Two questions about abandoned units, auctions

[AaronABC]

First issue: Customer comes into office, says they are moving out by the end of that day. They leave the unit wide open and without a lock, and vacate the property. After two weeks, they never returned. We are unable to reach the customer by telephone, no response to mail. We have had a professional view the contents and he estimated the total not to exceed $200. The ReStore came and only took one item, leaving behind the couch and bunk bed stating they weren't good enough for them to take. Can we dispose of this property? Do we need to go through the eviction process first? It is not worth the expense of conducting a lien sale I don't think.

Second issue: Customer is a business. Customer got behind on monthly payments. Unit was overlocked. One day, we checked the unit and found the customer had come on-property and removed their lock. Only ours remained. All of the contents are company documents - it's a 12x24 completely full of filing cabinets, boxes and piles of documents. So I believe we couldn't lien sale any of this property, could we? Should we proceed with an eviction process? It has been one year since this was left unlocked. We just want the stuff gone so we can rent the unit. We don't know what step to take next.

Thanks!

[Krismarie]

Hey Aaron, pertaining to the documents. You can go through and see what is in them. If they are filled with customer information you cannot auction them, you have to pay to get them shredded. Then add that fee to the collections request and send them to collections. For the first one, do you have anything in your contract that says if they leave stuff in the unit that you'll charge them? If not, add it for the future. If so, chuck the rest and send them to collections as well. We charge $250 to people who leave stuff in the unit.

[Guest]

What does your state statutes say and have you contacted your state SSA and asked them? What does your lease say? What does your lawyer for facility say? Here in Oregon if the unit has been stripped out, your first scenario, we can determine the value to be less than $300 and get rid of it and send to collections and I would send a letter/email to former tenant saying the same thing. The second scenario, IMO, is something a business does not want to go to the law about, if they are still in business, and I would contact them and let them know your plans of contacting the state or lawyer and also if it costs you anything it goes to collections. Both of these are using you as a trash dump.

[lady5563]

With your 1st issue, I would consider the contents that were left behind abandoned property.
1. Renter told you that they were vacating, that day.
2. They did in fact take MOST of their stuff, left the door open AND unlocked.

Your 2nd issue is a bit more stickier, in that the stored contents appear to be business records.
My 1st thought has to be...how did a delinquent tenant gain access to the property to be able to remove his lock?
If you have an attorney, please consult him or her in this particular unit, your state's self storage lien laws may be different than mine.

Good luck and please keep us posted.

[A-team]

Ref the unit with stuff left in it, I would let it go through the lien process particularly if we had a number of those size units available. However if your state law allows you to discard it if valued under a certain amount, hauling it away may be your best option.

As far as the records are concerned, in CA we have to shred documents left by companies if they have personal information like CC and bank account numbers, SS numbers and such. If they only contain names, addresses and phone numbers they can be tossed. We have a unit that has been collecting dust for years because the owner does not want to pay the cost of shredding. We did shred one company's records over a period of time when the shredding companies came on the facility for other tenants. I plan to do the same with the dust collecting one too, but those records have to be brought down a flight of stairs. You will likely find that the company declared bankruptcy leaving you stuck with getting rid of the records.

[AaronABC]

Thanks for your replies. We have not made any progress. We inherited the business documents unit/issue. We have joined the Self Storage Legal Network and will ask their advice.

The tenant gained access because we don't have an automatic gate. We ask that our customers stop and sign in. About 40% do this. Also, as we inherited the problem, we didn't know what their vehicle looked like. None of that information was stored, so it was pretty easy for them to abandon all of their records, file cabinets, uniforms...imagine an entire office was dumped minus the computers and printers. We hope to get an automatic gate. That will definitely help with this problem.

Regarding the customers that left the unit open and picked through...we sent a notice to collect their stuff within 30 days or we consider it abandoned, as per their contract. We eventually donated what we could and wrote off the dump fees on the rest.

[lady5563]

Thanks for your replies. We have not made any progress. We inherited the business documents unit/issue. We have joined the Self Storage Legal Network and will ask their advice.

The tenant gained access because we don't have an automatic gate. We ask that our customers stop and sign in. About 40% do this. Also, as we inherited the problem, we didn't know what their vehicle looked like. None of that information was stored, so it was pretty easy for them to abandon all of their records, file cabinets, uniforms...imagine an entire office was dumped minus the computers and printers. We hope to get an automatic gate. That will definitely help with this problem.

Regarding the customers that left the unit open and picked through...we sent a notice to collect their stuff within 30 days or we consider it abandoned, as per their contract. We eventually donated what we could and wrote off the dump fees on the rest.

Have you ordered "manager overlocks" yet?
They will all be keyed alike, you managers have this key, you then overlock a delinquent tenants unit, so that they can not access their unit.