Some impressions on how the TV shows have affected the storage business

While from the storage auction buyer's point of view the TV shows have had a detrimental affect on our ability to buy units as cheaply as we would like, there is also the feeling that the TV shows have educated the public about the legal system in which the storage facilities operate. This seems to be leading to lkr renters actually paying their bills and reducing the number of units available to we the storage auction buyers.

Here's a partial cut and paste from a storage blog on the internet. Because the full site is obviously an ADVERTISEMENT for the blogger's storage properties and a variety of other ways they get money from storage auction buyer's I have chosen not to reveal the source. If you wanted to know, you could spend some time Google-ing and you could find it.

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"It’s not surprising that reality shows about storage auctions would have an affect on the storage auction industry itself, but what about the self-storage industry at large?  The popularity of the shows can definitely skew the public’s perspective on the self-storage industry in that they will think a unit being auctioned off is common place and something they might have to worry about if they ever decided to rent self-storage.

But considering the fact that, as we mentioned, only 1-2% of all the rented storage units in the country ever go to auction, this really isn’t the case.  In that way, Pimley suggests that the TV shows “are positive for the auction business but a negative for the storage facilities.”  But that blanket statement may be a little too simplistic since another surprising consequence has been that, according to Watkins, the television shows have increased awareness of the lien and auction process they have “educated America that the storage industry lives within a set of laws that govern how we do business and out only resolution for dealing with delinquent or abandoned units […] and therefore the public are paying their bills at a higher rather than they were before”.

In that way, the popularity of storage auctions could certainly be considered a boon to the industry since most facilities would much rather have every tenant pay his or her bill on time even if it means they never get to be on TV."

A win-win for storage facilities and a lose-lose for us the buyer. Either people are paying their bills on time, or the ones that do go to auction bring in a higher price because of the large crowds. While we get less units to bid on and higher prices. Thats just the way it is though.