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]

According to the United States Search and Rescue Task Force, the thing to do if you get lost is to stay in one place -- and stay together. Sunrise, Florida, and its more than 86,000 citizens have been doing just that for 50 years, since Sunrise (originally called Sunset) was first established. Yet for almost a month this summer, Google Maps sent viewers who were looking for Sunrise to Sarasota -- a city that is 200 miles away and on the other side of the state -- instead. Not only was the city of Sunrise lost, but so were all its businesses (including many self storage facilities), addresses, and even city hall, much to the mayor’s dismay. [More]

The self storage industry is continuing to expand this spring with a wave of new facilities opening up across the country, particularly in the South.

In Georgia, a private investor has purchased the four-year-old East Ellijay facility of American Storage. The facility has about 35,000 square feet of rentable space, divided into 248 units, some of which are climate-controlled. The property also features a truck rental service and has several security features, including digital entry, perimeter fencing, and security cameras. The sale was brokered by Dale Eisenman, the president of Midcoast Properties Inc. [More]