If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the steamrollers almost certainly go through storage units. There may be no more costly or easier mistake for a homeowner or estate executor to make than falling for the trap of renting a storage unit.
Storage units are like credit card debt.
We see it all the time in our work with Orion’s Attic: People with the very best of intentions choose to put heaps of stuff in storage units instead of dealing with the problem beforehand. Our advice to you? Don’t let yourself become a storage unit sucker. If you’re already stuck in a unit, or two or three, hire us to be your storage unity cleanout company. Contact us today to help get you out of the ever-increasing monthly fees for storage unit rent. You can also read more about all of our services.
We have seen people rack up many thousands of dollars in storage fees before they even know what hit them. Putting stuff in storage units is like going into credit card debt: It’s incredibly easy to get in and monstrously difficult to get out. The comparison between storage units and credit cards is apt in many ways. Both offer wonderful deals to get you to try one for the first time. Many storage unit companies even offer a first month for “free.”
Storage unit companies know that you may start a rental agreement intending to get out before the first month is over but that almost all people get hooked and end up paying for storage for many months and, sadly, often years. By the time you’re done, assuming you get out before you decide to default and let the storage unit company auction off your belongings, you have spent thousands more dollars in storage than the value of the stuff you’re saving.
We refer to storage rental companies as modern-day crack dealers. They give you your first hit for free because they know you’re likely to be a user for years, if not for life. Don’t let the crack dealers get you hooked and strung out.
Even stock market investors are cashing in on your misery. Self-storage industry trade publications blatantly advise self-storage facility owners how to stick renters with more and greater fees.
, which you often don’t need because your stuff isn’t worth enough to buy a policy from them — and your stuff is often covered by your homeowner’s insurance. Call your agent to check if you’re in this situation. Self-storage companies also raise your rates constantly.
Public storage companies hate storage unit cleanout companies like us. We cost them money every time we liberate someone from their metal junk prisons.
Let’s share some examples of the storage unit nightmares we’ve seen and show you the math. Hopefully, this will inspire you to use Orion’s Attic for your storage unit buyout and/or storage unit clean-out needs:
Half-empty storage units are worse than packed units: You’re paying for twice what you need.
We helped a Northern Virginia client who called us a few years ago hoping to make a mint on the sale of his mother’s antique furniture he had kept in storage. By the time he called us, he had spent $250 a month for four years — a total of $12,000. The second-hand, antique shop value of all of it? About $3,000 after the expenses of us taking it to an antiques store for him. The man had been blinded by the emotional attachment he had with his mom. As we have to tell people all the time, sentimental value does not equal real-world financial value.
We got a call from a Washington D.C. client who had a pair of storage units costing him about $500 a month. They were packed floor-to-ceiling. Unfortunately, they held furniture, art, home decor and collectibles that aren’t in style any time soon. He had already paid $22,000 in storage. He told us that he was ready to let the stuff go and stop paying storage fees. When we showed up to take it all away and sell it for him, he changed his mind. We asked him why he couldn’t go through with it, how he could live with that kind of expense. He told us that he got anxious each month as the due date approached, then chose to pay the bill and not think about it again for several more weeks. We suspect he’s still there now and that he has now made more than $40,000 in payments … money he has zero chance to recover.
One of the most painful cases we experienced came with a dear, sweet woman in Maryland who over time became a friend of ours. We first met her years ago when she was grieving for her husband, a man who happened to have a storage unit full of a certain kind of collectibles for which demand and value had fallen to the floor over the past 20 years. They were hot once but not now. We made her a generous offer to buy it all or take it on consignment just to get her out of paying $300 a month. The dear, sweet woman told us that she thought the items had more value so she just couldn’t let them go for that. Naturally, our friend called us years later and we emptied the unit, the collection now worth even less than it was years ago. She ended up getting back a fraction of what she had paid in storage.
If you’re thinking you’re going to play the junk stock market and put furniture in storage because “the value will come back” and that you’ll make a profit in the end, the odds of that working out for you are slim to none. The value of most items is not going to go back up in our lifetimes. The only furniture people go nuts for today is Mid-Century Modern furniture. Signed limited edition prints by most artists draw maybe $5 to 10 at auction — and sit forever in retail stores. No one cares about them anymore. (We’ve got stacks of such prints in our eBay store right now and can’t sell them for even $2 each.)
The key to avoiding storage units? Make tough decisions not driven by emotion.
People are just as often driven to storage units by bad, emotion-based decisions. Estate executors put their parents’ stuff in storage after they die because they think their parents would be horrified if they knew they didn’t keep it. We can’t imagine any parent wanting their kids to ring up thousands of dollars in charges holding onto Singer sewing machines with cast iron bases, Hummel figurines, china cabinets and upholstered couches.
Many storage unit companies, by the way, charge you a lower monthly rate for the first several months and then begin jacking up the fees by as much as 33 percent by the fourth or fifth month.
If you’re currently considering renting a storage unit, don’t do it. Whether your sell or donate the items, you’re still going to come out better financially than paying for storage indefinitely.
If you’re already in a storage unit facility, get out of it today. Orion’s Attic can help. If you have the kinds of hot items that would be profitable for us to re-sell directly, we can buy out the unit and haul it all away. If it’s filled with a
The couple hired us to provide a combination of services. We pulled down and opened every box so that they could review the contents and decide what they wanted to take home. Next, we made an offer to buy a collection of sterling silver flatware, some rare books, and other items. We delivered two truckloads of furniture and household items to charity (we love A Wider Circle in Silver Spring, Habitat for Humanity Restore and others) and provided them with tax receipts, and we hauled a truckload of broken items and other trash to a Montgomery County transfer station. The initial labor charge for two days of hard work with a crew of four and our truck was not cheap — but — after we purchased alot of collectibles — the final bill fell to about $500. They closed out the unit and saved the $400 rent payment for the next month, not to mention who knows how many more after that.
We met another elderly couple recently when they called us, confessed that they were hoarders, and needed our help to clear out NINE storage units they’ve paid to rent for some TWENTY YEARS.
“I know we could buy a house for that,” the woman said.
We met the couple at their units. We estimated the total financial value of everything in all the units was, on a good day, $500. Yes. $500. They’ve paid $400,000 to keep $500 worth of stuff. The condition is now so bad that most of it should be thrown away.
The only thing worse than becoming a storage unit sucker in the first place is remaining one when you’ve already paid way more in storage fees than you will ever get back from liquidating the unit’s contents. STOP throwing your money away in storage unit fees. Contact Orion’s Attic today to find out more about our storage unit buyout and storage unit cleanout services.
Learn more about liquidating estates, downsizing, and cleanouts of entire homes in our Estate Liquidation and Downsizing Guide. Gain insight on selling your antiques and collectibles including some market trends in Sell Us Your Stuff.
- Self-storage unit prices soaring (ABC Cincinnati)
- Sad side of self-storage growth (The Press of Atlantic City)
Resist the temptation to rent a storage unit