Self-Storage in America's Leisure Towns

Interview

Key Takeaways

The only institutional platform in a 99% mom-and-pop market:

Nearly every storage facility in America's leisure markets — ski towns, lake towns, beach communities — is independently owned: no website, no revenue management, handwritten ledgers, rents unchanged for years. Ludlow is the only operator approaching these markets with institutional infrastructure, which is exactly why the opportunity exists.

Supply constraints are permanent, not cyclical:

Federal land surrounds tiny pockets of zoning in mountain towns. Municipalities are actively banning new storage development. Even when zoning is technically "as of right," design review boards require costly aesthetic upgrades and construction runs double what it costs in a secondary metro. As Michael Forrest put it: "You can't manufacture more land in a valley surrounded by national forest".

Demand is driven by lifestyle, not life events:

Unlike major metro storage — driven by short-term triggers like moving and divorce — leisure market tenants stay four to six years versus a national average of 12–18 months. Skis, boats, ATVs, and contractor equipment are permanent fixtures of the lifestyle. Second homeowners, timeshare visitors, and Airbnb operators add durable commercial demand that simply doesn't exist in urban markets.

Value creation comes from operations and proprietary data:

Ludlow targets ~6 cap acquisitions and stabilizes to 8–9% unlevered yields by closing the operational gap sellers leave behind. The playbook is repeatable: website, local SEO, dynamic pricing, 24/7 remote management. Underlying it all is a proprietary rate database — built from overseas callers tracking rents that never appear on CoStar — and an AI agent scanning Google Street View to find facilities that don't even have a Google listing.

The

Ludlow Property Group

Team

Michael Forrest

Michael is Managing Partner and Head of Acquisitions & Development at Ludlow. A born-and-raised New Yorker who now splits time between New York and Colorado, he started his career as a real estate attorney before moving into commercial brokerage and then ownership. The Ludlow thesis began with his 2019 acquisition of a gas station and junkyard in Snowmass — where a conversation with a zoning attorney led him to self-storage, and a 60-day lease-up of 50 units convinced him the model was scalable.

Jason Udoff

Jason is Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Ludlow. Based in New York, he spent eight years at Shorenstein Properties as VP of Investments after starting his career at Hines in international emerging markets development. He met Michael through a mutual connection while investing as an LP in student housing in Boulder, and the two drove I-70 from Denver to Aspen — stopping at every storage facility along the way — before deciding to go all-in on the thesis.

Michael Fishman

Michael is a Partner and Chief Operating Officer at Ludlow. Born in Los Angeles and now living in Carbondale, Colorado, he is a lifelong entrepreneur who built Pure Cycles from his dorm at UW-Madison into a 250,000-unit business sold across 50+ countries (Forbes 30 Under 30). He brought an e-commerce lens to Ludlow's operations: rebuilding the tech stack, cutting the rental process to two clicks, and building the Notion OS — including the company's AI system "Kobe," named after his hero and trained, like him, around the clock.

Ready to get introduced to

Ludlow Property Group

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