AMEN to that Storman -- don't be afraid to give the customer what they want!

I have taken out a few walls myself - now I am running out of walls to take down and I am still stuck with 5x5 and 5x10's!

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Wayne
All American Self Storage
Palmdale, CA.
webmaster@all-americanselfstorage.com

We actually market to business tenants at our facility. Our debt ratio is around 5% so it's gone up a bit. Yes, residental customers are coming in more.

We've only found 3 residential customers living in their units but my husband and I don't terminate their lease. We have several charites that work with them. One has already found a job and now has a permanent home.

Wayne,

We have a waiting list in our area for 5x5s and 5x10s. That's the side residential customers are wanting. I'm glad we didn't agree with corporate and start taking walls down.

Our rentals skyrocketed, thanks in part to the many home foreclosures in the Bay Area this summer. Last month, we took a small hit 2% and are now sitting at 94% occupancy.

We're lucky in that there is a new shopping center with retail shops available like our City has never seen before. We developed a flyer back in July for all the retailers for their excess holiday merchandise. They have to pre-order their merchandise many months in advance.

As the center is not completed, just phase one of three, the normal 'on-site' storage rooms for merchants are not all completed either.

We're starting to see the merchandise flowing into the stores and movement starting on the phone calls from the merchants. Hopefully this will be enough to boost up back up; let them all know we're here and garner more business customers for us.

We already run around 30% business customers and they are the best. Long term, always prepaid, little traffic to their units throughout the year. With the shopping center itself there is the year-round storage of decorations, so it's a bright outlook for us being in such close proximity.

Another smaller strip mall opened earlier this year too. Once all of those stores are leased up, we'll be sitting pretty good here.

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You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough!

I posted on here back in sept. and we were holding are own. but things have definety changed since then, we are having more move-outs then move ins.
Are small 5x10's were not renting as well as the larger units but now they are almost full, people are renting the min. sizes. some that had several units have sized down to one unit. a few months ago we only had 10 units available and they were all small, we have 16 empty now and are all larger units, we rented 5 units one week but have not had one call for a unit in three weeks since then. And some that are rented are short term and will be moving out soon, if the phone doesn't start ringing we are going to have a lot more vacant soon. We are adding a large lighted sign and have set-up a web site and are trying every means possible to advertise and promote but if people don't have money storage is the first thing they eliminate in this area.
The last few weekends has been crazy, people in their units sorting thru stuff, having yard sales, moving out. We are now at the lowest we have been since we bought the place. This time of month at least 70% of the tenants have paid for the month, this month so far we've only collected about 1/3rd of the rent. Hope things pick up soon, I don't like the stress.

we are seeing more of an impact here too. Usually the Salvation Army truck comes by about once a month to pick up someone's stuff that they don't want to take with them when they move out, or to pick up all their stuff when they decide it's not really worth paying storage anymore for any of it.

The Salvation Army truck was here 5 times last week, twice on Thursday!

We've had a couple of move outs, I'm having to make a few more reminder calls than usual, and a lot of shoppers, I've had several rate calls today. but unless someone else in town dropped their rates we're the same. There are a couple of large facilities that are basically out in the country about 20 miles away that are a little less, they may be picking some of those up.

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ChefMichael
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Anthony and Sons Self-Storage

I'm in a small town 30 miles east of seattle. rentals are slower with the recession and seasonal fluctuations and a new competitor. I havent been getting inquiries for my small units (under 10x10) and very few for my medium units (10x10 to 10x15). I've been getting rentals for my larger units. Square footage occupancy hasnt changed since peak of summer but occupied units have dropped 4% and economic occupancy has dropped 2%. Hoping that with a new casino here, it will bring more revenue to the area but may cause people to gamble away next month's rent... we'll see what happens as it just opened last night.

Wow North Bend is growing! You will hate the traffic that casino will bring.
We use to live in Auburn and moved to Florida from Newcastle,Wa. We miss Seattle

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Proud Karate Mom

We've had a ton more NSF checks but delinquencies still under 1% by the end of each month. Overally, occupancy is still up from the past three years. Slow economies usually don't effect us negatively.

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Danielle