Storage wars - Anyone else watching?
 

Makes me just want to go out and hit up some auctions!

They make some great scores.cool show

Just saw it for the first time tonight. Good enough I set up a series recording for it.

lol, me too, already called around and one of the big local companies with several storages in the area is having their auction in two weeks, im going to go check it out if nothing else. Curious to see it first hand.

At least I know I am not the only crazy entrepreneur at heart.... lolol Even if the stuff is junk that can resold on ebay... it might make some good profit... :)

I know a few storage companies well and all about these auctions.

The most important thing you need to know is....

1) your not cutting the original lock off these storage containers ;)

That is all ;)

Yep. But there is still good finds if you can get the unit for a good price.

even total shit sells on craigslist or a garage sale. I have someone I know who I trust that has nothing to do all day and plenty time on their hands. I was thinking of giving him some money after I check it out and let him buy a few and try to sell what they get and see what kind of profit it turns, if it works out, do more.

i am sure that is true in some cases. But they don't want to get caught doing that... big trouble. Up until the time of the auction the person renting the unit can come back and pay. It would look really silly if they went back that morning of the auction, paid their bill and found a new lock on their unit.

Also, it would be nearly impossible for them to go through every unit and every single box/item.

Saw it, good show. I would have loved to do that, but now that its on tv so will 300 million others :upsidedow

Do the storage unit companies have to auction it off? They don't get first dibs? Could be worth owning a storage unit business just for the defaulters if it's that lucrative.

On the show it works like that gameshow Deal or no deal

Supposedly they don't open the boxes, and auction these "mystery packages" off to the highest bidder.

If you owned a storage facility i guess youd have to decide what gets you more money, doing it that way or selling the stuff off for what its worth on your own. Which includes a lot of overhead and work.....

For about two years I bought storage units and sold the stuff inside just like on this show. It is a wild, fun and at times frustrating and time consuming thing, but you can make some decent money at it if you stick with it.

Here are a few things to look out for and remember for those who saw this show and want to try it out.

1. Get to know the bidders. If you do this enough you will start to see all the same people at the auctions. Know who buys what and how they bid. You might be able to sell them stuff later and it could help you get out of their way and save money if you know they are the kind of person who will bid at all costs.

2. do your homework. Just because you don't know what the item is doesn't mean it is not valuable. One of the best units I ever bought was filled with track (running) stuff. There were programs from track meets, a poster etc. It turns out the poster was a very rare Steve Prefontaine poster that sold for $250 and some of the programs were from track meets where the guys on the cover eventually went on to win gold medals so some of them sold for $100+ each.

3. Own your own truck. When you buy the unit you will normally have 48 hours to empty it out so you will need to be able to move it fast. You will also be making a lot of runs to the dump. If you have to borrow/rent a truck every time you need to do this you will go insane.

4. Have outlets for your stuff. A lot of the stuff you get has some value, but you can't sell it on ebay. Use Craig's List and other local papers. I found half a dozen small local area papers that would let me put free classifieds in their paper for things that were less than $100. I use those to sell mattresses and appliances (and trust me, you will get a lot of mattresses). Also as you make contacts you might find people who will buy some of your items. I would save a lot of it and have a couple of garage sales every year to move a bunch of it.

5. Most units are not winners. You will get the occasional unit full of great stuff. Like I got one that was packed with sports memorabilia, but you get a lot that are just people's junk. Be prepared for it and know cheap, fast ways to dispose of it.

6. Know the companies you buy from. There are some storage places that will gather up all the shit people leave behind when they move out, put it in one unit and sell it at the auction. The more reputable ones will tell you it is "found" merchandise, but others will not and you are basically paying them to haul off their garbage.

7. Out of the way places can be your friend. There were a handful of out of the way places that held auctions during the day in the middle of the week. On a few occasions I was the only bidder. I eventually came to an agreement with a few of them and if nobody else showed up they would sell me each unit for $1.

8. Have storage space. You will quickly accumulate shit so you will need to have a place to put it while you sell it. You will also need a place to go through the stuff you buy and decide what is good and what is garbage.

Anyway, those are just a few tips for those of you who want to give it a shot. I suggest you go along once and just watch, maybe bid if you see something you know is good or you can get a unit for a great price, but start slow and see what it is all about. It can be fun, but it is hard work.

If you really are going to give it a shot and have any questions post em up or drop me an email below, I would be happy to answer them. It isn't something I do anymore, but I might be able to steer you in the right way.

How do you find the auctions? Does each storage company do it at different times , including mom and pop storage businesses?

Thanks for the info


~Ray

It may vary in some states, but most states have a law where they have to announce the auction in the public record. This announcement has to take place a set amount of time before the auction can take place (I think it is two weeks, but that may not be accurate). So you can get your local paper, I always had the best luck with a sunday edition, but they can be in any day, and look under the announcement/public notice section of the classifieds. There you will see the location, day and time of the auction. They also have to list the storage until numbers and the names associated with them so you can see how many units they have up for sale.


What I did a lot when I was starting out was just get the yellow pages and called every one of the storage places in there and ask if they have unit auctions and when. Many of the little mom and pop places will actually put you on a mailing list or a call list and notify you when they decide on a date.

When you get there you may find that they actually have fewer units actually up for auction than advertised because some people may have come in and paid their bill. So when the day of the auction comes around if there were only a few units up for sale I would call to make sure they are still available before driving out there.

You will quickly find that there are auctions nearly every day of the week somewhere and that they take place at different times. A lot of them will schedule so that they don't conflict with other auctions so they can get the most bidders. I built myself a spreadsheet that I used to keep it all straight.

yeah i like that show...most of them seem to have a store front where they sell alot of merchandise

Thank you

~Ray

Definitely a fan of the show, I too get that itch to find an auction.

So why did you stop Kane?

How much do these storage units usually go for?

I am not sure if they HAVE to auction it. It may vary state to state depending on the law of each state.

However, if you think about it most of these places (at least around here are full), they are in the business of renting space, not owning stuff and selling. If they could keep the contents they would need another place to keep it as the people win the auctions get the stuff out that day or they start paying for the unit themselves. Then there is always the people who pay more than the contents are worth (the storage owner does better selling on those.) And if they did keep it and sell they would need to hire more employees to go through everything, a place to sell it, etc... I think just like anything else most people stick to what they do best and pass it off to someone else. If they could keep it I would bet most would still opt for the quick money and freeing up a unit asap to rent to someone else.

Everything you said is exactly what I did / experienced. Made a bunch of calls yesterday, talked to some who said they put me on a list and will call me. Had one lady tell me her auction this month was cancelled because the people paid, but she had 3 due next month and if they don't pay the auction is on. Where I am at they have to advertise it. I asked each place I called which paper the advertise in. Seems like all of them here are scheduled on wednesdays for some reason. In the paper they list the person who is renting the unit's name, unit number, and contents (which is pretty vague "house hold item" was used for most.)

Did you go and win some? If so how did it work out for you?

good info thanks for sharing. I have a truck, trailer and storage area at my house and more importantly a person with the time to deal with this as I do not, so I think my situation is good to proceed based off of your advice. I have to imagine the fun part is bidding and opening everything up. The hard, time consuming part is moving the shit, storing it and selling it and I can imagine that can eat up a lot of time.

These units aren't cheap. It's amazing that a lot of people will pay several hundred and even thousands of dollars a year for storage space for total junk. You would think the contents would be worth more than what they paying each month, but I guess some people are just dumb hoarders and can't throw away crap.

It really can vary wildly. I have bought units for $1, $5, $50 and up to as much as $500. I have seen them go as high as a few thousand dollars.

The way it works is the storage company opens the door to the unit and then gives you about 5 minutes to look at it. You can't touch anything, you can't go inside the unit. You just stand at the edge and look in. Once everyone has had a decent amount of time to look the bidding starts. So how much it goes for can really depend on how it looks. If it looks like a pile of garbage, chances are it will not go for that much, but if the until is well organized and there is stuff clearly out in the open that is valuable they can go for a lot.

At the bigger auctions you will find people showing up that are looking for very specific items. For example there was one woman who only bought furniture. She was looking for antique stuff and she knew her shit. If she was bidding you knew it was valuable and you knew she would probably win the auction. There was another woman who would bid mostly on units that had a lot of women's clothes.

The crap shoot are the ones that are just boxes and you can't see what is inside them. sometimes you can see those go up pretty high.

In my experience the average unit went for between $150-$300, but I saw them get much higher. I found the best deals to be at the small mom and pop places where you didn't get a lot of bidders.

This is right on point. I had several owners/managers tell me that they are at capacity most of the time and often have a waiting list. Some of these units are expensive to rent. When some defaults it is often about 3 months worth of rent that they are now out on so they just want to get the thing empty and get it rented ASAP. The don't want to deal with selling stuff, shipping stuff, etc.

You are dead on about this. People will pay a large amount of money to store crap. I don't know how many of those shitty pressboard entertainment centers I have seen in storage units. There are people paying $150+ per month to store $300 or less worth of stuff.

Sounds like you are on the right path and it sounds like (based on your other post) you are in a good position to deal with the inventory. Having a truck, some space and someone to deal with all of the stuff you get is vital.

I bought a lot of units. I would guess on average I would buy between 2-5 per week. Some weeks more, some less. One of the big auctions is going to be for the company Public Storage (or any large chain that has multiple locations). Where I live the Public Storage Company auction is two full days. Day one they did all the locations on the west side of the city and day two was the east side. You start at one location early in the morning and just travel from location to location auctioning off any units they have at each spot until you hit every location they have. They have about 20 locations in my city so you could easily see 75-150 or even more units sold over those two days. They held this auction once per month. Sometimes I would buy as many as 4 or 5 units just in those two days.

I had some great successes and some miserable failures. Best unit I ever bought was full of boxes and boxes of sports memorabilia. Cards, collectibles, autographs ect. I made thousands of dollars from that unit. The worst, literally, was a bunch of garbage. I think I paid about $75 for the unit. Sold maybe $50 worth of stuff out of it and spent about $150 total in dump fees and gas taking the rest to the dump. I told a buddy of mine that I would have been better of just taking $200 out of my pocket and lighting it on fire. At least that way I wouldn't have spent 3 hours sweating my ass off loading everything up.

I got to where I was good enough that I would do a pre-sort at the storage company. I would know right away what was obviously garbage and set it aside. I would then take a truck load of everything I want to keep home then come back and take the rest tot he dump. Dealing with the trash is half the battle.

So it sounds like there is money to be made, but the biggest risk is your time. In most cases you will break even or make some money, but at the end of the day (or week) did you make enough to justify all of the time you spent? (loading, going to garbage dump, sorting, unloading, storing, selling, etc.) Would that be a correct assumption ? (on average)

Very good read .... Thanks for all the info Kane

Two basic reasons.

1. It is hard work. When you buy the unit you need to load it all up, haul it, unload it and deal with everything. It can be very time consuming and physically demanding.

This might be an average day where I would have two auctions to go to and I end up buying a unit at one of them: Say the auctions are at 10am and noon. I would get up around 8am, eat breakfast while checking ebay and answering any questions bidders may have. Also check email for other Craig's List or other responses. Leave the house at 9am to go to the first auction. After the second auction is over after noon I now have the unit I bought to deal with. I would drive my truck to the auction so I would immediately start my pre-sort and decide at the location what was clearly garbage and what I wanted to take home. It could easily take 3-4 hours to sort, load and transport the good stuff to my house and the junk to the dump. I would come home, do a little more sorting and try to get the obvious stuff I wanted to sell up on ebay that same day. I would also need to box up and get ready to ship anything that sold that day and was paid for. I would also need to research anything that I wasn't sure about to see if it had any real value or not. If I was fast and lucky I would be done by about 6pm. I would then shower, eat dinner and the go to work on my regular job (porn websites) by around 8pm and work until about 3 am then get up and do it again. Not every day was like that, but probably 2-3 per week were. Those days with no auctions had me doing a lot of shipping, researching, sorting and just generally dealing with all the stuff you accumulate.

2. I had to make a choice how I wanted to spend my time. I was trying to do the storage unit thing, run my porn stuff and write a book all at the same time. Eventually, it wasn't working out and I had to decide which one to cut back on. I was determined to finish the book so it had to be one of the others and I knew my income potential in porn was much higher and I didn't have to work nearly as hard for it.

That is pretty accurate. I would say I only really lost money on a handful of units and after you have purchased several you start to learn what to look for and what types of units to avoid so you can really dodge the bad ones. Most of them you will at least break even on or make a little money on then if you really research the stuff and sell everything you possibly can. My experience is that if I bought 10 units, I might lose a little money or just barely break even on 1 of them. On 7 of them I would make a small amount and the last 2 would be my main money makers.

I likened it to baseball in a way. You hit a lot of singles, get a lot of walks, but then ever so many units you knock in the three run home run and do well.

When you start doing well is when you figure out how to deal with the stuff that you can't ebay, but you know has some value. Finding outlets for those items is the key. I used Craig's List, local classifieds, garage sales. There were even a few local auctions I found where you could bring anything you wanted and sell it. I almost never bought anything at those auctions (although I did once buy a box of Disney movies which are like gold and a huge record collection with about 2,000 records - vinyl. I got both for great prices and made a lot off them). I would take all my left over stuff over there in lots and sell it at those auctions. I didn't get a lot of money, but I got rid of it and made a few extra bucks.

Eventually, you start to find yourself getting knowledgeable about certain things so you can start looking for those items. For example, a lot of people I found didn't like bidding on units with appliances and if they did they would just take them to the dump straight away. I took them home, tried them out to see if they worked then I would give them a quick cleaning and put them in the local classifies for a small amount. Washers, dryers and fridges were the things I got most often and I would sell them for $50 and have them gone in a day. They were easy money and the classified ads were free.

How much would someone reasonably on top of things, doing this fulltime, going to auctions just about everyday, etc be able to pull in profit per month from an operation like that?

I actually tested this on myself. I put most of my porn stuff on hold for a couple of months and gave this a try full time. I wanted to see if I did it and only it how well I could do. I did this after having been involved with it for about a year so I had connections and ways to sell my stuff.

I worked 50+ hours a week, but I was doing everything on my own with no help so I bought the stuff, sorted and hauled it, put it on ebay/sold it, shipped it etc. I think the first month I made about $3K profit and the second month I made about $4K. This is pre-tax income so, obviously, I still had to pay my income taxes out of that as well.

Now before anyone runs off and decides this is a great way to make a decent living. I worked hard for that money. I sweat my ass off every day and it can be wildly unpredictable. You might have a week where you make next to nothing and then a week where you do really well (in a lot of ways it is similar to porn). I also had been around for about a year and had a lot of ways to get rid of stuff so I was able to sell just about everything I brought home.I may not have gotten the best price in the world for it, but I was able to get it sold.

If I wanted to make more than that I realized I was going to have to expand. I would either have to bring someone else in to help me work or start buying higher dollar units and figure out those markets for the real high end furniture and stuff like that which you sometimes find. The risk in that is obvious and you really need to know what you are doing.

It is a volume business. The more units you can turn over the more money you can make. It isn't easy to do. Over the couple of years I did it I saw a lot of people at auctions that would show up for a few of them then never show up again.

Seems like a lot of the big appliances would go quick on craigslist.

You could always rent a storage unit, fill it up with all the crap you collected that month that you would have brought to the dump, save money (storage cost vs dump) and then stopped paying and left that pile of shit for some unsuspecting guy to bid on 3 months later LOL.... j/k

Also, did you ever think about dropping off the crap at a goodwill type place? saved on dump costs and got a tax write off ?

the two people I have in mind to do the financial backing for I am related to, they are intelligent and retired (late 50s/ early 60s) still very much able to do dirty work and they have a good understanding of value on a lot of things. They have a lot of time on their hands and looking for something to do that would be fun and interesting and can make them some extra spending money.

I did donate a lot to goodwill and places like that. You will find yourself with a lot of clothes. Some of them sell easy, some don't so I donated a lot of those and a lot of stuff like kids toys.

Funny I watched it for the first time last night, you see these guys buying and think they have crappy thrift stores then you see them unloading one of 4 huge trucks with their name all over them, must be some good money in it.

Sounds like they would be perfect for something like this. They can get the stuff, dig through it and take the time to make sure they aren't passing anything of real value up.

It can be a lot of fun. You never know what will be in any particular box.

The funniest thing I found was a lockbox that had no key, but had a padlock on it. I cut the lock off and inside was a tube of lube and a pair of handcuffs. :)

When I was involved in it there was a company that ran an auction house locally. They would buy 20-30 units per week and then auction everything off. They did really well for themselves, but they had a crew, a couple of big trucks and a really slick operation.