Today's guest are Alex Morrison and Andrew Runnette.

 

Alex Morrison has broad experience across real estate, capital markets and startups. Alex currently is the founder and CEO of Portal Warehousing, an innovative real estate operating company in the flex warehousing space.

 

Show summary: 

In this podcast episode, Andrew and Alex, co-founders of Portal Warehousing, discuss their innovative flex warehousing business. They detail how they provide small industrial spaces to various businesses, emphasizing the flexibility and services they offer, such as logistics support and community building for their members. They share their strategic approach to market underwriting, building selection, and the importance of location in gentrifying areas. Despite challenges in scaling and logistics, they highlight their efficient systems and the high demand for their spaces, evidenced by rapid occupancy rates. The co-founders invite building owners to consider management deals with Portal Warehousing, which seeks to expand its unique model nationwide.

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Intro (00:00:00 )

 

Concept of Flex Warehousing (00:02:17 )

 

Finding Properties and Plugging Tenants (00:07:17 )

 

Membership Perks and Differentiation from Self-Storage (00:12:27 )

 

Challenges in Scaling and Overcoming Them (00:17:08 )

 

Underwriting Deals and Selecting Locations (00:18:17 )

 

Underwriting Markets and Demand Generation (00:18:59 )

 

Building Criteria and Location (00:20:12 )

 

Real Estate Cost and Client Opportunities (00:21:34 )

 

Minimum Building Size (00:23:07 )

 

Conclusion and Contact Information (00:23:55 )

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Connect with Alex and Andrew: 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/portalwarehousing 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/portalwarehousing/  

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/portal-warehousing/

Web: https://join-portal.com/

 

Connect with Sam:

I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.  

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/

Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com

 

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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f

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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:

Alex Morrison (00:00:00 ) - They have very limited options after they outgrow their first space, which maybe is a garage, maybe a bedroom as they get to that next level., the options drop off. They need to sign a five year lease, and there's not a lot of space that's available sub 5000ft². So what portal is doing is being an institutional level provider of small warehousing space.

 

Sam Wilson (00:00:19 ) - Welcome to the how to scale commercial real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.

 

Sam Wilson (00:00:32 ) - I've got Andrew and Alex with me here today from Portal Warehousing. Andrew and Alex, welcome to the show.

 

Alex Morrison (00:00:38 ) - Thanks so much for having us.

 

Andrew Runnette (00:00:39 ) - Absolutely.

 

Sam Wilson (00:00:40 ) - The pleasure's mine. I always asked every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there? And, Andrew, if you don't mind kicking us off by answering that question. And then Alex, I guess we'll have you be up next after that.

 

Andrew Runnette (00:00:55 ) - Yeah. No problem. Thanks for having us on., we started the company about three years ago., we just opened our fourth warehouse,, and we've got for,, Salt Lake, Tempe, Brooklyn and LA., it's been a journey, and we're, you know, we're growing and just moving on to the next one as we go. So I'll let Alex take it from there.

 

Alex Morrison (00:01:21 ) - Yeah. I mean, the the genesis of the company actually came at the start of Covid when the world changed. And, you know, traditional methods of real estate were kind of changed overnight. And I was based in LA, and the only thing you could, you could tour for the first six months of Covid were industrial buildings., so we looked at buying a lot of industrial buildings for my last,, the company I worked for lastly, which was a real estate private equity company. And ultimately that journey led us to developing an operating company that could plug into vacant real estate and add a lot of value.

 

Alex Morrison (00:01:54 ) - And that and that, you know, three years later is portal. And what we do is as effectively,, we're a co warehousing, flex warehousing operators. So we provide industrial space for businesses of all sizes to, to use for all sorts of purposes. But basically the solution is a flexible industrial product that,, serves a lot of needs on the logistics side and the warehousing side.

 

Sam Wilson (00:02:17 ) - Okay, that's really, really cool. I love that in the name again of your company is Portal Warehousing going to learn more about it? I think it's join-portal.com. So give me a breakdown on that. Like what's a who's a customer. What is flexible warehousing I know we talked about this before the show. You guys said something along the lines of, you feel like where you are now is where maybe self storage was 30 or 40 years ago. Kind of give us just a broad overview if you can.

 

Alex Morrison (00:02:43 ) - Yeah. Like I'd say from a fundamental perspective, if you think about an industrial business or an industrial user of space,, there's a long tail of users that are smaller.

 

Alex Morrison (00:02:53 ) - , you know, the Amazons of the world take on 50,000 100,000ft² plus of spaces, but there's a massive amount of companies that just need a couple thousand square feet or less space. And their options are super limited. So the genesis of portal was actually thinking about our network in the e-commerce space and learning, you know, their their kind of supply profile as you as you start a company and think about the last company you saw advertising or purchase from on Instagram, these companies have products they need somewhere to store them and fulfill them out of. They have very limited options after they outgrow their first space, which maybe is a garage, maybe a bedroom as they get to that next level,, the options drop off. They need to sign a five year lease, and there's not a lot of space that's available sub 5000ft². So what portal is doing is being an institutional level provider of small warehousing space.

 

Sam Wilson (00:03:42 ) - Got it. An institutional provider of small warehousing space. Is this kind of I mean, we're going to use this maybe not even the right term, but I mean, we see it happening across Airbnb ten years ago, you know, hey, we're working.

 

Sam Wilson (00:03:55 ) - We're doing you know, people are renting out their houses on Airbnb. We're seeing it happen in the parking industry where we're, you know, anybody with a lot that can park a semi and some other things those get, you know, turned into,, you know, semi parking spaces. And you guys kind of saw this, I guess same opportunity in again, smaller, potentially unused spaces. And or maybe you're taking big buildings and converting them I don't know. I mean it's that kind of am I thinking along the right lines here.

 

Alex Morrison (00:04:21 ) - Yeah, exactly. The thought is there is a massive amount of of customers out there that need a functional place to operate. They don't need the 32 foot clear class A building. They just need an industrial logistics environment with a dock door and loading in a commercial a