’s what real estate is supposed to do.
The good news is, you don’t need millions of your own money to invest in premium storage. You need one solid project, a little courage, and a clear plan.
Why Storage Makes Sense Right Now
Storage sits in a rare category of real estate that’s both simple and scalable.
It has low operating costs, stable tenants, and predictable demand. It’s not dependent on short-term rent spikes or speculative appreciation.
Most importantly, it serves a real economy.
Since 2020, more than five million new business applications have been filed annually in the U.S. — the highest level on record, according to Census data. Many of these are small operators and tradespeople who need affordable workspace with short-term flexibility, not long-term leases
The plumber who’s finally hiring a crew.
The e-commerce seller who’s outgrown their garage.
The small contractor who needs a premium storage space.
The landscaper who wants to store equipment in the off-season.
We built our luxury storage playbook around these customers to meet their needs and build infrastructure for entrepreneurs willing to pay more for a premium space.
For a state of the luxury storage market in 2025, check out our guide from earlier this month.
Three Ways You Can Make Money with Storage
There isn’t one path into this business. Depending on your background, capital, and appetite for risk, you can take three main routes:
Acquire an existing facility
Develop your own from the ground up
Invest passively as an LP
Each approach has its own financing structure, challenges, and upside.
Option #1: Acquiring an Existing Storage Facility
Buying an existing facility is the most direct way to start generating income. You’re not reinventing the wheel. Instead, you’re taking over something that’s already built, often with room to improve.
What to Look For
Focus on smaller “mom-and-pop” facilities. Many owners built 20 or 30 years ago, paid off their loans, and now want to retire. These properties often have below-market rents, limited online presence, and inefficient operations.
Look for:
20,000–40,000 square feet
Purchase price between $1–2 million
Occupancy above 70% with room to grow
Solid location and access (visibility from major roads helps)
Financing the Deal
You’ve got several realistic ways to finance your first acquisition:
1. Traditional Bank Loan (SBA 7a or 504):
Banks like storage. It’s considered stable collateral. Some SBA loan programs can fund up to 90% of the purchase (depending on your credit), leaving you with a 10% down payment. That means you can buy a $1.2M property with $120K out of pocket.
2. Seller Financing:
Many older owners prefer steady income over a lump-sum payout. Offer to buy their property with 10–20% down and finance the rest directly with them. You’ll often get better terms and avoid traditional underwriting hurdles.
3. Private or Partner Capital:
If you have operational skills but not enough cash, raise equity from investors who want passive returns. Offer a simple structure of preferred return and a 70/30 split on profits. Transparency and a solid business plan go further than hype.
The Upside
With minimal improvements — automated gates, better lighting, online leasing — you can increase revenue 10–20% and lift the property’s value by hundreds of thousands.
This is why storage is not speculation, but instead is more of a game of buying underperforming assets and fixing them to produce more income through better leasing, value-add improvements, and pricing.
For a deeper look at how to acquire storage using creative financing strategies, check out my guide on How to Buy Real Estate with Other People's Money.
Option #2: Building Your Own Storage Facility
If you understand construction or want to create equity fast, development is where the biggest upside lives.
You’re not limited by someone else’s operations. Instead, you’re designing an asset from scratch to maximize yield.
What It Takes
A realistic first project looks like this:
Size: 25,000–35,000 square feet
Land: 2–3 acres
Total Cost: $2.0–$2.4M ($80–90 per sq. ft.)
Financing: 70–75% bank loan, 25–30% equity
Rents: $1.25–$1.40/sq. ft./month
Stabilized NOI: ~$180,000/year
Cash Flow After Debt: ~$75,000/year
This is an example.
There are obviously a lot of variables that go into how much you can purchase for, rent for, and how much a storage facility cash flows. Specifically based on your location and how cheap land is. North Dakota and other growing cities in the Midwest offer land costs lower than those in larger, more crowded cities.
How to Finance Development
1. Local Banks:
Regional lenders fund most of our projects. They’ll lend up to 75% of cost once you show land control, construction bids, and a clean pro forma. Relationships matter more than perfect credit.
2. Equity Partners:
If you’re short on capital, raise equity from investors who want exposure to real assets. Offer an 8% preferred return and equity split. The key is trust and a clear plan for how you’ll execute construction and lease-up.
3. Seller or Landowner Partnerships:
If a landowner is sitting on the perfect parcel, offer to make them a partner instead of paying all cash. Their equity can serve as part of your capital stack, cutting your out-of-pocket need.
4. Sweat Equity:
If you manage entitlements, design, and construction oversight, assign value to your time. Document your role as development manager and earn equity in the project.
For a full breakdown of how to build your first luxury storage development, check out The Luxury Storage Development Playbook.
Why It’s Worth It to Build Storage
When you build, you capture both construction margin and long-term cash flow.
You can refinance once stabilized, return much of your equity, and keep ownership. That’s how small developers quietly build multi-million-dollar portfolios within a few years.
Option #3: Investing Passively as an LP
If you’re too busy running your business, working 40 hours a week in a W2 job, or you prefer to stay out of operations, you can still participate as a limited partner (LP).
This is how many professionals diversify into real estate without managing anything directly.
What to Expect as an LP
Here’s an example of how an experienced storage operator might structure an investment with an LP accredited investor:
8% preferred return to LP investors
70/30 profit split after the preferred return
5–7 year hold
Target IRR: 15–18%
Tax benefits: Depreciation and cost segregation passed through
LP investing means you’re partnering with an experienced builder or developer who already has the systems, land pipeline, and contractor network.
Your capital gives them fuel to scale, and you receive steady, tax-advantaged income in return.
It’s ideal if you want exposure to storage but don’t want to underwrite sites, deal with zoning, or manage construction risk.
For a more detailed look at how to invest as a passive LP investor, check out The Passive LP Investor Playbook.
If You Decide to Raise Outside Capital…
Whether you’re buying or building, capital will be your biggest hurdle (and your biggest teacher).
You don’t need to start with institutional equity. In fact, you shouldn’t.
Start small, local, and transparent.
Here’s what’s worked for me:
Show real numbers, not projections. Bring examples of rent comps, expense ratios, and financing terms.
Speak in simple language. “This is a $2M project. The bank funds $1.5M. I need $500K in equity. Here’s how returns and payouts work.”
Build trust before you raise. Share content, walk people through your process, and demonstrate competence.
People invest in operators they trust long before they invest in spreadsheets.
Once you prove the first deal, raising for the next one gets easier.
Operating the Asset
Whether you own one facility or ten, the model doesn’t change much.
You don’t need a ton of on-site staff. You can do a lot yourself or with a contractor or two using repeatable systems.
Install cameras, automated gates, and remote monitoring. Handle leasing through digital contracts and recurring payments. Contract local help for snow removal and occasional maintenance.
A 35,000-square-foot facility can run lean, often under $5,000 a month in total expenses.
The simplicity is what makes it scalable. You can own multiple sites across regions without building an empire of employees.
Scaling to Real Freedom
One facility that cash flows $75,000–$100,000 a year is life-changing. But the real leverage comes when you repeat the process.
Build or buy three of those over five years, and you’re sitting on $300,000 in annual cash flow plus millions in equity.
This is not a “get rich quick” scheme. This is another path to compound your wealth with a focus on ownership and cash flow: steady, boring, and predictable.
It’s the same model we’ve used at MAK Capital to scale to more than $65M in assets.
The Bottom Line
Storage isn’t trendy. It’s not going to light up your social media feed or get you featured in a business magazine.
But it’s the cleanest, most reliable real estate play I’ve ever seen.
You can buy one.
You can build one.
You can invest in one.
Each path gets you closer to owning your time.
That’s the real win — not the cash flow, not the valuations, but the freedom to decide what to do with your day.
Thanks for reading,
Marc Kuhn, CEO at MAK Capital
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