Page 29 - March23T

apartment building, and the guy didn’t have enough money to pay me. So, he said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in taking an airplane on trade for some of the seller financing?’ I agreed and picked up a nice 1969 Cessna Turbo 210 and flew that around for several years. I really had a good time with that plane and would fly my family back and forth between Northern and Southern California all the time.”
Lund was enjoying the freedom that aviation afforded him and his family,
as well as its benefit to his growing real estate portfolio. But several factors soon sidelined him from the cockpit.
“I had a couple of scary experiences with turbulence. I remember a time I was flying out of Santa Barbara and the turbulence was severe. My wife was crying as my two kids were in the backseat screaming. I imagined we’d all end up dead, so I considered giving up f lying entirely,” said Lund.
“Then in 2008, during the big real estate bust, I basically lost every- thing and had to start over. I sold the plane to pay some debts, moved to Southern California, and ended up divorced. I was basically starting all over again from scratch. I rebuilt by buying self-storage facilities and created a chain of properties called ‘Purely Storage.’ After having a few properties under my belt, there came a need and an opportunity to lease a plane from a guy at the John Wayne Airport (KSNA). It was a 2004 Lancair Columbia 400, which I f lew for several years.”
Initially, while Lund was growing this new business, he didn’t have the luxury of leaning on the time savings of private aircraft.
“When I first started out buying these self-storage facilities, I used to drive to all of them. At one point, I was driving a Prius all over California. In time, I thought I should be driving a better car and bought a beautiful BMW 7 Series. I got so busy that I hired a driver and was sitting in the back seat working the whole time. I was usually gone two, three, or four days at a time, staying in hotels and paying all the expenses for my driver and me.”
“The Columbia 400 then helped me get around to see properties with ease, and I flew it for several years. It was a great plane. The business kept grow- ing and I would use the airplane to fly around to more and more self-storage facilities often in different directions.”
Lund really liked the aircraft, but one aspect made him consider making the move to another bird.
“The Columbia 400 was a little costly to maintain. Every year something would go out and need to be fixed, whether it was a turbocharger, a cyl- inder head, or something else. My an- nuals were crazy money and I thought, ‘For this much maintenance, I could be f lying something nicer.’”
With all of the great options to as- cend to in his aviation journey, which aircraft was the then 1,000-hour pilot leaning towards?
“I was originally looking to upgrade to a Piper Mirage. But then I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I just skip that and go straight into a Piper Meridian?’ But when I went to finance a Meridian, the lender said they didn’t like financing the plane because their values were all over the place. The lender asked whether I had considered a TBM or not, but I looked to discover they were crazy money. Then they asked if I had considered just skipping into a jet and suggested the Citation Mustang as an option,” Lund recalled.
“When I purchased my aircraft, Mustangs were about $700,000 less than available TBMs. Of course, jets cost more to operate, but $700,000 buys a lot of jet fuel! When I first sat in the Mustang, I thought it was way more plane than I needed. But I pulled the trigger on a 2009 model anyway.”
The aircraft has been a crucial aspect of the company’s growing operations. “Today, we have 33 locations in several western states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and Texas. With the Mustang, I can lei- surely depart by nine in the morning, f ly up to Sacramento to see a couple of properties, stop in Fresno and Bakers- field on the way home to see a couple more, and still be home before dinner.
Time is money.”
Lund remarked how the transition
into the Citation 510 went remarkably March 2023 / TWIN & TURBINE • 27
PHOTO COURTESY OF JESSICA AMBATS
Brad and Becky Lund.