1. I won't be able to assess trends in local auction attendance until the first of July. Ive been out of town for a couple of weeks and no big auctions scheduled until the end of June aorund here.
2. Online trends & forums: Definitely the interest is dropping on forums, and there has been some noticeble downward trends in "storage auctions" across the net. Interest hit a low this past May, but the SW season 3 promos have peaked interest again, atleast on the internet. Remains to be seen if that translates into more newbies at the auctions.
My personal thought is the third seaon of SW California will peak some interest in newbies and even bring back some folks who tried it before to see if the prices have come down. I think we are still in for a little bit of ebb and flow due to folks who came out over the last two years cause of the TV shows, got burned, lost money, but come back out to see if the bidding comes down, as the bidding comes down, they win units, word gets out, more show back up, prices go back up again, more people lose money again, drop back out, prices go down again, etc, etc, etc. But all in all I just got a feeling that prices on units across the board are going to start trending downward. My prediction is we are going to start seeing auctions where those who have been doing this a while and recognize "hidden" value of the items showing are going to be able to start stealing really great units out from under the newbies, but at the same time there are still going to be many over-priced units being won.
In my local the first season of SW Texas seemed to have a much bigger influence on bringing people out to auctions then the first season of SW California, so I am not to concerned about the third season bringing a lot of folks out but who knows, we will just have to wait and see. Being in the South few people want to move a lot of furniture and other stuff in 90 degree plus heat, so this summer should still be good for getting the large packed out units with furniture. Will just have to see what happens when the weather turns nice again in the fall.
I think in our little forum here we are getting to "meat and potatoes" discussions and all the newbie questions have been asked and all the treasure stories have been told, and it turns out our treasure stories can't compete with Alan & Ton so unless you are a real storage auction buyer the interest in reading these posts is waning.
My .02