Frank Rolfe has been a commercial real estate investor for over 30 years. He has been an owner of self-storage facilities for almost 20 years. In addition to his self-storage holdings, he is, along with his partner Dave Reynolds, the 18th largest owner of mobile home parks in the U.S. He uses the same strategy on all forms of commercial real estate: only buy great properties, perform great due diligence, and buy them when nobody else is buying them. This contrarian strategy has worked well for him over time. "I was a huge buyer of billboards during the Savings & Loan crisis in 1988, when everybody else was afraid of them. I sold them at the peak of the market in 1996. I then started mobile home parks and self-storage facilities when they were on the skids, and then sold that portfolio out at the peak of the market in 2005. Then I started buying again around 2010, when buyers had gone away again. We have bought more in the last three years than in all the other years combined - that's how strongly we feel about the timing right now."
Frank has been a huge believer in due diligence. Benjamin Franklin once said "diligence is the mother of good luck" and Frank takes that 200-year-old saying to heart. "If you perform great due diligence on a property, then you will have few surprises after you buy it, and your success is pretty well assured. Without due diligence, you are taking a huge gamble that might destroy you. Real estate has nothing to do with gambling, contrary to what people may think. A good real estate investor has already worked through all the risks, and mitigated them or come up with contingency plans. It's no different than a pilot that checks the plane out before taking off. Those pilots always come home safely."
Self-storage is going to be aided greatly by the baby boom generation. With over 10,000 baby boomers per day entering retirement, many are going to downsize their housing and need space to store their goods. "There will be continuing demand from baby boomers for storage space - in many markets overwhelming demand. Americans are great accumulators, and the baby boomers have been the biggest buyers of material possessions in U.S. history."
Frank lives in Missouri with his wife and daughter. He is active in local affairs, serving on the Lions Club, the school board and as Chairman of the Landmarks Commission. He holds an A.B. in Economics from Stanford University.
