We are a nation of accumulators and keepers, and we believe that people will hold close to their belongings and continue to use self storage as a repository for their most valued personal and business items. Michigan and Ohio, two of our better performing markets last year, were among the hardest hit by mounting foreclosures—mostly on occupied homes. We stand ready to provide all of our customers with a valuable service, treating each one of them fairly and with respect in a time of what can be a stressful life change.
The time is right to further strengthen our balance sheet. We are being extremely proactive and have to date in 2009 secured nearly $60 million in additional financing. We are currently actively speaking with 40 banks at this time. Most of these are new relationships for us, and we believe this will bring us increased financial flexibility in the future. We continue to take a conservative approach to acquisitions and development projects. Looking ahead, our first order of business is to take care of our debt.
The time is right to further improve our processes. Keeping a vigilant watch over our operations will enable us to maximize our property performance. We are focusing on keeping our expenses under control and leveraging our state-of-the-art technology and operational systems to make us more efficient. We will also be upgrading our revenue management system to make us even more knowledgeable in pricing our properties. A major milestone for us was bringing our new internal call center online in late 2008. At the same time, we implemented our customer relationship management technology system, which gives us a key advantage by tracking customers and prospects from first contact to move-in and beyond.
