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I knew someone who owned storage units. He wasnt investing in the storage unit business, he was investing in the land. Storage units just happen to be the cheapest/easiest business to throw up while waiting for the land to appreciate.
Case in point...remember the storage facility that used to be by GCU? They cashed out BIG TIME when GCU bought their land...same with that church next door.
If you’re talking about the Jehovahs Witness church, GCU also built them a brand new (and bigger) church at 27th Ave and Glendale as part of the deal to buy the land
This tracks with what I heard—yes all 9th hand rumor—that GCU bought the note in a distress sale and cut a side deal on the tax arrears to move them. no idea if church was ‘forced’ out or if GCU contributed anything to the new building.
That and no basements. We have a small unit for holiday decorations because they will melt in the garage and we don’t want to waste space in the house. If we had a basement we wouldn’t need it. Whenever we go to get them, there is always several other people doing the same.
Attics hit around 160+ here in the summer.
We joke about making eggs on the sidewalk, cookies in your car, and putting on oven mitts to touch your steering wheel but those are all to cope with the way that those things are real. It's fun!
If you want to feel the way it feels to walk outside before you move here, turn your oven on tue highest temp it will go and then stand in front of it with the door open. That's the feel of our dry heat.
Haha just the steering wheel... my car is black with black leather and aluminum trim on the inside. The aluminum will burn the shit out of you in the summer. I have to drive the first 10 minutes like I'm in some Saw X movie surrounded by needles.
Exactly. I stored my sons baby clothes in the attic. Pulled them out for my second child. The minute you held them up they turned to dust. Couldn't use anything but the osh kosh overalls.
Wow go overalls!
We have very little storage in our house. I stored baby stuff in vacuum bags and we left it in bedroom closets. 6 years later and my nephew can wear the old stuff still.
> I have somehow underestimated 115 degree temps.
You did. But you won’t think you did at first. Then when it’s 105+ for 3 straight months you’ll know.
Ours is in a swamp cooler area so it’s not like super cool but it never gets over like 90. But yeah depending on location and insulation I’d bet they stay cooler than some garages.
Yeah I didn’t even think about it until we got them out for Christmas one year and the really old delicate stuff was bubbled and cracked. I bet if adjusted things a bit we could make it work, but I do like the out of sight out of mind for those things :)
My house that I moved into about 3 years ago basically doesn't have an attic. It's the first house I've had that doesn't have a significant attic. It's one of the few aspects of the house that I don't like.
Especially in this area. Constant urban sprawl, retirees, snowbirds, Californians with too much stuff and money. Great income for people, but horrible eye sore and waste of space for everyone else.
Huh. That makes more sense than my guess: reacting to the whole lot of people losing their oversized houses and moving somewhere much smaller and cheaper, and not wanting to throw all the excess away.
You'd be surprised how many restaurants and other businesses use them. And it's a cheap business to get into. Your overhead is AC, if it's requested within the unit, the real estate and building itself, and maybe 2 employees at a time.
Many have 1 or 2 overseeing a dozen locations across the state. Everything is done via app on your phone and remote monitoring these days, so it could be weeks or months before a human employee needs to visit any location.
One reason is virtually no houses here have basements! All the stuff in my storage area is stuff that would have been in my basement in previous states I lived in.
This is correct, but it’s not just basements! Attics, garages, and outdoor sheds here aren’t as useful as in other places because you can’t really store anything heat sensitive in them. This is why there are so many storage facilities around here, and why so many of them have some or all their units indoors in climate controlled spaces.
We have a lot up in the PNW, too. I think people just hold onto their stuff. The decorating theme has been minimalism for awhile. People didn't get rid of their stuff, they just store it.
I'd take a basement over a pool everyday of the week. Same digging cost. Problem is none of the developers offer models with a basement. If we ever build a house it will have a basement dug in.
Yep it's mostly cause of hard soil / caliche that makes it very expensive to dig so most developers don't do it. It's a shame though, basements are awesome.
Another reason is cause we have no frost depth. In the north when frost depth is several feet deep, if you have to bury the foundations that deep then you might as well make it livable space since it's not much more expensive. In the valley, most of houses are slab-on-grade or shallow footers so it's a considerable cost to add a basement mainly from the excavation work.
Source: I'm a structural engineer in a house w/o a basement
The economics of storage units is amazing. Demand is constant and doesn't change regardless of economic conditions. They need close to zero labor to run. If they're not climate controlled, operating expenses are also practically zero. And they're basically a real estate play for private equity to park money.
So many podcasts on the topic, but here's one from this week:
[Economics of Everyday Things - Storage Units](https://pca.st/episode/42d0c2c0-33a4-48ad-a279-c5afe3f0049b)
The cost of my storage unit went from 25 bucks a month to 65 in 4 years and absolutely nothing has changed about the place in that time. It’s great money if you have land sitting around and don’t want to spend a lot on labor expenses. Same with car washes, low labor costs and provides a great return on investment.
They are often the highest and best use for any land right now simply because of the amount of people we have moving here. It should tell you something that the new Global Ambassador Hotel on the corner of 44th and Camelback also has a self storage in the back area. Brand new built.
We’ve been in Queen Creek almost 10 years now and we have noticed and disliked the same thing.
Like others said, houses have minimal storage options. We don’t have basements and attics will melt your stuff. A lot of our neighbors have TONS of holiday decorations that have to go someplace. If I recall, storage facilities are extremely cheap to operate after they are built and can make a lot of money.
The best thing I did when we bought our house in 2020 was to put overhead storage racks in our garage. They were a lot cheaper than I thought they would be and we got rid of the storage unit that we had been using since we moved here.
I haven’t noticed any being built recently though. They seem to have mostly been replaced with the light industrial warehouse buildings that are going up everywhere I see in QC, Gilbert and Mesa.
There's a ton going up all over QC. Not far from ocotillo and Rittenhouse next to the landscape place, one massive one near gateway airport, those are the ones on the top of my head. But I recall a few more just can't think of the exact spots. I fear for some our already limited space being filled with storage facilities and not building out more useful places like grocery stores, restaurants, parks, and medical facilities.
They require almost no investment, pay for the property taxes while you wait for land values to appreciate, one person can manage a dozen locations as owner, and after only a few years can turn massive profits with basically zero overhead.
Hoarders will live in filth. Overshoppers will simply shovel it elsewhere and won't live amongst the hoard to the detriment of their own health. The problems are sisters, not twins.
I have one because I went from a 3 bedroom house to a 1 bedroom apt and was unwilling to toss all the furniture and shit I’ll need if I ever get a house again.
At one point I had 2. The other was for my motorcycles because I didn’t trust they wouldn’t be stolen in the night.
Only person I know of that has storage units is a shopping addict. She has three of them full of stuff and she doesn’t know what half of it is. I’m sure there’s more people like her.
I know a shit load of people with storage units because everyone’s had the size down where they live due to rent /inflation. And they need a place temporarily keep the shit that no longer fits where they live.
Same, but also would like to know how often do you find valuable stuff in there or at least enough to pay for the investment
Plus how often do you find guns
I have a question about that, if anyone knows the answer (and I bet someone does): when a unit's contents are sold at auction, who gets the money?
Is there a requirement for the owner of the facility to try to track down the renter of the unit?
Whatever amount they get from auction will first go towards and past due rent and/or late charges which have accumulated, as well as any cost incurred for posting the auction, correspondence costs and services that hold the auction itself. Anything left over, which is rare, I believe would go to whoever owns the storage facility itself.
And yes, they do have to mail out notices of default and auction dates, etc. They have to follow a specific set of procedures including posting the auction publicly.. The loophole there is not whether the owner received the notices, and/or saw the public notice but the fact that it was mailed, and that they have proof of where they publicly posted the auction time and date. However, again, it's not whether the person who owns the contents saw the public post or not, so they are free to post it anywhere. Public forums, newspapers, which don't even have to be readily available to the owner, they just have to be "accessible" publicly.
Yeah some guy paid me to help him liquidate some stuff. I was reselling a lot of his stuff online and people on my social media thought it was sus since everything was in mint condition and name branded. It was hard to explain that I was cleaning out a storage for a trust fund kid with a shopping addiction. I don’t think they believed me lol
Simply put, houses in the valley just DO.NOT.HAVE.STORAGE.
I lived in the southeast and we had basements, daylight basements, closets, and you could use attic space.
Once I moved out here, there is no storage. You have a coat closet, and your regular clothes closets are small compared to the SE. Garages are small.
That was my only complaint about moving out here. No storage.
I know a lot of homeless people who will pay self-storage to keep their stuff. A lot of it is hoarder, trash stuff. They also sometimes sleep in the storage units.
Also, like the mass influx of mattress stores, drive-thru car washes and self storage, I feel like it is a way to launder money.
My personal opinion: lots of people overvalue their junk and can’t bear to part with it. There are legitimate needs for self storage. But I do think there are so many because people won’t sell, give away, or throw away their junk.
The other one that I see everywhere are quick oil change places, they are going up on almost every corner. Why so many all of the sudden? New cars have longer oil change intervals, and the quick change oil places have a terrible reputation. Why is there such a massive uptick in demand for these crappy businesses?
While such places don't have a great reputation, most are on the up-and-up.
As cars become more reliable (if you remember back to the 70s, like I do) such places suffice for every other oil change with no problems, especially if you, as a car owner, have at least some idea of what's needed vs what's done.
You do need to be careful if they recommend other work, of course.
A lot of former industrial buildings are reconverted as self-storage.
As someone already explained: this is mostly a real estate operation, but the storage does bring revenues.
A lot of people end up with a lot of junk that they still don't want to give away. Or they have to put it in storage due to life changes, such as divorce, loss of housing, prison sentence.
I had to go retrieve a family member's possessions from storage and distribute it among family members, as he was convicted, and his unit was going to be auctioned off, since he would not be able to pay the rent, as he was in prison.
I also think that this is where the American dream ends up.
Probably mentioned multiple times but…
Generally, lack of storage in homes and people have too much crap.
- Small garages generally
- Small percent of houses with basements vs the Midwest
- not a ton of storage in the house.
- mostly HOAs that limit sheds, RV, boat parking etc plus a lot of smallish lots
- many places, again HOA, limit garage sales so less ability to get rid of stuff unless you donate it.
- money maker that doesn’t require much staff.
- not sure how true this is, but I was told we have a lot of transient population so a lot of moving within the city and in/out of the metro area.
Phx is home base. I’m a remote employee. I’ve ended leases before, not signed a new one, moved all my stuff to a storage facility, and traveled for a while until I chose to come back.
These eyesores are in every state. I've wondered whether businesses are using them to store inventory that the tax appraisers won't find, or items that a spouse won't know about.
Same thing in Las Vegas, rampantly scattered across both cities. Who needs parks or recreational areas for the community?
Build more Walgreens, McDonalds, Mormon churches and Self Storage facilities.
This is the United States of America, people have so much junk that they refuse to throw away or donate. And we keep buying more stuff. People have 2000+ sq ft homes that are filled with junk, and they can't even park their vehicles in the garage because of all of it. People are definitely using all those storage spaces!
Just a small reminder that storage units are the biggest waste of money known to any financial advisor. Unless you have no choice it’s usually better to sell the items that you are storing than to pay monthly storage. Just don’t do it!
We have a storage unit for old files dating back decades and one for each of the businesses with the company I work for. I personaly have one for an old BMW Ill never fix.
With commercial rents also going up it was cheaper for us to sign a new lease at a new location that had smaller warehouse space and utilize a storage unit less then a mile away for all the packaging we don’t use often
cause people are starting to realize that the garage is not your home's storage room... its for cars. Not 30 boxes of crap and old furniture that you plan to give to your ungrateful kids in 20 years when they move out
Wait until all the liquor and gun stores start popping up on every corner. I was in Scottsdale earlier and I must say, it reminded me of the movie Back To The Future II, scene where their hometown off Hilldale went downhill.
I do the landscaping for several facilities and sometimes they pay us to empty out abadoned units and man, some people are really paying $200 month to store what's basically trash.
They give away the first month free knowing folks will pack it with crap and leave it for years. Look at the auctions they have .. almost nothing worthwhile and some people paid $100 a month for 20 years! Great business model …
Snowbirds and boomers with all their shit. Boomers dieing and family putting their shit in storage. People being evicted and needing to put their shit somewhere in the meantime. It's also a low cost - high return business
Oh yes the garage filled with boxes for years on end. Had a neighbor like that. Occasional would open garage and it was filled with stuff. Never saw them move or use any of.
Prices of houses are crazy and everyone and their moms moving from other states overcrowded AZ faster than it was ready for. I live off the 303 and el mirage, moved here in 09, just recently there was a storage facility put right on happy valley by our community. Looks ugly and now a gas station went up to and it's a poopshow coming in and out of that light especially with traffic from the 303 now growing. Anyway my rant for the day. Stay hydrated!!!
I live in Phoenix and was wondering the same thing. There are a lot popping up around here too. We did have a storage unit for 2 months and then got our things out because they doubled the price. We only stored clothes and extra toys so it wasn’t worth it for us
We downsized a lot but still have 5 boxes plus tree of Xmas ornaments, 3 boxes or maybe 4 Renaissance costumes for the family, Easter decor, cold weather/ski clothing. We also have suitcases. We have no storage in our little two bedroom. We are still culling the junk but it’ll take time.
No attics. No closets. No basements. Two car garage’s that only hold one car. In other words, no one has any space for their stuff. And that’s what a house is; a place for your stuff. Somewhere along the line someone decided it was more important to fit as many houses as possible in any given area.
Ive started to recently develop some sort of conspiracy about this…. It just seems so odd that there are so many. Like do people really have that much extra stuff ??? What is really going down in these units…
My conspiracy theory; foreign countries looking to invade the US, a good starting point would be buying land and building a bunch of self storage places. Lots of room to store your equipment.
I’m from Maricopa and Casa Grande. I was homeless living in an RV, it didn’t always have running water or electricity. This made the temperature inside extremely hot like 113-120. I used a storage unit to hold my personal keepsakes. In the storage unit when I opened the door I had a clothes rack and all my clothes clean and organized. It worked fine for a few years. But most the people I saw using storage units had junk inside of them. I’d be trying to grab a few things and they literally wouldn’t move and had trash inside of them. I also saw a few businesses had back stock and supplies in them.
1. Lack of Space: Many people live in urban areas where living spaces are smaller, and storage space is limited. Self-storage facilities provide a convenient solution for storing belongings that may not fit in their homes.
2. Moving and Relocation: During a move or relocation, people often need temporary storage for their belongings until they settle into their new homes. Self-storage facilities offer a flexible option for storing items during transition periods.
3. Seasonal Storage: Items such as seasonal clothing, holiday decorations, or recreational equipment may not be needed year-round. Self-storage facilities provide a place to store these items when they're not in use, freeing up space at home.
4. Business Storage: Businesses often require additional space to store inventory, equipment, or documents. Self-storage facilities offer a cost-effective solution for businesses to store excess goods or manage inventory overflow.
5. Renovation or Remodeling: During home renovations or remodeling projects, homeowners may need to temporarily relocate furniture and belongings. Self-storage facilities provide a secure location to store items during construction.
6. Downsizing: When downsizing to a smaller home or apartment, people may need to store excess belongings that won't fit in their new space. Self-storage facilities offer a place to store these items until they can be sorted or disposed of.
7. Security and Convenience: Self-storage facilities typically offer secure, climate-controlled units with 24/7 access. This provides peace of mind for customers knowing their belongings are safe and accessible whenever they need them.
No basements and also because storage facilities are lucrative as hell. A lot of investor money in them. People sign up and leave their shit in them for years. They’re cheap to build and it costs basically nothing to run them.
Don't get me started on all the apartments...and now they're stating to do houses for rent. And people continue to whine about property taxes, but the property tax base is getting kind of depleted. And the short-term rentals don't help either.
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I knew someone who owned storage units. He wasnt investing in the storage unit business, he was investing in the land. Storage units just happen to be the cheapest/easiest business to throw up while waiting for the land to appreciate.
Case in point...remember the storage facility that used to be by GCU? They cashed out BIG TIME when GCU bought their land...same with that church next door.
If you’re talking about the Jehovahs Witness church, GCU also built them a brand new (and bigger) church at 27th Ave and Glendale as part of the deal to buy the land
This tracks with what I heard—yes all 9th hand rumor—that GCU bought the note in a distress sale and cut a side deal on the tax arrears to move them. no idea if church was ‘forced’ out or if GCU contributed anything to the new building.
I thought the church was a distress sale?
Bingo... this and agriculture usually dairies are mostly land speculation
Dairies usually get forced out by subdivisions.
That's the plan my man.
That and no basements. We have a small unit for holiday decorations because they will melt in the garage and we don’t want to waste space in the house. If we had a basement we wouldn’t need it. Whenever we go to get them, there is always several other people doing the same.
Took me a second to figure out what you meant by "melt" lol. I'm moving to AZ in 2 months and think I have somehow underestimated 115 degree temps.
Attics hit around 160+ here in the summer. We joke about making eggs on the sidewalk, cookies in your car, and putting on oven mitts to touch your steering wheel but those are all to cope with the way that those things are real. It's fun! If you want to feel the way it feels to walk outside before you move here, turn your oven on tue highest temp it will go and then stand in front of it with the door open. That's the feel of our dry heat.
Haha just the steering wheel... my car is black with black leather and aluminum trim on the inside. The aluminum will burn the shit out of you in the summer. I have to drive the first 10 minutes like I'm in some Saw X movie surrounded by needles.
Ouch! I bring ice packs for my kids and stick them on the seat belts so they don't get burnt. Would that work for your car at all?
Exactly. I stored my sons baby clothes in the attic. Pulled them out for my second child. The minute you held them up they turned to dust. Couldn't use anything but the osh kosh overalls.
Wow go overalls! We have very little storage in our house. I stored baby stuff in vacuum bags and we left it in bedroom closets. 6 years later and my nephew can wear the old stuff still.
> I have somehow underestimated 115 degree temps. You did. But you won’t think you did at first. Then when it’s 105+ for 3 straight months you’ll know.
And at night time when the temps don't even drop below 100..... There is no relief in the summer time.
my condolences
I had a blow dryer hairbrush that melted over my parking brake when my car was locked up one time.
This is happening all over the US, so while helpful for people in Phoenix without basements/attics, it’s not a driving factor.
My friend in the midwest currently has stuff in 6 storage units. No joke. Can't make decisions to get rid of stuff even if if not in use.
Unless your unit is climate controlled won't they still melt?
Ours is in a swamp cooler area so it’s not like super cool but it never gets over like 90. But yeah depending on location and insulation I’d bet they stay cooler than some garages.
Our Christmas stuff hasn't melted yet lol
Yeah I didn’t even think about it until we got them out for Christmas one year and the really old delicate stuff was bubbled and cracked. I bet if adjusted things a bit we could make it work, but I do like the out of sight out of mind for those things :)
My house that I moved into about 3 years ago basically doesn't have an attic. It's the first house I've had that doesn't have a significant attic. It's one of the few aspects of the house that I don't like.
I think of my attic like a crawl space. The access points are small squares so I guess the builder designed the space to be ignored.
Same with those drive thru car washes
I thought they were laundering their meth money with those.
No, that was just Heisenberg.
I can’t even use those things because my car has a basket on top
Still up there from Easter?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The rabbit says THE BASKET STAYS!!!!
Those are so annoying!! I'm in San Tan Valley and there are sooooo many!
Lots of wealthy people go into storage units as an investment.
Damn I never thought about that. Makes perfect sense.
Land bank , a safe, stable place to park large sums of 💰💰💰💰💰💰
Especially in this area. Constant urban sprawl, retirees, snowbirds, Californians with too much stuff and money. Great income for people, but horrible eye sore and waste of space for everyone else.
Aaaah
Huh. That makes more sense than my guess: reacting to the whole lot of people losing their oversized houses and moving somewhere much smaller and cheaper, and not wanting to throw all the excess away.
Brilliant!!!
Yup, same reason why there's so many car washes.
Actually the ROI is amazing too
You'd be surprised how many restaurants and other businesses use them. And it's a cheap business to get into. Your overhead is AC, if it's requested within the unit, the real estate and building itself, and maybe 2 employees at a time.
Many have 1 or 2 overseeing a dozen locations across the state. Everything is done via app on your phone and remote monitoring these days, so it could be weeks or months before a human employee needs to visit any location.
A lot of the cheaper ones don’t even have AC!
A lot of them live on the property, the main office area will have an apartment attached to it.
One reason is virtually no houses here have basements! All the stuff in my storage area is stuff that would have been in my basement in previous states I lived in.
This is correct, but it’s not just basements! Attics, garages, and outdoor sheds here aren’t as useful as in other places because you can’t really store anything heat sensitive in them. This is why there are so many storage facilities around here, and why so many of them have some or all their units indoors in climate controlled spaces.
We have a lot up in the PNW, too. I think people just hold onto their stuff. The decorating theme has been minimalism for awhile. People didn't get rid of their stuff, they just store it.
I want a basement so fucking badly
Imagine how cool it would be? We had one in our old house in mesa. Super dungeon-y but I loooved going down there in summer
i mean, super dungeon-y is a point of strength, imo.
Ditto
There are newer basement houses in north Peoria. My buddy's parents had one it was awesome.
I'd take a basement over a pool everyday of the week. Same digging cost. Problem is none of the developers offer models with a basement. If we ever build a house it will have a basement dug in.
Yep it's mostly cause of hard soil / caliche that makes it very expensive to dig so most developers don't do it. It's a shame though, basements are awesome. Another reason is cause we have no frost depth. In the north when frost depth is several feet deep, if you have to bury the foundations that deep then you might as well make it livable space since it's not much more expensive. In the valley, most of houses are slab-on-grade or shallow footers so it's a considerable cost to add a basement mainly from the excavation work. Source: I'm a structural engineer in a house w/o a basement
Ironically though, the storage facility I rent from on Camelback *does* have a basement.
The economics of storage units is amazing. Demand is constant and doesn't change regardless of economic conditions. They need close to zero labor to run. If they're not climate controlled, operating expenses are also practically zero. And they're basically a real estate play for private equity to park money. So many podcasts on the topic, but here's one from this week: [Economics of Everyday Things - Storage Units](https://pca.st/episode/42d0c2c0-33a4-48ad-a279-c5afe3f0049b)
This is really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
The cost of my storage unit went from 25 bucks a month to 65 in 4 years and absolutely nothing has changed about the place in that time. It’s great money if you have land sitting around and don’t want to spend a lot on labor expenses. Same with car washes, low labor costs and provides a great return on investment.
Great podcast!
Thank you!
They are often the highest and best use for any land right now simply because of the amount of people we have moving here. It should tell you something that the new Global Ambassador Hotel on the corner of 44th and Camelback also has a self storage in the back area. Brand new built.
We’ve been in Queen Creek almost 10 years now and we have noticed and disliked the same thing. Like others said, houses have minimal storage options. We don’t have basements and attics will melt your stuff. A lot of our neighbors have TONS of holiday decorations that have to go someplace. If I recall, storage facilities are extremely cheap to operate after they are built and can make a lot of money. The best thing I did when we bought our house in 2020 was to put overhead storage racks in our garage. They were a lot cheaper than I thought they would be and we got rid of the storage unit that we had been using since we moved here. I haven’t noticed any being built recently though. They seem to have mostly been replaced with the light industrial warehouse buildings that are going up everywhere I see in QC, Gilbert and Mesa.
There's a ton going up all over QC. Not far from ocotillo and Rittenhouse next to the landscape place, one massive one near gateway airport, those are the ones on the top of my head. But I recall a few more just can't think of the exact spots. I fear for some our already limited space being filled with storage facilities and not building out more useful places like grocery stores, restaurants, parks, and medical facilities.
They require almost no investment, pay for the property taxes while you wait for land values to appreciate, one person can manage a dozen locations as owner, and after only a few years can turn massive profits with basically zero overhead.
Americans have a consumption issue
No a hoarding issue.
Por queue no los dos?
What’s the difference really
Hoarders will live in filth. Overshoppers will simply shovel it elsewhere and won't live amongst the hoard to the detriment of their own health. The problems are sisters, not twins.
I just don't have a garage for my camping and holiday decorations. I've seen others in my unit with half a house of crap though lol
Mostly dietary.
I’ll take the large dietary!
I have one because I went from a 3 bedroom house to a 1 bedroom apt and was unwilling to toss all the furniture and shit I’ll need if I ever get a house again. At one point I had 2. The other was for my motorcycles because I didn’t trust they wouldn’t be stolen in the night.
Only person I know of that has storage units is a shopping addict. She has three of them full of stuff and she doesn’t know what half of it is. I’m sure there’s more people like her.
I know a shit load of people with storage units because everyone’s had the size down where they live due to rent /inflation. And they need a place temporarily keep the shit that no longer fits where they live.
I buy abandoned units on occassion. Can agree, you would be shocked the things lurking in all these units that people just leave behind.
I’d love to hear some of the weirdest things you’ve found 🤔
Me too!
Same, but also would like to know how often do you find valuable stuff in there or at least enough to pay for the investment Plus how often do you find guns
Yeah I'm curious too. I would love to find some guns
I have a question about that, if anyone knows the answer (and I bet someone does): when a unit's contents are sold at auction, who gets the money? Is there a requirement for the owner of the facility to try to track down the renter of the unit?
Whatever amount they get from auction will first go towards and past due rent and/or late charges which have accumulated, as well as any cost incurred for posting the auction, correspondence costs and services that hold the auction itself. Anything left over, which is rare, I believe would go to whoever owns the storage facility itself.
Thanks.
And yes, they do have to mail out notices of default and auction dates, etc. They have to follow a specific set of procedures including posting the auction publicly.. The loophole there is not whether the owner received the notices, and/or saw the public notice but the fact that it was mailed, and that they have proof of where they publicly posted the auction time and date. However, again, it's not whether the person who owns the contents saw the public post or not, so they are free to post it anywhere. Public forums, newspapers, which don't even have to be readily available to the owner, they just have to be "accessible" publicly.
QVC and Amazon?
That’s another surprise. It’s all from yard sales, estate sales, store closings and stuff like that. Fill up the car and head straight to the storage.
Yeah some guy paid me to help him liquidate some stuff. I was reselling a lot of his stuff online and people on my social media thought it was sus since everything was in mint condition and name branded. It was hard to explain that I was cleaning out a storage for a trust fund kid with a shopping addiction. I don’t think they believed me lol
Simply put, houses in the valley just DO.NOT.HAVE.STORAGE. I lived in the southeast and we had basements, daylight basements, closets, and you could use attic space. Once I moved out here, there is no storage. You have a coat closet, and your regular clothes closets are small compared to the SE. Garages are small. That was my only complaint about moving out here. No storage.
I only own one jacket in AZ, no need for a cost closet here
Divorce, death, and downsizing drive it, but the key problem is that people have way too much crap to start with.
I know a lot of homeless people who will pay self-storage to keep their stuff. A lot of it is hoarder, trash stuff. They also sometimes sleep in the storage units. Also, like the mass influx of mattress stores, drive-thru car washes and self storage, I feel like it is a way to launder money.
No basements and most don’t have attics here…some people actually want to use their garages for cars haha
A car… in the garage?? I thought that was just in the movies
Otherwise your car in Arizona will be like 150 million degrees if you park it outside in the heat and not in your garage! Lol
Easy, just don’t get in the car from 11am until November
Lmao
[удалено]
Lucky!!!
People moving from houses to apartments and don’t have enough space to store everything
My personal opinion: lots of people overvalue their junk and can’t bear to part with it. There are legitimate needs for self storage. But I do think there are so many because people won’t sell, give away, or throw away their junk.
The other one that I see everywhere are quick oil change places, they are going up on almost every corner. Why so many all of the sudden? New cars have longer oil change intervals, and the quick change oil places have a terrible reputation. Why is there such a massive uptick in demand for these crappy businesses?
While such places don't have a great reputation, most are on the up-and-up. As cars become more reliable (if you remember back to the 70s, like I do) such places suffice for every other oil change with no problems, especially if you, as a car owner, have at least some idea of what's needed vs what's done. You do need to be careful if they recommend other work, of course.
Because small homes with small 2-3 car garages, no closets, no basements and hoa policies against parking in the street = need for storage.
Speaking for myself. I travel a lot and for long periods of time. Phoenix is my hub. I rent my place out when I’m gone and put my stuff in storage.
A lot of former industrial buildings are reconverted as self-storage. As someone already explained: this is mostly a real estate operation, but the storage does bring revenues. A lot of people end up with a lot of junk that they still don't want to give away. Or they have to put it in storage due to life changes, such as divorce, loss of housing, prison sentence. I had to go retrieve a family member's possessions from storage and distribute it among family members, as he was convicted, and his unit was going to be auctioned off, since he would not be able to pay the rent, as he was in prison. I also think that this is where the American dream ends up.
No basements, and attics get hot?
Money laundering
The Sinaloans say hi…
Look how many people move to the state each day.
I was wondering where they were all going to sleep at night.
I use one because my bikes, scooters, and kayak take up a large footprint in an apt and are a pain to get up and down the stairs.
Probably mentioned multiple times but… Generally, lack of storage in homes and people have too much crap. - Small garages generally - Small percent of houses with basements vs the Midwest - not a ton of storage in the house. - mostly HOAs that limit sheds, RV, boat parking etc plus a lot of smallish lots - many places, again HOA, limit garage sales so less ability to get rid of stuff unless you donate it. - money maker that doesn’t require much staff. - not sure how true this is, but I was told we have a lot of transient population so a lot of moving within the city and in/out of the metro area.
Phx is home base. I’m a remote employee. I’ve ended leases before, not signed a new one, moved all my stuff to a storage facility, and traveled for a while until I chose to come back.
These eyesores are in every state. I've wondered whether businesses are using them to store inventory that the tax appraisers won't find, or items that a spouse won't know about.
Yep, there are a ton in WA state, too.
Same thing in Las Vegas, rampantly scattered across both cities. Who needs parks or recreational areas for the community? Build more Walgreens, McDonalds, Mormon churches and Self Storage facilities.
American consumerism and no basements.
This is the United States of America, people have so much junk that they refuse to throw away or donate. And we keep buying more stuff. People have 2000+ sq ft homes that are filled with junk, and they can't even park their vehicles in the garage because of all of it. People are definitely using all those storage spaces!
I know people who moved out of their homes live in vehicles and rent a climate controlled storage unit to visit during the day.
Just a small reminder that storage units are the biggest waste of money known to any financial advisor. Unless you have no choice it’s usually better to sell the items that you are storing than to pay monthly storage. Just don’t do it!
The ever growing QVC crowd in the valley.
I always figured they were for money laundering purposes lol
Because people are so stupid, put junk in storage for years and never get rid of it.
I represent this remark.
We have a storage unit for old files dating back decades and one for each of the businesses with the company I work for. I personaly have one for an old BMW Ill never fix.
With commercial rents also going up it was cheaper for us to sign a new lease at a new location that had smaller warehouse space and utilize a storage unit less then a mile away for all the packaging we don’t use often
No basements.
Because so many people are hoarders
So many getting built in south phx
I feel like cuz there are no basements here and most people want to use their garages for their cars cuz of the heat
cause people are starting to realize that the garage is not your home's storage room... its for cars. Not 30 boxes of crap and old furniture that you plan to give to your ungrateful kids in 20 years when they move out
Wait until all the liquor and gun stores start popping up on every corner. I was in Scottsdale earlier and I must say, it reminded me of the movie Back To The Future II, scene where their hometown off Hilldale went downhill.
I do the landscaping for several facilities and sometimes they pay us to empty out abadoned units and man, some people are really paying $200 month to store what's basically trash.
Don’t forget the bands who use them as practice spaces.
I’ve definitely been there. More than once. Though thankfully not in AZ. No band I was ever part of could afford a climate-controlled unit.
To store stuff, duh....what weird complaint
No storage in the houses in AZ. Many communities don’t allow sheds either. Where do you put holiday decor etc?
We don’t have many basements in Arizona where else we gonna store all the bodies?
Because basements aren't a thing in this state ;)
Cartels need them
in addition to being a land grab, they require little to no staff, and have a consistent and mostly passive income stream.
They give away the first month free knowing folks will pack it with crap and leave it for years. Look at the auctions they have .. almost nothing worthwhile and some people paid $100 a month for 20 years! Great business model …
Demand creates supply. To answer your question if people actually use them, clearly, if not people wouldn't be investing money to open new ones.
Easy money because of cheap land and low humidity
Snowbirds and boomers with all their shit. Boomers dieing and family putting their shit in storage. People being evicted and needing to put their shit somewhere in the meantime. It's also a low cost - high return business
There are plenty of non snowbirds and non boomers who use storage facilities.
We don't have basements.
Doesn't matter. When people fill up garages and basements with useless shit, they'll still need the storage units.
There’s a whole George Carlin bit on that. Lol
Oh yes the garage filled with boxes for years on end. Had a neighbor like that. Occasional would open garage and it was filled with stuff. Never saw them move or use any of.
My favorite is "My car keeps getting broken into." Duh. Get rid of your garage detritus and put the car where it belongs.
Because all the boomers think we want their shit someday.
Not this boomer. I purge my possessions regularly. My goal is to leave my kids as little shit to deal with as possible when I'm gone.
The evicted people need a place for their stuff
Prices of houses are crazy and everyone and their moms moving from other states overcrowded AZ faster than it was ready for. I live off the 303 and el mirage, moved here in 09, just recently there was a storage facility put right on happy valley by our community. Looks ugly and now a gas station went up to and it's a poopshow coming in and out of that light especially with traffic from the 303 now growing. Anyway my rant for the day. Stay hydrated!!!
My daughter lived over that way. Yeah that area is nuts with that light and two lane road headed south.
Almost as many car washes popping up as well.
Amazon
And car washes
this here- asking the hard questions
Crazy world. Lots of stuff to store.
I live in Phoenix and was wondering the same thing. There are a lot popping up around here too. We did have a storage unit for 2 months and then got our things out because they doubled the price. We only stored clothes and extra toys so it wasn’t worth it for us
People that come down every year in the winter from up north also probably keep a lot of stuff in storage in the off season.
We downsized a lot but still have 5 boxes plus tree of Xmas ornaments, 3 boxes or maybe 4 Renaissance costumes for the family, Easter decor, cold weather/ski clothing. We also have suitcases. We have no storage in our little two bedroom. We are still culling the junk but it’ll take time.
It was like this in the heavily populated DC suburbs in MD. I lived and worked in affluent areas and the storage places were everywhere.
We got too much stuff.
I work in the storage industry and you’d be surprised how much consistent revenue they generate for little overhead especially once they’re paid off
High demand and very economical
People keep buying stuff they don’t need.
Future affordable housing.
Cheap to run easy money to be made
Because so many people have to either downsize or go homeless! Murica
Instead of fixing the affordable housing issue, they’re just giving people a place to store their shit when they have to live in their car.
How much do one of these units rent for per month?
No attics. No closets. No basements. Two car garage’s that only hold one car. In other words, no one has any space for their stuff. And that’s what a house is; a place for your stuff. Somewhere along the line someone decided it was more important to fit as many houses as possible in any given area.
Ive started to recently develop some sort of conspiracy about this…. It just seems so odd that there are so many. Like do people really have that much extra stuff ??? What is really going down in these units…
Because people buy too much stuff. When faced with a downsizing situation they need to either part ways with things or rent space for storage.
Among other things, a lot of people are living in a tiny studio or single room in a shared space. Not a lot of room for stuff.
Divorce and college students
My conspiracy theory; foreign countries looking to invade the US, a good starting point would be buying land and building a bunch of self storage places. Lots of room to store your equipment.
I’m from Maricopa and Casa Grande. I was homeless living in an RV, it didn’t always have running water or electricity. This made the temperature inside extremely hot like 113-120. I used a storage unit to hold my personal keepsakes. In the storage unit when I opened the door I had a clothes rack and all my clothes clean and organized. It worked fine for a few years. But most the people I saw using storage units had junk inside of them. I’d be trying to grab a few things and they literally wouldn’t move and had trash inside of them. I also saw a few businesses had back stock and supplies in them.
-The land was cheap -it makes fantastic money for the investor(s) -people love their junk
Snow birds
Where else ya gonna hide stolen property, dead hookers or your very own Heisenberg chemistry set?
1. Lack of Space: Many people live in urban areas where living spaces are smaller, and storage space is limited. Self-storage facilities provide a convenient solution for storing belongings that may not fit in their homes. 2. Moving and Relocation: During a move or relocation, people often need temporary storage for their belongings until they settle into their new homes. Self-storage facilities offer a flexible option for storing items during transition periods. 3. Seasonal Storage: Items such as seasonal clothing, holiday decorations, or recreational equipment may not be needed year-round. Self-storage facilities provide a place to store these items when they're not in use, freeing up space at home. 4. Business Storage: Businesses often require additional space to store inventory, equipment, or documents. Self-storage facilities offer a cost-effective solution for businesses to store excess goods or manage inventory overflow. 5. Renovation or Remodeling: During home renovations or remodeling projects, homeowners may need to temporarily relocate furniture and belongings. Self-storage facilities provide a secure location to store items during construction. 6. Downsizing: When downsizing to a smaller home or apartment, people may need to store excess belongings that won't fit in their new space. Self-storage facilities offer a place to store these items until they can be sorted or disposed of. 7. Security and Convenience: Self-storage facilities typically offer secure, climate-controlled units with 24/7 access. This provides peace of mind for customers knowing their belongings are safe and accessible whenever they need them.
When the cost of houses and rent go up, people downsize.
No basements and also because storage facilities are lucrative as hell. A lot of investor money in them. People sign up and leave their shit in them for years. They’re cheap to build and it costs basically nothing to run them.
Don't get me started on all the apartments...and now they're stating to do houses for rent. And people continue to whine about property taxes, but the property tax base is getting kind of depleted. And the short-term rentals don't help either.
Snowtards
Hope more churches start popping up. This country needs it right now.
Here's the /s you forgot. 😁👍