A storage unit is the one part of an estate that nobody has looked at lately. This month we walked thirteen units belonging to one family, together with the organizer who had been managing them, and took 93 photographs in about half an hour. Nothing had been inventoried. These are the steps we would take, in order, and the reason for each.
The Steps, in Order
- Read the rental agreement and call the office before anything else.
- Confirm who is allowed to open each unit.
- Photograph every unit before anything is touched.
- Sort into sell, keep, donate and dispose.
- Decide which units to empty first.
- Sell in waves, not all at once.
- Give notice on each unit as it empties.
Read the Agreement and Call the Office
Many storage agreements restrict selling or running a business from the property. We do not assume yours is silent on it. We read the agreement and ask the office what is allowed, including whether buyers may come to the unit to collect.
If selling on the property is not allowed, the plan changes, not the goal. Buyers collect from somewhere else, and each piece is moved once, on the day it sells.
Confirm Who Can Open the Unit
If the renter has died, or the units are held in someone else's name, ask the office what it requires before a family member or an organizer can open a unit, change a lock or end the rental. Requirements differ from one facility to the next. Settle this first. It is the question most likely to stall a cleanout after the work has started.
Photograph Before You Touch Anything
Wide shots of each unit with the door open, then each wall, then the labels. The photographs do three jobs. They show the family what is where, so decisions can be made from home. They are the record if something is later said to be missing. And they let us plan which unit to empty first without standing in the doorway.
The thirteen units we walked were unusually well organized, because the family's helper had labeled and stacked them. The contents ranged widely: a dining set with the maker's label still on it, a Chinese apothecary cabinet, a king leather sleigh bed, a set of 20-inch wheels, about two hundred leather-bound books, signed sports memorabilia, bicycles and Christmas decorations. Our photo estimate was roughly 150 to 190 lots.
Sort Into Four
Sell, keep, donate, dispose. A fifth pile appears in almost every unit: the personal items, such as family photographs, medical papers and boxes of documents. Those are set aside for the family and are never listed or photographed for sale.
Many boxes in the units carried the family's name and a street address in marker. None of that goes into a listing. A buyer should see an item, not the people it belonged to.
Pieces wrapped in plastic or packed in boxes are a decision of their own. Leaving them closed would leave value in the unit. We open them, photograph the contents, and list them as lots.
Decide Which Units to Empty First
The question is the rent against what is inside. A unit that holds a bed and a few boxes costs the same each month as one holding furniture worth ten times more. Empty the first kind quickly, with donation or disposal, and the rent stops. Put the careful selling effort into the second kind.
Work it out unit by unit: monthly rent, divided by the number of lots inside, tells you which units are costing the most for what they hold. We covered the arithmetic in what storage really costs compared with selling.
Sell in Waves
You cannot bring thirteen units of furniture into one room at once, and buyers do not turn up all at once either. So the units come out in waves, highest value first. The first wave is furniture and the highest-value pieces, listed first. Household lots follow once those are moving.
For each unit, we tell the family the date it will be empty, so they can end that rental the same day and stop the rent. In the plan we wrote for this family, prices step down at 30, 60 and 90 days, with a decision at 90 about what is left. The plan states two goals, the most money and the fewest units, and that is why selling comes in waves and not on one weekend.
Give Notice as Each Unit Empties
Check the notice period in the agreement. Some facilities charge through the end of the billing month or ask for notice in advance. Knowing that before a unit empties is the difference between ending the rent on the day it is empty and paying another month.
Questions People Ask
Do we need to be there? Not for the selling. Buyers collect at the unit with whoever the family has named, and we arrange that. What if we cannot find the key? Ask the office what it does. Most have a procedure, and it usually needs proof you are allowed to open the unit. What if we do not want to sell everything? Then the keep pile gets a label naming the unit it is going to, and we leave it where it is.
How It Is Priced
Every project is quoted individually, in writing, after a free walkthrough. A job with this many units is a different job from one unit, and the quote says so. The commission is 15% of the net sale price, after marketplace fees, so you keep 85% of that net figure.