A Practitioner's Guide to Street Rate, In-Place Rate, Length of Stay and the Rent Roll That Has No Leases
Julian R. Sterling
These are the companion files of Self-Storage Real Estate by Julian R. Sterling.The book on Amazon →
Every other asset class hands you a lease. A self-storage store hands you
470 customers who can cancel this month. The price on the website is £32.65/sq ft. The rent roll
collects £35.93/sq ft. That gap — 10.0 per cent — is not a market fact: it is an operating record,
and resetting every customer to the website price removes 17.7 per cent of the asking price.
These are the workbooks the book was written from, corrected and completed: the first version
announced a lease-up curve, a ten-year cash flow and an optimum increase it did not compute, and
three of the four files held typed values. Every figure is now a live formula, and every workbook
ends with a sheet that compares it with the book line by line. Around them: the same four with the
inputs emptied, thirteen working documents, forty questions that mark themselves, and three cases
the book names and never takes to a number.
The four workbooks
The whole book
The Self-Storage Model
The cohort engine every figure in the book is computed from. Self-storage has no leases, so the rent roll cannot be read from a schedule — it is built from cohorts of arrivals decaying against a hazard of departure, each carrying the increases it has received. 590 units across six sizes, the three prices, length of stay, the cost base and the break-even (36.3 per cent). Revised: the lease-up curve is now built from the cohorts (the store first earns money in month 25, after £535,460 of losses), the ten years, the sale, the debt and the bid are computed (£7,279,057, 13.7 per cent below the asking price once acquisition costs are paid), and the optimum increase is found in closed form. What a move-out loses is valued properly: the average customer in the store is worth £2,691 from here on, not the £1,094 of Chapter 8's shorthand. Fifty-six checks.
The decision the asset class turns on, laid out so you can put your own response curve into it. Fill in your move-outs in the month after each increase cycle and the file fits the response exponent, solves for the increase that maximises net operating income — 12.82 per cent on this store, worth £0.4 million of value — shows how flat the answer is, and repeats the search under four other beliefs. Revised: the decision sheet held values and did not recalculate; it now does. At the book's exponent the optimum is exactly where four increases land on the 62 per cent cap.
Month by month against the plan: move-ins, move-outs, net gain and the enquiries behind them. Its diagnostic columns answer the question most lease-up plans have never been asked — occupancy equals move-ins times length of stay, so what occupancy can your actual flow hold? Here that flow is 34.0 new customers a month, indefinitely. Revised: a second diagnostic uses a measured length of stay, because one read off a filling store's own move-outs overstates it (16.4 months in the first year against a true 13.8).
The bridge from asking price to bid, the six inversions — each of which closes the gap on its own — and the omissions table for the facing page, with a column saying where each unpriced item can actually be found. Revised: it was typed values and is now live from its asset sheet; it ends where Chapter 29 does, at the bid of £7,279,057, and the length-of-stay inversion is corrected to 16.0 months (the book prints 16.7, having charged marketing as a share of rent).
Twelve workbooks, the printable documents and the read-me. Each group below can also be
downloaded on its own; the four book workbooks alone are in The_Four_Workbooks.zip392 KB. Last revised 23 September 2026.
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The four workbooks with every input emptied. The checks sheets count what is still missing and test what holds for any inputs.
Every chapter
Your tape, your curve, your flow, your bid
The cohort engine, the planner, the tracker and the bid sheet, with the same formulas and every blue cell emptied. The increases tested and the search grid are kept. Nothing runs until the last input is in; then the whole engine does.
The book’s inputs are listed in a text file inside the archive. Type them back in and the book’s figures come back with them: 13.8 months, £510,124, an optimum of 12.82 per cent, a bid of £7,279,057.
Blank_Model_Set.zip · ZIP · four workbooks and book_inputs.txt
The documents the chapters describe
Thirteen pages to print and use. A4, with margins wide enough for US Letter.
Chapters 1 to 30 · Appendices A and D
Thirteen working documents
The five-minute test and the six things to check first. The eighty-five questions of Appendix A across five pages, with a measurement table for the response to an increase. Length of stay from the two raw series, with the three definitions side by side. The lease-up plan tested against the flow it requires. The catchment: the planning register and the competitor walk. Arrears, the lien and the licence. The wrapper: VAT and the going concern, capital allowances, the protection product. The operator agreement and the unstaffed store. The committee paper with the omissions table.
A workbook that marks itself. Answer in the yellow cells; the marking fills in as you go.
All parts of the book
Forty questions on the book
Seven on the unit-month and the four prices, seven on increases, stay and the customer, seven on denominators, occupancy and costs, six on income lines, tax and the market, seven on cash flow, value, debt and the bid, and six on the three cases. Every numeric answer comes from the models; the reasons are on the last sheet.
New material, not a restatement. Three situations the chapters name and never take to a number. Each case is one workbook: the note is the first sheet, the model is the rest, and a checks sheet closes it.
Chapters 5 and 24 · Case one
Moving to the optimum, and the two years in between
Chapter 24 says a buyer moving the increase toward the optimum would want to see the rent roll re-age, and sends the reader to the workbook. Every cohort in every month: move-ins jump at once, income dips below the old policy in months 1 and 2, and year 1 delivers £9,584 of the £23,962 steady-state gain (40 per cent). It all arrives only after two years, when every customer has climbed four increases to the cap.
Chapter 7 · Case two
The deeper offer, and the stay it has to keep
Chapter 7 recommends testing a deeper promotion in two stores and never says what result would decide it. Eight weeks free, converting 15 per cent more of the same enquiries (ADDED), adds £82,157 a year if its customers stay as long; it loses money if they stay 0.81 of a month less. The test decides it at month twelve: 37.7 per cent of the intake still there, against 39.9 for today’s offer.
Chapter 20 · Case three
The store next door, month by month
The chapter’s opening followed month by month: half the fall in occupancy by month 9, ninety per cent by month 30. A buyer valuing on the trailing twelve months nine months later (ADDED) overpays £875,095. Holding the flow is worth up to £2,424 for each extra move-in, 19 times what marketing pays for one today.
Blue on pale blue is an input you may edit. A yellow fill is the carrying
assumption of the sheet — the one to argue about first. Black is a formula.
Nothing is locked, protected or watermarked. There are no macros and no external links.
Every workbook ends with a sheet called Checks: the figure as the book
prints it, the figure the workbook computes, the variance and a status, closing on ALL OK. If a line ever
reads “to check”, the workbook and the book have drifted apart — and the
workbook is right.
Three numbers to compute on your own store
Length of stay, in months. Not churn, not occupancy — the
expected months an arriving customer stays. Here it is 13.8 months. Almost everything else is a
function of it, and most operators do not report it.
The move-in flow your occupancy requires. Occupancy equals move-ins
times length of stay. Holding 79.6 per cent here takes 34.0 new customers every month, indefinitely.
Ask any lease-up plan for that number before you ask it anything else.
What you spend to stand still. Discount plus marketing, divided by
nothing — just the annual total. Here it is £109,074, or 11.0 per cent of the rent roll, purely to
replace the customers who leave. That is the recurring cost of an income with no contract
behind it.
One warning, because it decides the answer
The increase applied to existing customers is what manufactures the rent roll, and how
far to push it turns on a number nobody publishes: how sharply customers respond. The
second workbook exists to measure it rather than assume it. What the book can say is which
part of the conclusion survives not knowing: the optimum ranges from 10.1 per cent to 17.4 per cent across
plausible beliefs — too wide to act on as a figure — but under every one of
them it lies above the 8.2 per cent this store applies. The magnitude does not survive. The
direction does.
What changed, and when
23 Sep 2026
The four workbooks corrected and completed. The model now computes what it announced: the lease-up from the cohorts, the ten years, the debt, the bid (£7,279,057) and the optimum increase (12.82 per cent); the planner and the bid sheet recalculate. Corrected: a move-out loses £2,691 of value on average, not £1,094; with marketing charged per customer, the length-of-stay inversion is 5.60 per cent and 16.0 months, not 5.35 and 16.7, the gap to the national churn is worth £29,958 a year, not £22,968, and a month of stay £19,696, not £15,369. Added: a blank set, thirteen working documents, forty questions that mark themselves, and three cases.
How do you value a self-storage facility?Capitalise NOI after a management fee: £905,532 at a 6.25 per cent cap rate is £13,566,022, and resetting rents to street takes 10.8 per cent off.
How long does a self-storage lease-up take?Occupancy settles at move-ins times length of stay: 38 a month and a 14-month stay hold 88.7 per cent, reaching 80 per cent in month 35.
What is the optimal ECRI for self-storage customers?Fit move-outs to a measured increase, then maximise net rent: 8.83 per cent, £18,166 a year on 300 customers, and 15.14 per cent where vacated units re-let.
Closing the DealTwo defensible bridges 20.70 million apart, a peg worth 7.00 million, and the six choices that remove 6.60 of a 12.00 earn-out.
CMBS and CRE CLOsWhere the loss actually lands, from appraisal reduction to realised severity, and what the B-piece is really being paid for.
How to Read a Commercial LeaseThe three refinements chapter 19 names and never performs, and the renewal rate below which the mark-to-market is worth nothing.
How to Read a Credit AgreementWhere the default actually comes from, the cure that costs 5.5 times the other, and the capacity nobody adds up.
How to Read a Real Estate Loan AgreementThe cure ratio in closed form, the four-point window in which the cheap cure works, and the cure sized to the wrong threshold.
Office Real EstateA six per cent yield that returns 3.2 per cent once the re-letting cycle is paid for, and the headline-to-net-effective rent arithmetic.
Private Equity Real EstateBoth worked waterfalls to the dollar, the two capital stacks, and the arithmetic of the promote made changeable.
Private Markets PerformanceThirty-one of the thirty-three figures chapter 19 publishes reproduce exactly — and the two that do not are named rather than quietly adopted.
Raising a Real Estate FundThe chapter 17 funnel run on a calendar — when the first close actually lands, and why more travel does not help.
Real Estate Financial ModelingProperty, development and fund models built line by line, and the modelling test worked end to end.
Real Estate Fund ManagementThe waterfall of 6.11, the build-to-core of 8.7 and the proceeds gap, reproduced as live formulas rather than asserted.
REIT Analysis and ValuationFFO of 532.0, AFFO of 381.0, net asset value and dividend safety — every figure a formula you can change.
Retail Real EstateThe occupancy cost of every unit in a centre, the sixteen per cent of the rent roll no tenant can sustain, and the right-size-convert-or-hold decision priced.
Sale and LeasebackA €179.5 million transaction end to end, with rent cover measured on the entity that actually signs the lease.
The Fund Finance ProfessionalChapter 8 builds the reported-to-eligible NAV bridge; chapter 9 computes every ratio without it. Two points at every state — and what a subscription line does to the IRR.
The Growth Equity InvestorWhat a pro rata cheque really costs, and the band where defending your ownership loses money.
The Private Credit InvestorThe two coverage ratios are not measured on the same thing: the erosion is 47.7 per cent, not the 28.7 the headline implies.
The Private Equity Fund Controller PlaybookThe book defines IRR, DPI, RVPI and TVPI, tells you to update them at the exit, and prints not one value. Computed: a 1.833× deal inside a fund at 0.892 TVPI.
The Venture Capital AssociateWhat defending a position costs, and how many companies a reserve pool actually defends.
Real Estate FinanceFour people look at one building and reach four numbers; the lender is whole only above 105,109,489, twelve per cent below today’s value rather than forty.
Financial Risk ManagementA fund inside every limit that cannot meet a redemption — and the number that decides it is the one with no currency attached.
Business ValuationThree advisers land 26.8 per cent apart on one company, and the whole gap turns out to be 1.96 points of perpetual growth.
Quantitative FinanceThree models agree to a quarter of one per cent about a number that one unobservable input moves a hundred and three times as much.
Asset ManagementFour people quote four returns for one mandate, all correct and 2.7017 points apart — forty-eight times the manager’s net skill.
Alternative InvestmentsA manager reports 13.29 per cent and the endowment earns 6.26 — both correct, and only a third of the advertised advantage arrives.
Credit AnalysisFour defensible EBITDAs on one borrower give leverage from 3.19x to 6.47x — and the add-back argument is fifty times the covenant headroom.
Venture CapitalOne company out of twenty-eight returns 56.7 per cent of the fund, and half the capital goes in after the decision — at half the return.
Machine Learning for FinanceFive people quote the accuracy of one credit model, all five are right, and the number that decides how much money it makes is none of them.
Commercial Real Estate InvestingThe equity earned 8.6647 per cent and the investor received exactly 8.0000 - the preferred return, and nothing above it.
Mergers and AcquisitionsThe board paper says the deal creates 13,436,667 of value. The arithmetic says it destroys 17,530,855. Nobody is lying.
DerivativesThe treasury report says the hedge cost 1,233,698. That is the interest differential, not a cost. The number that mattered appears in no report at all.
Treasury ManagementFive cash balances for one company, all correct and 145,600,000 apart — and the revolver that is two-thirds of the liquidity leaves at a revenue fall of 8.4127 per cent.
Financial Planning and AnalysisRevenue 3.0190 per cent above budget and operating profit 16.3209 per cent below it, in the same quarter, with every figure correctly stated.
Energy TradingA position report that is 91.7031 per cent hedged and correctly computed, on a book that is short 2,542,000 MWh — and a margin call of 198,400,000 the next morning.
Construction Cost ControlA contract sum of 26,301,102 became a final account of 29,153,363 on the building that was drawn — and 85.8 per cent of what was lost was knowable on the day it was signed.
Trade FinanceSix routes to payment on one 4,200,000 export order cost between 178,040 and 223,268, a spread worth 14.8 per cent of the margin, and a day of buyer credit costs 1,031.76.
Cost AccountingOne factory costed twice on the same 13,440,000 of overhead, and 4,053,091 moves between four product families.
Pricing StrategyA list price of 148.00, a pocket price of 112.51, and the nine deductions in between — with what one point of price is actually worth.
Contract ManagementA bid 5.50 a unit cheaper, signed on paper worth 9.81 a unit more — and 94.68 per cent of it was knowable on the day of signature.
Capital MarketsFour defensible readings of one bond, the cost of an issue under each convention, and the placement discount computed at a constant discount.
Financial RegulationThree ratios pass and the fourth is in breach by 1,956.0 million: the output floor, the liquidity buffer after encumbrance, and the loan split.
Bank ManagementFour defensible readings of one balance sheet, the deposit beta measured two ways, and the liquidity that lasts 3.9 days.
The Real Estate WorkoutFour ways out of one broken loan, discounted to today, and the 58.7 cents at which a payoff beats enforcement.
Go beyond the companion files
Self-Storage Real Estate develops the complete framework behind these models, with the assumptions, trade-offs and worked examples tied together.
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