New to acquisitions, any tips?
I just graduated from college a month ago and started working for a mid-sized self-storage company that's owned by a local development/investment firm. For obvious reasons, I've essentially been tasked with learning the ropes and understanding how this product type works as a real estate investment. However, for the most part, the majority of my day I'm just sitting at my desk doing nothing. I haven't really started any of the "acquisition" work, I've just been helping my bosses with some market research and some work on the proforma's. Do any acquisition veterans have any tips/resources/strategies I should learn before I start diving into my real work (which I hope is soon)?

TLDR; Recent college grad that hasn't really been doing much of anything at work because of my lack of experience - what sort of things should I learn in preparation for my role? 
[{"id": "dj27q5n", "text": "I would read Broker market reports. Theyre free and produced for different asset types, locations and for different quarters. I recommend CBRE, JLL, Cushman &amp; Wakefield, Transwestern and NAI.\n\n I dont know how the hell you go about modeling for a self-storage property lol.\n\nI would reach out to different buyers in your market and just introduce yourself, what you guys do, what you hope to accomplish and ask what the person youre talking to are interested in etc. Real Capital Analytics and Costar are good resources for using data to learn but they are very expensive. \n\nI would learn excel very well, the entire business world still runs on excel for the most part. You can also learn Python and try to automate certain tasks like auto-populating pdfs for contracts, sending emails, combining and searching through files etc.\nGood luck man!", "replies": [{"id": "dj2k6q7", "text": "Self storage is most similar multifamily. Takes much longer to lease up and stabilize (~2-3) years if it's newly built. Lower expense ratio. Very profitable.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "djiu2uo", "text": "Wow thanks for the great advice! I've started doing a lot of research in the space and have spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with who's who in the market I'm working in. Generated my first lead this week! Wooh! ", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dj2rglr", "text": "Read market news, globest and the real deal are good. Look at proformas and due diligence of previous deals and try to understand why decisions were made and what processes needed to be followed and familiarize your self with deals.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dj38eq0", "text": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Self_Storage_Economics_and_Appraisal.html?id=VU-wMQEACAAJ\n\nBuy this book and read it.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dj3roet", "text": "Hey OP I'm a commercial real estate broker specializing in self storage. It's a great niche to learn! What area of the country are you in?\n\nTo learn the space, I would learn about the large SS Reits, local owners in your area, and talk to brokers too. Depending what area you're in, I may be able to connect you to good resources. Also as another poster mentioned, reading broker reports could be useful. We put out local reports on individual markets that may be helpful for you. Feel free to message me if you want to connect. ", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "dj4a1cg", "text": "Lots of great advice in this comment section. I will add keep track of industry trends in general. Subscribe to feedly or another app/tool that will notify you of news articles, stories, etc. I have seen a recent increase in the amount of self-storage industry coverage as well as coverage of \"disrupters\" like Clutter out of silicon valley. Your local Biz journal might be helpful as well. Ours is publishing more about the self-storage market in our local area.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "djwm1z0", "text": "My advice would to first go back and listen to the past 4qtrs earnings calls for all the big reit's to get up to speed on the market and see how quickly it's changing. \n\nSet up Google alerts for self storage for all the markets you're currently in or looking to get into. That way you'll be notified each time an article is written about self storage in your markets or a developer puts out a press release. \n\nSparefoot's Storage Beat site is a great resource to learn from as well. Go back and read up on all the articles and look through their \"done deals\" posts to see how different sized facilities, and markets are roughly valued. \n\nREFM has some free excel spreadsheets for back of the napkin budgeting for building new faci that may be worth playing around with. \n\nRegister and get the due diligence packages for every storage facility on the market in your state. Studying those will give you great insight into how they're valued and the market competition. It'll also get you on the mailing lists for all the storage brokers in your region. \n\nHope this helps :-) it's an exciting industry once you get into it", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]