We have recently opened a storage facility in Savannah GA. We have quite a bit of extra land, and were planning on holding yard sales for our customers on saturdays. However, I was just told by someone that it was illegal to hold yard sales at Storage Facilities. Anybody Have any thoughts??

Other than the legalities involved, liability if someone were to be injured on your property, what your zoning covers, local laws etc. the biggest concern would be security. Our local laws even prohibit a citizen from having more than two sales per year on their own home property, so you'd need to look into that as well.

In regards to the security aspect, if people have their unit contents exposed and you're drawing in who knows what type of clientele to the garage sale, I'd be concerned you would be inviting criminal activity into your site.

Someone sees something they want, but can't afford, but they know it is stored in unit 123 so they just come back and take it. I'm sure others will chime in here, but I know we can't hold yard sales here, nor would I want to from the simple fact that it encourages people to downsize and vacate their units.

It's a pain as anything we personally would want to sell, we would have to cart to a neighboring city and do it at a family or friend's home. So the bottom line result is we hang onto our 'stuff.' Hmmm, guess our customers are probably doing the same thing.

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Gina 6k
CochraneStorage dot com
Morgan Hill, California
twitter.com/CochraneStorage

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough!
I am not an attorney, just an experienced manager who is willing to share what I have learned. Your thoughts, practices or opinions may vary and neither of us may be right.

I moved the thread here from the Newbie Lounge.

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John Carlisle
Community Manager, Self-Storage Talk
Online Content Editor, Business Solutions Network
VIRGO
jcarlisle at vpico dot com
480-990-1101, x1214

I have a storage facility (100 units) in central Wisconsin, with a huge area of grass adjacent to one of the buildings. Renters asked me last summer if we could start a flea market. I checked with the appropriate town board/authorities and got the go ahead to allow people to set-up on the grass, or open their units, with the stipulation that it only occur on the weekends, not all week. No required licensure, etc. I have a person in charge of this and onsite of this mini operation on the weekends, directing cars to parking area, etc. The rules are no sales of firearms, explosives, fireworks, etc. So, it's people from town and surrounding towns who come in and set-up on the grass, and some who specifically rent a unit just to flea market. Many of my long term renters who are aware of this activity and who have been there for years claim they want to open their units and try to get rid of stuff, but it hasn't happened. The majority of stuff being sold is flea market variety (household, old, new, cheap, not much in the way of collectibles or antiques, altho some is). A few of the other storage units in town also allow their renters to sell out of their units. Basically a small operation. No problems to date, and not losing renters due to clearing out their units.

Must be nice to live in a place that allows things like this.

We have an open field in front of our facility (about 2 acres) and the city wont allow anything like a flea market or yard sales.

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Wayne
Jamestown, ND


All arguments can be resolved ... with high explosives and Humor!!!

I see people list and advertise storage sales all the time so most places are complacent with it.

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If your storage bin is just too full than it might be time to have a garage sale and a new iPhone garage sale app for you techies out there who hate getting lost when storage hunting!