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- Hacker News
- Most people I know with a self storage place are not using them like the article. (though some do - YMMV). Some use it as a warehouse for their business - they rotate stuff in and out. A carpenter might buy a pallet of nails once every few months and use the storage every few days to refill the truck. Several people keep off-season holiday decorations in storage and rotate it back home for the season. Others keep fishing stuff in storage and stop by storage on their way to/from the fishing spot.
If you have anything in storage you should look at it at least once a year to decide if it is worth saving. It is okay to say that "I love this thing from Grandma even though I don't have room for it", but you need to decide it is still worth it.
by bluGill - My personal experience with this is my father, who lives in a rural area with 10+ acres, has placed several shipping containers on the property as storage for his junk. He's charged just over $500/mo for them. He's had them for 18 years. The value of property in those containers is maybe $5000.
Consumerism is a disease, and the USA is super good at it.
by mike_bob - Near my house I saw two large blocky buildings being constructed on a main thoroughfare. Different construction companies, but within about 100 yards of each other.
"Fantastic!", I thought. New apartment buildings. That means new restaurants, stores, and other conveniences. Not to mention desperately-needed housing.
I'll never forget my despair upon learning that they were BOTH going to be large multi-level self-storage facilities.
- There was a solid analysis of these facilities done by Modern MBA. https://modern-mba.com/case/self-storage
tl;dw - As far as businesses go, they require low capital to construct, have low operational costs, and also operate as a way to hold real estate/land while also generating revenue.
The people that use them are usually dealing with some life event such as moving, a death in the family, divorce, and just want some solution to house possessions.
by milkytron - I'm in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and self storage facilities are popping up around here like weeds. I have a storage unit and I'm trying to clear it out. I'm tired of the monthly fees that keep going up. I got it when I had to clear out my late sister's house and I wanted time to go through things and decide what to keep. When I moved last year, I got a larger unit, thinking I would need to declutter my townhouse prior to showing it. It turned out my agent wasn't that concerned about my clutter, but I did move some idle tech stuff into the unit. I was hoping to get a house with a big basement for my future tech hoarding needs, and I wanted to keep this stuff. As it turned out, I ended up in a rancher with no basement, so now I'm getting rid of old tech I'll never have space for. I'd have saved a lot of money if I'd just done that a year ago. I now have a much smaller unit that I hope to be rid of next year. Self storage units are definitely a mixed blessing.
I also have all of the family antique furniture, some of which goes back three or more generations. I have no heirs and no idea what I'll do with it all, but I don't want to leave it for my executor to deal with. At least it's in the house and not in an expensive storage unit.
by rootbear - I live in a small downtown condo. I don't have room to store a whole lot of extra stuff but I also have hobbies like camping, watersports, etc. I keep all of that stuff in a storage unit and I access it fairly often. Since I have it I also use it to save all the boxes for my electronics (77" OLED is impossible to move safely without original box for example), car maintenance stuff, larger tools I use less frequently, etc. It is about 3 minutes drive 10 minute walk from my house. I definitely do not use it to hoard stuff I will never touch again.by dcdc123
- Taking this moment to remind everyone that 'Swedish death cleaning' is a healthy, holistic way to not give a storage unit your money.by Jaauthor
- This article takes the view of the consumer, "Why do so many people pay to store items they almost never use?". But in actuality, the interesting part of this is why is there so much supply of self-storage businesses?
The answer is: cash flow. Self-storage businesses are the almost perfect solution for someone with a good size (but not enormous) bucket of money that they want to put to work generating cashflow:
1. Cheap build out (cheap land, cheap facilities) 2. Almost entirely hands-off (no employees, automated entry) 3. Low liability (low risk of customers suing you) 4. Low overhead (just pay for taxes, electricity, minimal maintenance) 5. Reliable monthly cash flow
The abundant supply of these businesses, I suspect, tends to generate demand: it's easier to pay $80/month to store your junk than spend the time and emotional labor of picking through what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of. That ends up being captive long-term revenue.
by epochbtc