The Karr-Cunningham Storage Story
Karr-Cunningham Storage has its origins in the year 2011, when Brandon Karr joined the Marcus & Millichap team in Fort Worth as the office's first agent dedicated exclusively to self-storage brokerage throughout the State of Texas.
Since his arrival, Mr. Karr has closed transactions ranging in price from $300,000 to $33,000,000. He has not only been Marcus & Millichap's #1 Self-Storage Agent in Texas for the past eight years, in 2013 he was responsible for closing the largest transaction the Ft. Worth office had ever originated - a record that still stands.
To a large extent, Brandon's initial success can be attributed to the relationship he forged with Marcus & Millichap at the beginning of the decade. At the time, the Texas self-storage industry was flourishing. A large number of new facilities were being developed, and many sophisticated investors who had previously viewed the industry as a "niche" sector began to consider the space a "core" investment class capable of generating uncommonly predictable returns in what was rapidly becoming a highly unpredictable investment climate. The self-storage industry was evolving - and quickly.
Despite its maturation, the sector remained an environment in which...
"Mom & Pop" owners in need of competent and faithful representation were left to "fend for themselves" during the contract negotiation process.
Regional self-storage operators had little access to a marketing platform capable of consistently bringing out-of-state capital to Texas.
Publicly-traded, institutional capital had only a modest amount of Texas inventory to choose from.
The typical transaction was facilitated either on a principal-to-principal basis, by a residential realtor, or by a "jack-of-all-trades" commercial broker unfamiliar with the nuances and challenges that typify the average self-storage transaction.
Recognizing the opportunity, Mr. Karr decided to leave his position as Vice President with a Dallas-based real estate development company and join Marcus & Millichap. At that time, the suite of services that Mr. Karr brought to the Texas self-storage real estate market was un-named, but it has since been collectively defined as "The Marcus & Millichap Advantage." The overall "spirit" of the offering revolves around a few core principles - principles that have come to define Karr-Cunningham Storage.