Thank you Rose. As it turns out, last week I attended a seminar in my state concerning our state's lien law requirements. It was conducted by an attorney who works with our state's self storage association. I asked him about this and although I constructed the payment plan to allow me to immediately auction, we decided that it was probably safer just to start the lien process all over again.

Here's what I learned from this: I'm going to be a lot more conservative about payment plans from now on. If I have to start over when a tenant defaults on one, why prolong the agony? I'm going to be a lot more likely to just get on with the lien process and skip payment plans unless I'm reasonably convinced it's a hardship case where the tenant is honestly trying to save their goods.

I used to think that it was better to collect as much as I could from the tenant because it would probably be more than I would get from auction, and then go to auction after that if need be. And there will still be cases where that makes sense, but more often, I think I might just as well get the auction over with and get the unit back into circulation.