SBOA
Member
Spotlight
square feet and
over 18,000 units.
Currently the
firm owns and
manages 18 selfstorage facilities
in 6 states totaling
over 1.2 million
rentable square
feet and 10,450
units. Andover
Properties, LLC
An interview with Brian Cohen
manages and operates
of Andover Properties,
its facilities under its
Storage King USA
own brand: Storage
King USA Self-Storage.
(storagekingusa.com)
1
Recently, the SBOA team
sat down with valued SBOA
member, Brian Cohen
of Andover Properties,
dba Storage King USA,
to learn more about his
self-storage business.
Based in Manhattan, New York,
Andover Properties, LLC, is an
investor, owner, operator and
developer of real estate throughout
the United States. The firm focuses
on the acquisition, development
and management of industrial,
retail and self-storage facilities
primarily in the North and Southeast
Regions. Andover is regarded
as a full-time leading sponsor
in this area with expertise in all
aspects related to these product
types including acquisitions, asset
management, leasing, property
management, development and
dispositions. Its investors and
partners include global institutional
real estate private equity funds
and high net worth individuals.
Since its inception in 2003, Andover
Properties, LLC has owned selfstorage assets valued at over
$180 million through developing,
acquiring or purchasing loans,
totaling over 2.2 million rentable
Page 12
Brian Cohen, tell us
about yourself:
I was born and raised in New
York City, NY. My fascination
with real estate began to form
while I was in college at the
University of Pennsylvania and
interning at Tishman Speyer,
a global company specializing
in developing and managing a
portfolio of commercial assets.
After graduating from college,
Tishman Speyer hired me on a
full-time basis, thus beginning
my career in New York.
Over the next several years,
I began to understand the
opportunities that a career in real
estate presented. My goal was to
start my own firm and I initially
planned to convert industrial
buildings into condominiums.
One of the buildings we bid on at
the time happened to be a selfstorage facility in Greenpoint,
Brooklyn. While underwriting
the building and researching the
self-storage industry, I traveled
to Las Vegas for my first Self
Storage Association (SSA)
conference. Having had a positive
experience at the conference,
combined with all that I had read
about the self-storage industry, it
SBOA Magazine - Fall 2015
became obvious to me that this
is where my focus needed to be.
My decision to go into the selfstorage business was made
easier based upon many things,
including the fact that selfstorage has the lowest default
rate in the CMBS market, with
little capital improvement needs.
The self-storage industry is
also fragmented, which allows
owners and operators to invest
in different geographic markets.
2
You have several facilities,
how do you effectively
manage all of those
self-storage properties
and keep them in sync
with one another?
Our primary strategy is to buy
properties that hit our returns and
demographic metrics. If we buy a
property in a geographic market
that is too far for us to manage,
we have utilized various thirdparty management companies
to oversee our properties. In an
ideal world, we would be able to
cluster more facilities together, but
we have found that with the right
management and administrative
teams in place, on both operational
and store level, we can effectively
operate in a wide span of markets.
We try to instill a sense of
ownership in our managers and
they understand that if the property
beats specified expectations, they
will be rewarded. In a way, these
are the same entrepreneurial values
that I personally have as well.
From our back office, we spend a fair
amount of time on technology and
working on our web presence, as
well as assisting our field managers
in their local marketing initiatives.
Contrary to the REITS pitch that
midsize companies cannot compete
on the Internet, I come from the view
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