GI306: Industrial Real Estate Development with Chris Long

GI306: Industrial Real Estate Development with Chris Long

Chris Long is the founder of Longyards, an industrial real estate investment company that acquires and develops adaptable and affordable industrial storage solutions tailored for contractors, small businesses, and large-scale operations. They currently have 10 locations throughout North America. Chris has been involved in the construction industry since he was 14 years old.

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Transcript:

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Chris Long. He is the founder of Longyards, an industrial real estate investment company that acquires and develops adaptable and affordable industrial storage solutions tailored for contractors, small businesses, and large-scale operations. They currently have 10 locations throughout North America. Chris has been involved in the construction industry since he was 14 years old. Thank you so much for being on the show!

Chris:
Excited To be here. Thanks, Charles. So

Charles:
You’ve been in the industry in sales and in construction for many years. Can you kind of give us a little background on yourself prior to getting involved in launching long yards, what you were doing? Yeah,

Chris:
I was a contractor, a licensed carpenter in construction and literally swinging a hammer and, you know, got into real estate. And also at the same time when I was 14, I was knocking on knocking on doors, selling chocolate bars. So it was always, you know, physically working

Charles:
What, I’m sorry, selling

Chris:
Bars. Oh, chocolate

Charles:
Bars, <laugh>. Yeah,

Chris:
So, you know it just came natural for me to like knock on doors and a builder. So, and I just love innovation. So yeah, a little bit of my history, I was a builder and, you know, a few worlds collided. My love for real estate and love for building with long yards, and this is where we are.

Charles:
So tell me about getting into real estate because there’s a lot of contractors, just like, there’s a lot of agents that haven’t gone to the dark side of investing and they’re staying on kind of their transactional approach. What, what made you go over into investing and kind of you know, what was your first project within that? Yeah,

Chris:
So I, it’s the weirdest thing, even as a kid, like I knew I dunno if it was rich, I report out or what originally triggered my thought process to get into like the passive income world, but real estate, I just knew it was a wealth builder. I love the idea of owning and controlling assets. So it, it was always there. And then the first one, you know, it worked great. I bought my first house and as a carpenter, I bootstrapped it, turned into a duplex, then every single month, cash at the door, paying my mortgage. So the basement tenant was paying my upstairs mortgage. And, you know, I always had the vision as a young age, and it was, when it comes to fruition, it just feels that much better. So, you know, that’s how it started. And I, you just never go backwards when you, when you taste that money, you know, and, and that, that freedom that comes with it, it’s a lot of hard work to get to the other side, but the grass is greener on that side. <Laugh>.

Charles:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It took me a couple deals to actually have, find a deal that actually worked, how kind of how it was supposed to. And when you hit that, you’re like, oh, this is, like, now I figured it out. Like this is the this is the whole thing. This is how it’s supposed to work. This is how people actually make this a real business by just doing what I just did, not what I was doing before. So, yeah. Yeah. That’s a great feeling,

Chris:
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. You got it.

Charles:
So give us an overview kind of, of what your company Longy Yards does and really what the concept behind your business is. So

Chris:
What Longy Yards does is basically we provide storage yards. So any listener out there, there’s mini storage or contractor, there’s like your traditional self storage, and then there’s storage yards. We are the same thing, except when you go to a unit, instead of rolling up a door with roofs in a wall, you open up your gate and you got a yard. So in Ottawa, it’s quite literally a long yard. It’s 200 feet by 2000 feet, and with there’s road in the middle. And on both sides we have small, medium, large yards. So that’s long yards in a nutshell. It’s definitely, it’s contractor storage yards. It’s a lot different. And, you know, we’re filling a niche that doesn’t exist. And in, in the iOS space, there’s a lot of people going after bigger yards chasing larger clients, and there’s a massive blue sea, you know, of small and medium sized businesses that need small, medium sized yards. And that’s the problem we’re solving.

Charles:
Yeah. When I talk to con when I talk to brokers in commercial real estate, they’re like, they, they have backlogs of people looking for any type of unique, smaller industrial spaces. So it’s definitely like a, a market gap. But I’m interested in finding out kind of how you identify that market gap in affordable storage early on. Because obviously if you’re a broker and you see people keep on asking you for something, you’re like, well, maybe I should start trying to find these assets to offer to these people that are asking for it. But from where you were as a contractor and just getting started in real estate, what kind of, you know, how did you find that? Well,

Chris:
It’s, it’s a really funny full cycle world because what happened when I was about to be a contractor at the beginning, I was actually thinking about being, becoming a broker. And I interviewed some of the top brokers and I sat down with them and I’m like, what’s that world like? And then I quickly realized it’s just not for me because I’m more of a builder and innovator and I love to see my thoughts come to creation. So kind of like circling back when I became a carpenter, like how I found the problem is because I lived with the problem <laugh>. So, you know, I just has had enough balls to figure out a solution. So I had to put my, you know, I had to put it on the table. I had to sell my house and make this work because no investor would get behind me.

Chris:
No banks would get behind me, no lender, nobody. They’re all like, you’re crazy. And I’m a simple guy. I’m like, you know what? If I need this space, other people need this space. And that’s the thought process. And that’s still, you know, and, and it became true. I started with my first location. I started small, you know, and then quickly leased up. And then now that thing has created financial freedom. Not only that, it’s created a blueprint to do that again and again internationally, which is what we’re working on. So yeah, that’s how it started, started with me having the need and knowing enough to solve that problem myself.

Charles:
So let’s just branch out a little bit, what you just talked about on capitalizing your first properties there. I mean, how do you today finance your properties? Because this is, this is a niche thing. So what, when I hear that it’s something where I think you’re going to, you know local credit unions, local banks is there a mix of bank and SBA loans involved with how you guys work?

Chris:
Right. So we became a franchisor and now we are doing a partnership model. So we actually partner with people, but what’s unique is, you know, the SBA actually approved us. We’re on the directory list. So we, we, we launched our location, we built the FDD, we went on the SBA directory list. If you look at Longhorn Steakhouse, we’re right underneath them long yards. And that’s how we’re doing it. So, ’cause the banks, the local credit unions, their heads just explode when we try talking to ’em about what we’re doing. So we figured after five, maybe 15 locations, we’ll then go, you know, wrap them in a baby’s blanket and explain it to them with a little bottle of milk. But for now, we’re not doing that. We’re going to SBA and, and we’re also have, you know, some investors come in with just liquidity. So we have to get really creative on our financing strategy.

Chris:
But a, you know, as long as people are willing to play with SBA, which is great, we just bought a piece of industrial land, including all of our build out and operating costs for 10% down, right? Like, you can’t really do that. And we could buy raw land for 10% down while doing the long years build out. So it’s a land banking and a cash flow play. But most importantly for SBA, they love small business. That’s what we do. These yard support, small business, it’s month to month, it’s like self storage with iOS. So that’s what’s really cool about it. And that right now, that’s our lending strategy. Can

Charles:
You explain what iOS stands for?

Chris:
<Laugh>? Yeah. It’s kind of a new term. Industrial outside storage. Yeah.

Charles:
One of the things that you were you were talking about there with the SBAI, you know, you probably have listeners that are with us right now that don’t know kind of what the SBA does and what it’s for. Now you have, you’re not just a real estate as you were just saying, it’s a business and real estate put together. So can you explain a little bit about what SBA is used for and how would one go about you know, getting approved for one, what projects they like to see within this realm? That’s a good

Chris:
Question. So what SBA stands for? Small Business Administration. And I’m Canadian. So in Canada we have what’s BDC, business Development Canada. But basically they’re government backed programs that help people launch a business. And what’s unique about us is that, you know, we’re a business with real estate, so we have both. And what people sometimes forget, if you’re buying a multi-family, it’s still a business, the top of real estate, it’s just more brick and mortar and fixed. But if you take apart the two components, there is a business and there’s a dirt underneath it, we just happen to marry both of them. And so what that means is we could buy dirt and SBA will fund your entire build out. So this means you’re carrying costs, how much does it cost to make it profitable? Any fees associated, soft costs, legal costs, everything associated with the project.

Chris:
That makes sense. That could be covered within reason of the project, including construction. Even giving you a fee, if you gotta take time off your job and you give yourself, you know, $40,000 during the six month of your build out, SBA will put that in there. So simple numbers, let’s say it’s a 500,000 project all in which, by the way, we do leases so we don’t have to buy dirt to solve our problem. We can lease on a piece of land to our build out, which in that example, $500,000 is a very reasonable approach. What do you need to come up with 10%, $50,000? And on a project that we’re doing right now, an exact scenario for that, we’re cash flowing over 12,000 net profit a month on a $50,000 investment using our long aired model. So it allows people to get into the game of, of business while, you know, usually not having to come up with a crazy amount of money.

Charles:
So a lot of questions there. Number one is that with land leasing, how long are those those leases for? And that’s how you’re able to get such a high percentage of financing by SBA ’cause you’re not buying the property, correct? Well,

Chris:
Both. We, we just bought it using $3 million and we’re doing a lease for 500 grand. So you do need a minimum of 10 years. SVA wants to see 10 years, the loan is 10 years for, ’cause it’s more equipment financing on that side of things. And ideally we try to get as long as we can with our lease build outs, but with the lease it’s more than 10 years.

Charles:
Okay. That’s, that’s all it is. Do what kind of kind of like caveats in there, are there for renewing that or kind, how does that work going forward? It’s all

Chris:
Negotiated. I mean, you know, we’re not gonna look at anything for, for 10 years or less less than 10 years. So as long as, now the other thing with SBA is they don’t wanna do site plan improvement. So the land has to be ready. This means gravel, you know, we have a tier program with our underwriting tools. We’ve literally built all the ip. And by the way, for anyone, it’s like we are full turnkey. We find the land, we do the underwriting, we give you an executive summary for the bank, we do the construction, we can help with the management, lease up marketing, everything. We’re turnkey so we know exactly what the banks want. SBA, because we’ve gone through it, this is our bread and butter. But for the SBA, they, they, they want a land that’s ready 10 years. And as long as the debt service coverage ratio works and the cash flow, then they’ll, they’ll

Charles:
Lend it. Nice. And how are they, what type of collateral, I had a friend that went through before many years back with SBA, but what is, what kind of collateral are they, if any, are they requesting for you? Right, so

Chris:
There’s kind of like breaking points. So if you’re below $500,000, in some cases they don’t ask to cross collateralize. Now there’s two layers to that. There’s the SBA requirement, and then there’s the bank or the program that kind of, you know, works with SBA and sometimes they might want you to cross collateralize. So that really depends. So, but if you’re trying to buy dirt and you’re going 90 10 loan to value, in most cases, they’re gonna want to see obviously the check boxes, like good credit, liquidity, ideally business experience, or you partner with us and then they wanna see assets that they can collateralize on to then, you know, cover themself in the worst case, hedge situation.

Charles:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty much the, the more times your system is duplicated, the less risky it becomes, I would imagine. Yeah. And that just makes it easier for people down the road.

Chris:
Exactly. Yeah.

Charles:
So let’s talk about this kind of, you, you talked a little bit about this plan that you have that you’ve been duplicating 10 times. How can you, how do you measure the potential demand for a project before investing? Because this seems, I mean, you know, if, if you could easily, if I’m looking to build an apartment complex like this, I can really hone in and see exactly what similar properties are, are renting for. If I was gonna open a self storage complex, I can easily find out what neighboring complexes have, how far they are, all that kind of stuff For you, since this is such a unique business model, you know, I mean, how are you actually finding out the demand when you’re choosing sites for new facilities?

Chris:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So this has gone to a lot of research and development. There’s kinda like two worlds we live in. There’s one where you can go deep into the weeds and we have, we’ve built a whole tam and a whole funnel that goes tam, local zoning, local building requirements buy box feasibility, and then that’s the property, right? And the TAM is weighted distribution metrics of the income we project versus the the cost we project and, and where’s the best dollars spent because we’re international, you know, so corporately we can laser focus on where we think the most data is. And then there’s the other world where you throw spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks, right? Because what the market does is it challenges all your assumptions, right? And we’re new. So, you know, if, if I had 50 locations, I can come to you with more data and be like, okay, this is exactly how much we’re gonna get, but we don’t, so we can go based on the assumptions data that we have internally built, which is internal to our ip, which we do feel confident and we’re validating all those assumptions accurately, you know, but those, those are comps that we, data reference marks that we’ve built internally that gives us the information to now look at a property, because you gotta go, how much can I pay for this?

Chris:
Well, you only know how much you pay versus how much you can get. So we’ve built our feasibility tools to give us give you those numbers. But it’s not an easy process and it’s taken us a long time to get that dialed in. So, yeah.

Charles:
And when you’re saying the tm, just so people know, that’s a total addressable market. So just so you know, kind of what your potential people would be.

Charles:
How is property management and staffing handle at your facilities? Because this is also another thing where you can’t just hire a typical management company. You might not have that many people there, so it may seem a little difficult and your properties are very spread out all over. I mean, from Canada all the way I mean all the way down south in the United States. So it’s, it’s it’s spread pretty far.

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. Management, you know, it took us a while to really craft it, you know, there was assumptions behind it, like everyone has assumptions. And then I had to fly away from my property. So when I left Canada, I couldn’t go back ’cause of immigration, right? You, you do an L one immigration. For those that don’t know, it’s like you can’t leave the us. So, you know, when Anthony Robbin says, burn the, the, the boats to get to the island, I quite literally did that. And then I had to solve my management problem when I could not go back to my facility. That was my first location. So it was a, it was a Guinea pig for a lot of reasons. And, and it took about, I would say almost a year and a half to two years to get management really dialed in. And I was going through a lot of people going through a lot of systems. We revised their lease 14 times. It’s not a simple answer and it’s not a simple process. We’re dealing with different clients, different avatars, and it’s a whole different business. And, you know, we, we, being in different masterminds, we could take some of the, the pieces of other management systems, but this is a whole new wheel that we’ve had to build. And for that reason, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s complex, but we’ve made it simple, but it took a while to make it simple. Typically,

Charles:
How many people are working at one of these facilities? Are there full-time people? How many, you know, part-time people, it’s one

Chris:
Part-Time, but we definitely rely on a lot of technology. But if you have a good size with low maintenance, depending on other structures and whatnot, and you could be between eight and 12 hours a week with one part-time employee. Okay.

Charles:
All right. 10. What would you consider some of the primary risks and challenges associated with your business and your business model? I mean, definitely

Chris:
One of the biggest risks is contamination. You gotta be very careful with who’s on your property and what they’re putting on the property. That’s a big one. And obviously going into new markets with the data that you have, right? There’s assumptions and then buying dirt, you need to make sure that you’re checking all the boxes through due diligence and your easements and everything else. So, you know, on, on the acquisition side of real estate, there’s a lot of risk and you gotta have, be very thorough in the due diligence checklist. It is land, but when people are buying a piece of land and operating a business on it, they need to really be, there’s extra steps that have to be taken. So, you know, there are, there are still risks and we’re getting better every day to, to learn and, and shave those off and, and trim the fat. But you know, I would say contamination would be the biggest one that stands out. Yeah.

Charles:
Yeah. So yeah. So you’re, you’re running a whole bunch of different tests on that and that’s kinda working and I imagine two all of your due diligence when you’re going into a property. Yeah.

Chris:
‘Cause our first property, we lost a year and a half because of one due diligence item where there was an easement and the, the title report messed up the documents on the survey and we could have sued them, but it was like a business decision. It’s like, what do we do? And because of that little trigger, whole site plan approval, curb cut, new, we had to widen the road, going to the property, all these extra things, all because of one little checklist in a due diligence item. And that could have sunk a lot of people. So, you know, every property we learn and we improve our due diligence process. And it’s just part of the joining long airs, right? Like we’ve taken the bruise <laugh>.

Charles:
Yeah, no, I, I get some land investors on the show and they’re telling us about how there’s no risk, there’s no nothing. And you’re like, well, I mean, there’s risk with everything. Yeah. So I mean yeah, yeah,

Chris:
You have protected species of animal on the plan. Like, come on, land has risk. There’s always risk. I don’t care how you slice it.

Charles:
Yeah. And even if there was a building there possibly before and that structure came down, you know what I mean, you could have some sort of environmental problem there. The didn even know, you know what I mean? Maybe you had an old site that was a gas station or a dry cleaner before he didn’t know about that. And it’s not going back against the person that had that 20, 30 years ago. You know what I mean? It’s coming up on you, you’re now the, the present owner of the property, so.

Chris:
Yep, yep. Exactly.

Charles:
So when you guys are running your businesses different properties, what are some of the key metrics you use to track the success of your property? I imagine similar stuff where you’re having, you know, like we talked about already, you’re talking about occupancy, minimal vacancy, stuff like that. Are there any key metrics that you’re really tracking or your team’s tracking regularly to kind of grade kinda where you guys are in the project?

Chris:
Yeah, well this is a good conversation ’cause we have your key metrics of your facility, and then you got the business of building one location and you got the key metrics of building the business multiple times. And we integrated EOS, which is having the right people in the right seats. And then that goes with KPIs that come with it at our unit, at our unit specific location. The, the KPI is obviously occupancy and also the lease up rate. We wanna make sure that our projections that we’re leasing up as we project, obviously your carrying costs are huge and then your market absorption rate. So you know, we’re, we’re really tracking this a lot. And then it goes to our avatars in the area. You know, we’re assuming that these are the most common avatars. We target them with this much, you know, spending this much on the campaigns.

Chris:
So right from the marketing to the lease up to the phone calls to the conversion, these are all metrics that we’re tracking. We’re always constantly, you know, keeping in mind on it first of all, but trying to always ask ourselves how, how can we improve? Because one of the biggest reasons we wanna do is we’ll go to a markets pre-lease as quick as we can. We are, we’re actually pre-leasing before we even go into markets. So when we actually open the cut the ribbon, we’re already, you know, as pre-lease as we can be. How are,

Charles:
Let’s talk about that. So on the lease up, how are you guys how are you guys finding, you know, you’re finding your tenants and I mean, what are these one year leases? I mean, how does this typically work in your, in your world?

Chris:
Yeah, so it’s more like shadow marketing. We, we have to be very strategic with our marketing campaigns because I live in that world. I know what these people need to see, where they need to see and how they need to see it. And, and that’s, that’s our internal process is like getting the right writing to the right people with the right message. So you know, with that we can test markets and really validate all of our assumptions. And, and that that’s a big part of it. So yeah, and sorry, the second question just,

Charles:
I’m just talking about how you are, how you lease the property, so how you’re actually, because this is a very niche thing, so it’s not like going to apartments.com, Zillow, putting up ads, I mean, you know what I mean? It’s like I, you know, it’s, there’s a lot of people in this, in, in industrial as it as it is, but this is very niche part within it. So how are you going out and finding, I guess, landscapers or roll off dumpster tr you know companies or whatever it is that are utilizing your yards?

Chris:
Yeah, I mean, we just go after them directly. So, you know, it’s an education process. No one’s searching this and trying to solve the problem. They don’t know it exists. So it’s an education process and then that takes time and seasoning, and we do that through shadow market.

Charles:
No, that makes perfect sense because I imagine once you have 1, 2, 3 complexes, you already know the type of tendency you do best with ones that don’t fit the model this well, ones that are better capitalized. I have a really good friend of mine that is a contractor in Connecticut, and he does like site prep, and it’s one of those things where he’d wanna move into another area. He is like, oh, I gotta get a yard down there, I gotta like do this. I gotta make sure it’s like close to where it’s market where I’m going. A lot of strategic things that you don’t think about when you pick up the phone and you’re like, want someone to put an addition onto your garage or something, you know what I mean? So it’s like all these different pieces that go together that make it easier for that person to get machinery to your property to get it back out and may cost effective too. They’re not like bringing it four hours each way to drop something off to do something small at your property. So there’s so many different things that I think the regular consumer doesn’t see when they’re, when they’re hiring a contractor. Oh,

Chris:
It’s huge. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there’s a lot. And, and this is a big problem in the marketplace, and you know, that a lot of people don’t know that small to medium sized yards, short and medium term, there’s no real solution that is specific to that target audience in the marketplace, and we’re working on solving that problem.

Charles:
So let’s talk a little bit about the franchise model. You, you mentioned it earlier, and this was something that was very interesting to me and I had to like do a double take when I was researching for this episode because it’s not something you normally see at all within real estate, per se, right? It’s usually like within other type of business models. But could you talk a little bit about selling franchises and a little bit about how your franchise model works and why you would bring in the franchise model then? Because if someone else had a business like this, I would think in, in many situations they have this niche, you would just go, like, most other people turn into a private equity firm and you’re raising money from past investors to build out all these complexes yourself, you know what I mean? All these different facilities. And you’ve gone a little different of a path where you’re going and you’re selling franchises, so you’re building out the brand, but can you a little bit of mindset behind how you guys are doing it. So are you raising capital for some of your own deals while also selling franchises and kind of the thinking behind making that decision? Yeah,

Chris:
Great question. So a few layers to that. First of all private equity, you know, what’s best for the investment is always what’s best for the business, right? They care about one thing, the bottom line, and also it comes down to an IRR and you are a marching soldier for their returns. So at the very beginning, I was very like, okay, well how do I wanna approach this? Because the whole reason I chose entrepreneur is to choose my path and freedom. And if I’m with private equity, they’re telling me how to dance and I don’t want someone tell me how to dance. So, you know, it is, I’m gonna say it’s an easy path because you know, you gotta be branded, you gotta get to that network, but at the end of the day, you’re gonna bed with an elephant. They can, they can roll on you and eat you, right?

Chris:
So strategically, I wanted to be diversified, diversified on multiple levels, which gives me higher enterprise value. I’m diversified on the unit economic level because I have multiple tenants, right? So with that being said, I can lose my top five 10 paying tenants and I’ll still be fine, right? I also wanna be diversified in how I grow my business so I can never have one or three people dictate how I, my path is chosen. So we are choosing paths that eliminate larger people telling us what and how to do things, which, you know, you can look at it pros and cons, but I wanted to build a path to solve this problem without being told what to do and just maintaining control of my company. So franchising is one road, and you know, we’re actually pivoting more to like a partnership model. And the partnership model is more actually just a joint venture. It’s very like a profit share. So we were doing a lot of franchising. We have franchisees, they’re opening up locations, but now we are doing a partnership model where it’s a profit share split. It’s really simple, it’s just the two of us, and that’s really clean. So to answer your question, it was about control. It was about diversifying, it’s about being controlled by destiny. Yeah, no,

Charles:
That’s, that’s a great answer. One of the things is, you talked about before it was difficult to capitalize your businesses to raise money and everything from investors because of such a novel approach. You were a new person to the industry, which makes perfect sense, right? That’s why most people, when they’re raising money, you go to friends and family to raise money initially for your real estate deals when you’re bringing in investors. But can you talk a little bit about how you initially introduced this unique investment strategy to your investors? Kind of like did you do one beforehand? Did you have any type of, did you, I don’t know, like how did you present it to ’em? Did you have any type of, like what kind of pitch deck did you, did you have one deal that was already done and you showed it to them?

Chris:
Yeah, man, it, it’s, it’s, it’s really funny. I mean, when I first started I knew I needed money. I didn’t know how, I never even raised money from investors. So I was a carpenter. I bootstrapped my first house, turned into a duplex by bootstrapping and did it again. But I’m like, okay, this works. But then I wanted to get into commercial real estate and I needed more capital and I didn’t even know like how to do it right now. The only way I knew at that time to raise money was debt simple, right? Borrow this much at 12% interest or whatever, and use that. That’s what I did. So I had equity in my residential portfolio and I would talk to everybody I knew. I, you know, I think it was at a Halloween party, I was talking to one of the guests and he’s like, oh, my, my neighbor actually likes investing in real estate.

Chris:
Sure enough, talk to him. He’s like, okay, I will lend you this money. And to go through the economics of my first property, I bought it for four 70. I couldn’t afford to do much on that thing. Even though it’s storage yards, it’s still kind of expensive. I mean, its big pieces of dirt and site work is not cheap. So I mean, talk to him. Banks didn’t care about anything, I had to say. Didn’t even bother talking to them much, especially in Canada. And then, so talk to this guy. He ended up lending me money in phases. So his milestones like, look, gimme a hundred grand, I’ll build it out pre-lease, you know, get the income, borrow another a hundred grand. And that’s what I did. So I bought it for four 70,000. I put 70,000 down, I borrowed 700,000 from him, total my own money, 200 grand. Then it was appraised at 3.6 million. Now it’s worth 5 million. Now I own. So what I did is I refinanced and I paid him back his 700 grand. I put the rest of my pocket and now I own it, which is bringing him $40,000 a month. And I have, you know, $4 million of equity. And that was my first deal in commercial real estate.

Charles:
Oh, how many tenants do you usually have at one of your properties?

Chris:
How many tenants? It depends on the size, but you’re, you’re typically anywhere from like three to six tenants per acre, three

Charles:
To six per acre. How many acres, what are their, what are your properties range at?

Chris:
Anywhere from three to 10. Okay,

Charles:
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That’s nice. So you, you, you have some scale there between, you know what I mean, maybe between like a few 10 to maybe 50 or 60 different tenants. So it really spreads that over a lot of different rent checks every month I come in. Yeah.

Chris:
And, and that’s a beautiful thing, right? It’s very diversified. Yeah. Yeah, it’s nice. <Laugh>

Charles:
<Laugh>. So let’s talk about kind of as we’re wrapping up here, some common mistakes you see industrial and storage investors make. I know you’re in a very niche thing, but I mean, obviously you, you know, you you see a lot of this within construction and what you do now.

Chris:
Yeah, I would say, like I’m finding a lot of syndicators ex extend themselves very thin going after a lot of assets and not being able to deliver with their partners and their investors. So, and because of the fees they’ve taken are so low because the investors have pushed back so hard and it became so competitive that digital don’t have enough meat on the bone to actually fulfill and, you know, come through on their word. So I’m seeing that a lot in the industry. So I would say that that’s a, that’s a big thing that I, I see as a mistake happening is over extension and you know, coming through on fulfillment.

Charles:
Yeah. As a, as another thing too, it’s, it’s with syndications all over, it’s every different industry within real estate, I mean, you see that where they don’t have enough money to do it. They’re not doing deals that are fat enough. They’re doing really thin deals. And so they’re cutting fees, they’re cutting this, and you know, if they’re lucky, they’re just giving money back to investors, not making anything. And some people that are unlucky might be actually losing some money out of their pocket. So it’s a yeah, it’s difficult to, with everything goes into a syndication, it’s very difficult to do it if you’re not doing good deals, very good deals, you know what I mean?

Chris:
Yep. Yeah, exactly.

Charles:
So overall, your gears of being construction, being in sales being in storage, what are some primary factors that have contributed to your success over that time? Yeah,

Chris:
I, I would say like resourcefulness. Like even as a young kid, like getting started in real estate or younger, you know, I just had to be extremely resourceful to overcome obstacles, to make things work. And that covers like a wide base of so many, whether it’s financing, getting creative with financing, getting creative with deal structure being creative with leasing out my yards, building out the yards on an affordable rate. There’s just so many levels where that impacts us as a company where I’ve had to go and build tools or systems or create relationships that help attribute to our success. So it’s about being scrappy and like, I’m not sure if there’s a better term, you know, besides like just grinding it out or being scrappy or resourceful. But I would say that that’s probably one of the main things that’s contributed to my success. Just not being afraid to say no, not being afraid to hear no and doing what it takes to get the job done. Yeah.

Charles:
Yeah. That’s some, that’s some great insight. So as we wrap up here, how can our listeners learn more about you and your business? Longy Yards? Yeah,

Chris:
Follow us on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram, Chris, I think it’s at Chris Longy Yards, <laugh>. And you can go to my website, long yards.com, Phil, or form if you wanna learn more. And we’re happy to reach out to you. Chris,

Charles:
Thank you so much for coming on today. We’ll put all those links into the show notes and yeah, look forward to connecting with you here in the near future. Thanks, Charles,

Chris:
Appreciate It.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

About Chris Long

Chris Long is a visionary entrepreneur and the driving force behind Longyards, a game-changing company revolutionizing the industrial real estate and outside storage industry. With a background in construction and sales dating back to the age of 14, Chris identified a critical gap in the market and bootstrapped Longyards from the ground up. What started as a single lot has now expanded into a rapidly growing business, providing secure, adaptable, and affordable industrial storage solutions tailored for contractors, small businesses, and large-scale operations.
Under Chris’s leadership, Longyards is aggressively expanding, acquiring, and developing industrial real estate to meet the increasing demand for secure, scalable outdoor storage. His expertise in business development, strategic growth, and capital raising has positioned Longyards as a major player in the industry.
His passion for innovation, tenacity, and commitment to creating smart industrial storage solutions make him a compelling guest for any podcast covering entrepreneurship, real estate, and business growth strategies.

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