When I was a kid, my aunts and uncles would use self storage when they're moving places, going abroad, or to keep extra junk. As an adult, my peers use self storage when they can't afford rent and need to live out of a van, car, or a friend's couch.

Here is one for you: I found myself homeless in a town a number of years ago where I knew no one. I ended up living in a storage unit for a number of months and, due I am sure to the cute guy in the pic, I made friends with the manager & ended up using the office toilet (after hours) when necessary. My Boy was with me the whole time I was there and. oddly, I actually have good memories of that time due to him. The power a faithful pup has ..... RIP Aries - Thank you for your Love and making the hard times easy ~

I considered using self storage during a work transfer in the mid 1990s. By my calculations, if I stored my stuff in a container for a year, then I would have paid more for the container rental than my stuff would be worth. Keep in mind that used stuff brings in much lower values than new stuff. So instead, I sold all the major items in my apartment. My work transfer situation went more than a year so I came out well.

European here, having almost no self-storage in the region yet still having Storage Wars-like shows pushed like crazy on TV. I find it so silly 😂

Because there are hoarders everywhere..

"The stuff you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden

The only reason people keep so many things in the first place is because they buy into the belief that they might need it one day.

Why do Americans measure everything by football fields.

Finall someone explaining History channel series.

Lesson morale: buy what you need, sell what you don’t.

I think you missed out one use for self-storage: small businesses use it to store their products. Like a guy who used to flip sofas would buy the sofas second hand and stash them in the self storage facilities before he could get a customer.

All fine and dandy; until someone breaks into your unit and you don't get notified for hours/days/weeks, or the facility burns down because an idiot stored volatile materials improperly.

I use mine as a photo studio and work out of it 5 days a week. It’s cheaper than leasing a building and is much quieter. I don’t have to worry about people messing with my stuff and I keep everything stored there. Working well for me 😀

"The things you own end up owning you."

The vicious cycle of consumption and waste

"Just think. There's a whole industry devoted to keeping an eye on YOUR stuff!" -George Carlin

I could see it being a cost-effective solution in denser areas. Let's say your family has a vehicle that doesn't get used every day. A self-storage unit a few blocks away could be a lot cheaper than renting another parking space in your own building. The same goes for toys like kayaks, motorboats, ATVs, RVs. But I imagine most money is made off people who don't realize that "nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution".

The video: 2.3 Billion Feet² Me: Ehh The video: That's about... Me: Oh cool he'll say it in some reasonable unit like km² The video: 1364 AMERICAN FOOTBALL FIELDS

"there are over 6 locations..." Was it 7?

There's always been lots of "outdoor" storage units in my area but in recent years there's been a great increase in the number of "indoor" storage units which are in a building and climate controlled. Some of the buildings are new and others used to house stores like Kmart, Macy's, etc. and even hotel buildings have been converted.

I’m an installer for a company called Janus, that manufactures 90 percent of all storage units in America. The crew I’m on is based out of Atlanta but we have to travel all over. The money is fantastic and we are constantly busy. In the last week I have been to Knoxville twice, Newton Mississippi, and now we are gonna be in Selma Alabama for a couple of weeks. They sent my boss to Australia this year before the pandemic. He was there to train guys how to build these things. Building them is easy as a construction job can be. The most important tools are an Impact drill and offset snips. They need more installers with skill and attention to detail. It’s weird going to storage places that other people build and seeing just how bad some installers can be. If you can get in this industry do it there is no sign of stopping. The job in Selma I’m on the guy literally has 4 lots that are all 100 percent full. He bought another building across the street to add another 80 units and they will probably be full in about 4 months. I love this line of work people should do this stuff man

I live in a small village in the Netherlands, literally, and I mean literally every street in my village has these, I think that there are thirty "self storage parks" in my village alone. When I was young my parents lost a lot of their stuff when their box was flooded, as I have a personality liable to hoarding I try to give everything away to second-hand stores as much as possible.

Europe is looking at this shaking their heads with their hands on the faces like , "first 40 oz cup holders, now this? "

*More and more Americans are renting with millennials expected to rent they’re whole life that usually means smaller spaces then what a house offers so people need somewhere to store items and storages offer that need*

My dad was a hoarder and it was disgusting. He basically died in a pile of his own filth. I don't ever want to have that much stuff.

Back when I was in the Navy, I used to rent out a storage unit just off of base to keep my personal firearms and other stuff there, especially during deployment when it could just be locked up and have automatic payments taken right the day after pay came in. Good set up, and the place was cheap 👌

Because people mistakenly believe stuff=happiness.

I’m a minimalist. I’m surprised people have things they don’t intend to use for awhile. Would it not be better to sell your stuff and move on?

Got a crowded apartment filled with stuff you no longer use but you don't want to throw it out with the trash? Get a storage unit! Look how nice and clean your home is now. Ok... Gotta do some shopping to fill the emptiness.

One aspect of self-storage that was totally missed is its use by businesses. If you only have a small amount of product stock for a retail store then it might be more affordable than renting a warehouse that you are only using a fraction of. Also, construction companies keep some of their tools and equipment in storage units rather than maintain a retail or office location that can handle small machinery. There is also off-season vehicle storage for sports cars and boats or campers., Some people use them for collectibles that need a managed environment as far as humidity and temperature. Finally, there are mobile storage pods call PUD as in Pickup and drop. These can be quite useful for contractors that can have an entire workshop delivers to a job site and picked up when the job is done. saving on the cost of a more expensive warehouse or company property. A new concept is the work office. These units have electricity and telecom connections so they can be used as offices with more floor space and freedom to operate month to month without having to negotiate a lease and be locked into that lease for several years. and a much lower per square foot cost compared to an office building. Mobile office pods are also available that can be dropped on site then removed when a project is complete. This information could form a second video on storage units for businesses.

The millennial generation has been hit hard by the pandemic and resulting economic depression. Many of them have moved out of urban areas due to job loss or rent being too high. They have turned to putting their stuff in storage and moving back in with their parents to ride this situation out. The boomerang effect this has caused is a worrisome symptom of an even greater socioeconomic problem.

storage units can tell a story of someones misfortune as well....

i live in my grandma's storage unit. i'm not allowed to the dinner table.

I’m literally designing a self storage location while I watch this video

Good to know storage wars will never run out of content

Reason there’s self storage is because people are less likely to own a home now. Renters move in and out of different places with nowhere to put there stuff. If everyone had a home they would rarely need self storage.

This makes me feel like throwing things away.

I work at a storage facility myself and I can say my occupency as of January, 6th, 2021 is 97.06% full and that's low compared to what I'm normally at.

My parents are kinda hoarders so I rented them a storage unit so that they could clean up their house a bit, but instead they just filled the unit with more junk. I'm not happy.

The long and short of it is that everybody wants some place safe secure to keep their most valuable assets and in this tumultuous time people aren't certain of their living arrangements for long terms so they put their things in storage facilities and with the average cost of a storage facility running you only about maybe one 8 or less of your total monthly rent in most metropolitan areas why wouldn't you a lot of young guys and girls can get away with crashing on someone's couch here or there

I live on a small island outside of Savannah GA and it was mostly developed in the 70s. Recently there was a huge 3 story storage place that was built right down the road by our local goodwill (ironic). Just thought id drop this here!

My work uses them all over the place for business. We have equipment technicians may need all over the province that we cannot get on a plane. So we fly a person up, give them the door code and a rental truck and they are back in business. Makes sense because it allows a business to operate efficiently and make money. To store a bunch of shit that depreciates and costs money to store is crazy.

Don’t buy more crap

I don’t think I’ve seen a storage facility out of business or shut down, grocery stores, office buildings, pawn shops and gas stations I’ve seen but never storage.

No wonder storage hunters is such a great show

They built a giant self storage uptown Charlotte and it is an ugly view when you get on the 277 :(

3 went up in a 1 block radius within 1 year directly around the city's major mall, with more in a 5 mile/2year window. One was a specialty facility with controlled refrigerated units but it's been the fastest growing business so far.

Had to use self storage for my last moving operation because there were suddenly renovations to finish in the new place. 3 days, a lot of work filling the thing up one day and emptying it again 2 days later but there was little cost involved and tbh it's SO MUCH better than the other option: my parents' place 35 miles away...9/10 would recommend

you would think that the people who need a storage unit separate from their house are people who live in very small homes or in apartments, but I feel like the people who always have storage units are people who live in already spacious houses and they just have too much stuff

At some point, people will realise they should just clear out their things rather than pay just to keep stuff - and then the industry will be in trouble.

I've started selling more and more of my stuff I'm not using or never will My garage is full of a family member's things that they haven't come to claim over 5 years. I keep telling them to just sell it, if they didn't need any of it over 5 years they probably won't again.

You forgot the real reason storage industry is so popular - somewhere to sleep when the wife is mad at you lol

It is a cheaper way to move out. Move all of your stuff into a storage unit over the course of the month or two. Then move into your new place, over the course of a month or two.

"Imagine that. There's an entire industry built on keeping an eye on your stuff." (George Carlin)

I have never had stuff in storage longer than 3 months. The first time was after graduating HS and not knowing what university I would get in, living in our tiny summer cabin. The second time was after a break up and temporarily moving in with my mum across the country before I found a new apartment. Even when we moved from a house in countryside to a small apartment we just rented out the house without the carage and stored stuff there.

Hmm, i wonder if you are allowed to store yourself in one of those storage lockers. It would be a good low-rent living space for some homeless

So that explains storage wars!

Anyone remember that video were some dude turned a self-storage into a apartment? That was some amazing stuff

the whole self storage thing sounds really stupid to me as I live in the UK ad there aren't any self storage facilities in the UK that I know of. Like why can't people just give the stuff that they don't need to a charity shop and keep the stuff that's important to them and the stuff that they need in there house?

there is a former self storage property that had converted itself into a flea market/farmers market where they put each "store" in an unit and close it up every night. and there are several self storage buildings that becoming hostiles, where a couple of the units are turned into shared bathrooms and kitchens, but the rest of the units are turned into bedrooms/living spaces that are rented out for cheep.

Congrats on the higher quality video. Much better than recent content

The reason they are everywhere is simple. People don't live in home with garages, but in flats with no space...

What I want is a live on-sight management job. That used to be much more common than it is now.

This is really depressing, the situations that occur to create a market like this

I don't need a storage unit right now due to the size of my apartment and I wouldn't need one in the future if I moved to a smaller apartment IF I could sell, trade or donate a portion of my books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, comic books, clothes and office supplies. Those items make up a large portion of what I own. I enjoyed the video.

I drive through a light industrial zone everyday. Every single new building that was put in the last ten years was a self storage building.

to people who post quotes in the comments: i need your memory. seriously, you can remember quotes AND the person who said it.. like how?? i can't even remember what i ate for breakfast yesterday. so please give me your memory. -sincerely from a person who forgets often

The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start.

There was an empty lot on the main road near my house, surrounded by homes in suburbia. Now it's a hideous Public Storage facility and I HATE IT.

I live in a tiny ass town in NY and have like 6 different storage facilities in my area

This video is a high level view from someone who know little about the industry. Self storage is now sophisticator. In most cases the state up capital is in the millions. The are lots of local codes to deal with. You have to know what you are doing or you will lose your shirt.

Those who own a traditional house. I know it might seem scary, but your attic is almost always an option for storage.

The homeless crisis plays a big part. I was shelter homeless for eight years and three months, and most people I met living in the system have storage units. In New York, they put your stuff in storage when you get evicted, and the welfare office pays for it when you live in the shelter system, although there are a lot of loopholes that force many of us to pay out of pocket, which is still a lot less expensive than an apartment. I had an idiot tell me that a homeless person with a storage unit has warped priorities because he didn't understand how huge the difference in price between an apartment and a storage unit, especially in New York. When my mom passed away and left me some money--or rather, life insurance and half-ownership of her house with my brother, the welfare office found a loophole to stop paying, even though hey couldn't force me to burn through my inheritance on housing. That's how I became homeless the first time. I was laid off from a low-wage office job in early 2008, my dad having passed away a few months earlier. I have physical challenges that limit me to desk work, and even though I earned a master's degree in 2005, I had a nil application to response rate for the first year that eventually went up to 0.8% and has since come back down. I had to renegotiate the cost of my unit after the rent got up to $405 after taxes and insurance. It was $181 before taxes and insurance when I first rented it, which in my case was for a relocation that did not pan out, having just been laid off again after surviving through housing court. I moved out of storage on Labor Day because a social worker persuaded the welfare office during the time of COVID-19 now that they're realizing the public health risk created by homeless shelters, which have become the new low-income housing in NYC. I still have another storage unit near my mom's house storing everything of mine that I left on my mom's attic and crawlspace, plus all her books because my brother didn't want to go through them, and I knew she had a lot that I wanted.

I have run a self storage place for 10 years and there is never any profits made in auctions. storage wars is as realistic as Scooby-Doo and Batman. I do auctions every month and they never ever make back what i's owed let alone make us any money! We have to pay the auctioneer we have to pay the state, and by the time we get it clean out, they're usually several months behind. I don't know who told you that there is prophets in auctions but that's wrong, all we do is get our units back to rent to someone else.. you're spot on right about everything else pretty much. It's a good business and a great investment!

Storage units are only worth it if the items contained within are worth more than the cost of storing it. When my wife and I moved out of state we used a storage unit for 6 months before we found a new home to move the stuff into.

I just store my extra bulky items at this random parking deck in the city. It has these free for public use, giant bike lockers

I put my storage in storage.

Square feet? Football fields? What!? Metric exists! Come on!

As an outsider, I'm disgusted at the amount of self storage. You have such large houses and excess space and you need more storage? Maybe new Yorkers with their 300sqft apartments might need it. But the rest of you, seriously? You don't need a bloody extra storage.

Well, of course you would look up and rent storage. You live in an apartment. If you lived in a house, there would be no need for storage rentals because your would have a basement.

I’ve only started using self storage for college. I’m an out of state student, so packing my things there while the dorms closed over summer was the best option for me. It wasn’t even full, I shared it with one of my friends who’s also out of state. But now that I’m back in, the storage unit I used is empty. Once I get an apartment or house, I definitely won’t need one. Having a uniting because there’s too much stuff just baffles me

I suspect that self storage doesn't get hit with the burden of land use regulation and zoning that effects residential construction. There are plenty of places gritty places that you can build self storage facilities in. It doesn't drive down real estate prices to build more self storage.

Long ago, southern California was growing, as in growing into the unoccupied land out side of built-up cities, some investors bought land, and sat on it waiting for cities to grow around them (Bob Hope bought land and built stuff). Storage was seen as a way of generating income from otherwise non-productive land. Technically it did not have to be profitable. So long as the operating loss was less than the property taxes on empty land, it would be a net gain. Surprisingly, it turned out to be profitable.

How do people have that much stuff that they need to store it outside of their home? I don’t get it. I’m planning to move to Europe in the next 5 years and while there’s some stuff I’d definitely have to get rid of, like bulky furniture, I’m not going to store it. I’m going to sell it or donate it. I am living and buying with the mindset that I will need to be mobile in the near future. Planning ahead like that also frankly just saves you money.

It's such a less risky business than residential real estate. Less property taxes, less burdensome regulations, easier to evict non-payers.

“Necessity is the mother of invention.” ― Plato

It's relatively unregulated, no inventory, and can be operated by a small number of people with no special training. You can also expand relatively easily so far as you are working with enough land.

The strange part is that I don't know a single person who uses self storage. Maybe I just live in a neighborhood of broke people.

Hey I believe you've made an error in your size calculation. If there are 2.3billion square feet of storage room and an American football field is 57,600 square feet, that works out to 39,930 football fields worth of space, not 1,364. maths

Renting a self storage unit is expensive, so it might be recession resistant because many of the tenants may be better off financially.

Reminds me of a George Carlin skit.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be cheaper to just throw everything away and buy new stuff rather than storing it. That's why I never used storage

1:53 that's the U haul storage on 4th Ave in Park Slope, Brooklyn!

Right, the question is not "how many self storage's are near you," it is "how many self storage's _AREN'T_ near you?" Within two miles of my suburban apartment, there are FOUR separate facilities! The reason I have one is simple: I have no space to store anything. It'd be nice to have a house, but I'll never see that kind of money in my life. :'-(

Can you use the metric system? Like almost everyone else

Here in the Dallas area…. I notice a lot of small businesses use them.

I love those videos where people sneak and live out of the storage facility.

I mean, it seems like an impossible-to-fail industry. As long as your rental fees exceed the cost of property tax, electricity, and very basic maintenance, you will profit. And maintenance should be cheap compared to other businesses, because it isn't heavily trafficked, and the nature of storage facilities is to be durable in the first place. You only need a single person to run the place, almost regardless of how large it is.

Such an American thing. These thing are unheard of here in Brazil. Why can’t people just get rid of some of their stuff?!

There is one thing that the bazillion TV shows centered around storage unit auctions don't give much attention: Why the lockers are up for auction in the first place. What happens if people lose their jobs because some suit with an expensive tie decides making 600 times the average employee isn't enough, and moves everything to Asia? They may have a hard time keeping their house. Where do they put their stuff if they can't? In a storage locker. What happens if they hit an even harder rock bottom? They lose the locker as well.