Doing a project, curious if anyone pays to store their cars at a facility? If so, how much?
Specifically interested in climate controlled units, but any data is useful (aside from handshake agreements where you give your buddy $20/mo to use his garage)
You say, "store" which makes me think of these typical places:
but, traditionally, these places will not let you work on the car while it is there and you likely do not have electricity or water available.
I have several friends who have one of those garage condos, usually with at least a lift in it, but they also do not have water/toilet.....tho there is all that available at the condo's clubhouse along with cold water, soda etc..
I don't think they allow you to rent them out once you buy one, cheapest ones I've seen are in the $40K range.....for a bare shell with electricity.
When I was doing the rustoration on my old Jag, I borrowed the neighbor's garage to store parts, she had bought a van that wouldn't fit in her garage.
This might be some decent background reading:
https://classicmotorsports.com/articles/what-you-need-know-about-classic-car-storage/
I used to, but it was $80/mo. Small warehouse full of other classic cars. Nice group of people, but I did have issues of people encroaching on my workspace- we paid more to have a workspace for a while. This was 20 years ago, and we pulled out in about 2013 when I sold two of my Alfas.
In reply to alfadriver :
Was that the facility over in Ypsi?
We rented a 20x60 unit with a few 20amp outlets and an onsite bathroom. It was the only unit in the city that allowed working on cars but we weren't supposed to weld. I think we paid 300 monthly, although between 2 people. Then they decided to no longer allow flammable liquids, so I had to move out.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:In reply to alfadriver :
Was that the facility over in Ypsi?
Yes. Really handy because the studio that I used to blow glass at was right down the street- so I could work a few hours on my car and then blow some glass for a couple of hours.
Haven't been there in about 10 years, but still get emails from them about the spring and fall tours.
In reply to alfadriver :
There's a place like this here in KC, only it's currently $225/mo for one parking/working space....big enough to park a full size American car.
I do. My house has a typical suburban 20x20 attached garage. We have 2 daily drivers, 2 race cars, an old car that I'll someday spruce up enough to sell (MGA), plus the usual crap. We've been here 14 years and built many race cars here. We have a storage garage 20 minutes away that is very secluded and safe, has been $220/month for 8 years now including electric and will fit 4 cars just barely. In the winter it gets the race cars and MG and NSX and I don't think about them from early Nov to late March. It would be nice to have them on site but for the price and safety, it's ok.
I pay for an outdoor spot that I can park the motorhome and the trailer in. Currently there is a project car stored on the trailer, but I won't work on it there.
The storage place would allow me to work on stuff and was even amenable to running 220 to the unit if I paid for it. For a while we had 2 10x30 garages with about a third of the wall between them removed. It was okay, but no climate control and the closest thing to plumbing was a porta-john.
My brother and I went in to rent a light industrial place which is 20x70. There's a man door and a 12x12 garage door. I've got a project car stuffed in there as well. That has heat as well as its own bathroom with running water and a small office area.
The outdoor place is around $100/mo, when we had two garages it was about $400/mo, and the current place is around $700 or so.
E3
hesitant to say it because ours already has a wait list and I don't want my rent to go up from demand, but lifts, tools, like minded folks and a spot where my water filled radiator won't crack in winter.
In reply to MiniDave :
Those "Condo Garages" around here start at about $500k for 1000 sf. Plus a condo fee of $350/month. Larger ones are well over $1m and $2k month. They are really sweet but that a a TON of money for a man cave.
You can rent them out though you'd have to get a lot of rent to cover your mortgage, property taxes, condo fee, insurance, etc. A person can rent a space in a commercial bldg around her for about $1.50/ft/month.
Great info all!
Two different "car condo" business recently opened up within 10 mins of me. I was shocked to see the absolute bare bones buy in was $150k + HOA. They strongly encourage you to upgrade the unit and $250k seems outrageous
One of those storage condos went up around here about a year or so ago. They look like they're geared towards RVs, based on the size of the garage doors and the advertising. I have no idea what they cost or what the condo fee is, but I was operating under the assumption that they would have a fairly lengthy list of restrictions as to what you could and could not do in your unit.
I also wonder what the fire department thinks about those places. As a commercial address, my shop has to get a fire inspection every year which means I need an up-to-date fire extinguisher, exit signs, a flammables cabinet, and a bunch of other things. Most of the stuff is what we'd want to do anyway, and since we don't do anything revenue-generating they don't get too persnickety with us.
We also pay commercial rates for gas and electric, although I'm pretty sure the Internet service is residential rate. One minor advantage is that FedEx charges less for delivery to a commercial address so once I trained the driver to just leave stuff at the door, I save a couple bucks on each rock auto shipment. It's also really nice to be able to fire up the compressor or the death wheel at 1am and not have to worry that you're going to wake anybody up.
MiniDave said:In reply to alfadriver :
There's a place like this here in KC, only it's currently $225/mo for one parking/working space....big enough to park a full size American car.
Where is this? I think The Fuel House is like this also but it's something obscene like $1500 per month. There is also Stonegate but I believe those garages/apartments are only for sale, not for rent and I was told it's not zoned residential so it can't be your primary address.
I looked at a shared workspace a few months ago near me (Boston area) -they wanted $800/month + a split of the utilities and required you get "shop insurance" to cover your tools/other personal stuff, and they wanted a year-long commitment. You got enough space for a car plus workbench, plus some shelf space in another room for parts storage. The whole place had room for 6 - 8 "members" if I remember correctly - current tenants were a mix of big American car projects, a motorcycle racer, and a couple of sports car guys.
Shop had a shared-use MaxJack, parts washer, and a few other big tools. They didn't want you to weld without prior approval (and you had to pay a little more for electricity). I passed on the opportunity. Even though it was only ~15 minutes away from the house, $800/month was a bit out of the budget and I like the idea of being able to go out to my own garage and turn wrenches if I have a spare half-hour. For me, a space away from home would cause the project to languish even more than it already has at home as it would require a special trip to get to the shop...
I've also stored with E3. It was a good experience for freeing up garage space, but it would be hard to get real project work done. Very basic tools and not being allowed to leave your car scattered in pieces overnight. The lift was game changing for oil changes and light maintenance, but it was inconvenient always having to bring all the tools I needed, and then forgetting a few... And it's pricey. Like $300+ /month.
Tom Suddard said:This might be some decent background reading:
https://classicmotorsports.com/articles/what-you-need-know-about-classic-car-storage/
Ah, Tom beat me to sharing that link.
I’d consider off-site storage if it was way, way close.
Ten minutes away? Okay, I’m interested.
Clear across town and more than a half an hour in traffic? Now I’m less interested–unless, maybe, if the storage spot was a bit of a destination.
When I lived in San Antonio I had a storage that was less than 10 mins from my house. It had enough space to store my Jags and a Mercedes plus workbench tools and space to work on them. It was $230 a month, I think.
I wish I could find something similar to my house here but that is for the rich. Storage space here is extremely expensive and the cardominiums are the same price as a home. If I just had something to store a few cars while keeping my garage and driveway clean, I would be so happy. I thought about buying some land and putting a metal building on it but then I'd have to purchase something at least an hour away simply because there isnt much land to buy here. If anyone has a spot in Northern VA message me!
David S. Wallens said:Tom Suddard said:This might be some decent background reading:
https://classicmotorsports.com/articles/what-you-need-know-about-classic-car-storage/
Ah, Tom beat me to sharing that link.
I’d consider off-site storage if it was way, way close.
Ten minutes away? Okay, I’m interested.
Clear across town and more than a half an hour in traffic? Now I’m less interested–unless, maybe, if the storage spot was a bit of a destination.
The distance is a really big deal, for sure. The spot we found is a weird geographical anomaly that is way closer to me than to my brother, if you look at a map. But drive times are almost identical at about 12 minutes to get there from either of our homes. That does mean that when I want to spend time working on something, I've got nearly a half-hour sunk into it just to get there and back, though. The other downside is that I have tools in two places. Most of the tools are at the shop and I've got a lot of the basics here at home, but projects around the house need to be planned out a little bit.
If it was just for storage, though, and not for also working that might change the calculus a bit. Especially if we're talking about storage that would primarily be a place for a car to winter.
My shop (25x60) is in a light industrial building about 10 minutes from my house. Best move I ever made. 1500 sf plus a 500 sf mezzanine for storage, card games, etc.
I was renting half the space to a buddy but he passed away about a year ago so now it's just me. It could easily handle 3-4 guys working on different projects except when one wanted access to the lift, everyone would have to jocky their cars around. With the HOA fee and property taxes it cost me about $500/month to own it which is cheap for 1500 sf.
What resources do you guys use to find these shop spaces?
In reply to Japanspec :
I tried craigslist, loopnet, MLS listings, and asking a commercial banker friend for hot tips. I found a couple leads from craigslist and the the place we wound up renting I found from just driving around and seeing a sign that the owners had on the side of the road adverstising "Work Space".
During my search, I also reached out to some commercial realtors, but I was not their people and they either couldn't or wouldn't find anything that remotely matched what I was looking for. It seemed like if it wasn't retail space or at least 50,000 ftft of industrial/warehouse space, they had nothing.
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