did you find the full artical?

I also cannot get access to the full article and would appreciate it if somebody could email it to me at wendy@premiereselfstorage.com. We are located in Central Massachusetts in a somewhat rural town, but very close to several cities and upper class communities. We have 361 units and our facility is definitely the nicest property around. We do our very best to keep our facility very clean and we have beautiful landscaping, which isn't very common with our competitors. We have 4 others within 5 miles, and 2 more within 7 miles or so.

I would love to talk with some other owners of smaller facilities to hear what they are doing for Marketing programs. I am the Manager of our facility, as the owner's main priority is another business, so I am in control of prices, specials, etc. It's not like the BIG GUYS who have corporate telling them what to do. I can give someone a special rate and guarantee it for 1 year, unlike Managers at large facilities. I'm new (8 months) to the business, but have found it very interesting!

We are a small facility in Florida and have noticed a slow down as well. We had been running almost 100% occupied until the middle of last year and then started to notice an increase in vacancies. For the past 9 months or so we have been running 80-85% occuppied and we are locking up a lot more people after the 6th of the month for non-payment - but luckily we have had good luck with the collections process - have several customers on payment plans. Easiest way to get those folks to 'pay' up if you are offering a move in special (i.e first month free) is to have them do a 2 month pre-pay. We just had a customer who rented 2 units for 2 months, move out in only a matter of a few weeks - but we got paid and he failed to provide us with 30 days written notice. We actually came out ahead, assuming we can get those two units re-rented soon. Hope this information helps.

Janet