There are many reasons, happy and sad, to become a self storage tenant, but one of the saddest must be to have to put belongings in self storage because your home has been foreclosed on. But in a recession economy, foreclosures seem to have become the new American experience, with millions of Americans from all walks of life losing their homes. Self storage companies have stepped up to the plate, offering storage to families who are going through a transition from one home to another, providing the first month or two of storage at a discount while families struggle to get back on their feet, and providing discounts to families with special circumstances, such as military families. Families who use self storage typically do so temporarily, while they are in transition, with the average self storage tenancy for an individual or family lasting about 11 months, according to industry statistics published last May in NuWire Investor.

Now it is becoming clear that one subset of self storage customers -- families who have lost their homes to foreclosure -- may have been improperly evicted from their homes in a deeply flawed foreclosure process that does not allow for careful and thorough review of mortgage documents and records to occur before the eviction process begins. Some bank employees are signing off on foreclosure documents without first going through the documents to make sure that the foreclosure is truly justified. Some of the foreclosures that have been processed over the last few years not only were processed far too quickly and sloppily, but are not even legal, because some files contained documents that were forged, signatures that were forged, names of made-up companies and employees from those companies, and affidavits that were signed without the presence of a notary (or that were signed by a notary several days after the initial signature that the notary was supposed to have witnessed). [More]

The nation is slowly coming out of the recession, and unemployment rates are starting to drop. But many people, even after getting a new job, are struggling to catch up on their debts -- especially back mortgage payments. Bankruptcy rates are slowly rising. All too many families, seeking bankruptcy protection or trying to avoid foreclosures, have fallen prey to financial scams. One common scam occurs when a company takes money from a family, agrees to make arrangements for a mortgage loan modification with the bank or lender, and then does nothing, letting the property go into foreclosure. Ironically, some people have gone into foreclosure or bankruptcy right after becoming employed again. Many such families have turned to self storage facilities at the last minute, storing their possessions while looking for a place to live. [More]