Top 8 Rookie Development Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Posted by Betco on Aug 4, 2025 7:30:00 AM

Breaking ground on new construction can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Read on for 8 common mistakes from first-time developers and self-storage owners—and the easiest ways to avoid making them.

Selecting a poor location. Focusing on land cost instead of potential revenue can undermine your success.

It’s important to bring in an experienced building contractor like BETCO when you’re selecting property so your potential sites will be evaluated for traffic patterns, potential new developments, demographics and population migration. BETCO then designs a layout to maximize rentable square footage that may include strategies like adding two-story sections to take advantage of your site’s zoning height allowances.
Underestimating site prep costs. New developers tend to think they can sift together a site plan, but that can come back to bite you without the proper investigation like soil testing, environmental testing and other assessments.

BETCO offers a complementary preliminary site assessment to help you avoid costly surprises—like rocky soil, contamination or poor drainage—before you’re committed to a property. This value-added service can save developers from unexpected site prep costs and construction delays.
Rushing the permitting process. Part of the site prep process is permitting, but a lot of new developers think it only involves a phone call.

Make sure you’re up-to-speed on requirements in your local jurisdiction, which may require dealing with building code officials, city councils or environmental boards. And be aware that some schedules can back you up a year in some cases.
Choosing the wrong unit mix. If you’re just looking at the competing self-storage facilities in your area and copying what they’ve done with their unit mix, you’re selling yourself short.

BETCO can help you maximize revenue per square foot by matching your facility to your community’s evolving storage needs. After evaluating demographics like housing types, income levels and basic tenant needs, the team provides you with market specific unit-mix design in conjunction with your feasibility study.
Ignoring seasonal demand patterns. This goes hand in hand with choosing the wrong unit mixes. For example, a developer looking to build in a college town might plan for a majority of 5 x 5s and 5 x 10s to cater to college kids. But that’s not really the demographic you want to focus on because those kids are going to move in and move out.

BETCO provides developers with local market intelligence integration, so you can maintain consistent occupancy through seasonal fluctuations. For example, in college towns, students are visible, but the stable revenue comes from faculty, staff, local businesses and long-term residents who need consistent storage solutions year-round. In this case, BETCO would design facilities with adaptable unit mixes instead of building for single-use demographics.
Skipping the market analysis process. Another big mistake is relying on outdated or generic feasibility studies that can lead to over-building and saturated areas.

By working with an experienced building contractor like BETCO, you can avoid surprises popping up at the last minute. The team provides a strategic methodology that includes market analysis and feasibility studies that are up-to-date, accurate and extensive enough to take everything into account.
Treating security as an afterthought. “Let’s build the building and then we’ll worry about security on the backend” is a big mistake that will cost you big. In fact, retrofitting your security systems can cost you 5 times more than building them into the initial construction.

BETCO helps you avoid inadequate security planning and costly retrofitting by treating security as a strategic initiative that’s addressed on the front end. With “smartready" buildings, security and access control are planned from the initial design phase, including a pre-wired infrastructure for advanced systems like Nokē’s smartphone-based entry technology.
Prioritizing manned sites without the right staffing. Some developers assume that staffing your facility at the bare minimum will work for the long term, so they hire part-time help that’s untrained.

BETCO sets you up for success with tools to help you avoid mistakes that create hiring challenges, training costs, payroll expenses and the security risks that come with undertrained personnel. For example, you can eliminate staffing headaches entirely by operating successful unmanned facilities. With smart-ready buildings complete with the Nokē Smart Entry System from Janus and integrated access control technology, you get fully automated operations and better security than most manned facilities while reducing your operational overhead.