What Happens To Abandoned Storage Units
Renting a storage unit is often a great idea. It’s the ideal place to put all those personal items that you simply don’t have room for at home but that you don’t want to throw out, sell, or donate to charity. Many people also choose to rent a storage unit if they are going to travel for a while and don’t want to leave their possessions anywhere that isn’t secure. Or perhaps they’re moving house, and they need a storage facility to keep everything safe while that happens. Whatever the reason, a storage unit can be the ideal solution.
Yet what would happen if you no longer had the money to cover the storage unit payments? What are the options open to you or to others? Or perhaps it’s not your own storage unit you’re thinking about – maybe you’re looking for a great bargain, and you want to know if you can buy items that owners have left behind. The truth is, there are a number of different things that might occur, so read on to find out what happens to abandoned storage units, and you might find that you can do something helpful for yourself.
How Are Storage Units Leased?
If you want to rent a self storage unit, it’s important to understand all the requirements that will be asked of you. You’ll need to look at the terms and conditions carefully; if you don’t do what’s asked of you, you might forfeit your belongings.
The main thing to know is that rent will be due on your storage space on a regular basis. This will depend on the agreement you and the storage company make, but in most cases, this will be a sum due once a month. However, you might want to pay for a number of months in advance if that makes more financial sense.
If you pay rent on your storage unit regularly, you’ll need to make sure this happens. Although there will often be a grace period of a few days to account for late payments to come in, if you want to keep your items in storage, you’ll need to pay the rent.
There will also be rules about what you can keep in a storage unit. Again, this will vary from company to company, but in general terms, you won’t be able to keep animals in a unit, nor will you be able to keep dangerous chemicals or other hazardous substances. You won’t be able to live in the storage unit either.
When Is A Storage Unit Deemed Abandoned?
After a certain number of rent payments are missed altogether, the storage company will deem the unit to have been abandoned. When signing up for a storage area, check the lease agreement – you’ll see how many payments you’ll have to miss before this happens.
It is unlikely (although not impossible, of course) that a storage company will simply take your storage unit away from you after the right amount of missed payments. In most cases, they will try to contact you to let you know there is a problem. After all, it might not be a deliberate act; perhaps your bank account details have changed, and your payment hasn’t been updated, for example. If you receive a letter or email from your storage company, check to see if the payments have been leaving your bank, and investigate to see what the issue is if you were under the impression that you were paying. At this point, you can either make up the missed payments or end the lease and collect your items.
If you fail to respond to the storage company’s correspondence, they will have to move to the next stage of what happens when a storage unit is abandoned.
What Happens To The Storage Unit’s Content?
Once all reasonable measures have been taken to ensure that the self storage unit really has been abandoned and that the lack of payment hasn’t simply been an error, the storage company will essentially confiscate the items in the storage unit. Those items become their property.
Once this has happened, there will be a public auction, and people can come to bid on the contents of any abandoned storage units. There are a number of reasons why this is the option that is chosen when a unit has been abandoned. Firstly, it’s a good way for the storage company to remove unwanted items from their facility – these items will be taking up space and using units that could otherwise be rented out. Additionally, the money raised from the auction can offset the lost money from the missed payments that caused the unit to be deemed abandoned in the first place.
These storage unit auctions are very popular, as it is certainly possible to buy a lot of items for a low price. It’s also fun; you never know what will be behind the door of a storage unit, and that’s always exciting. If you want to take part in an auction, search for self storage near me and find your closest storage facility. You should be able to find out when they are holding their next auction.
Anyone can bid on a storage unit, and that means the unit’s owner can bid too. It might be that they feel this would enable them to buy their possessions back at a lower cost than if they had paid the money due on the storage unit, although there are problems with this idea, as we’ll see below.
Will The Storage Unit Renter Still Owe Any Money?
The auction will be put in place to recoup losses on the abandoned storage unit. If the money made through the auction doesn’t cover the money that is owed, the renter may still receive a bill for the outstanding amount. Eventually, this might be sent to a collections agency, depending on the amount and the situation that has led to the problem.
It’s always best to contact the storage facility where your items are if you think you’re going to be unable to continue to make payments. In this way, you can arrange to collect your items and not lose them – ignoring the problem will only make things worse.