Post #1: American Stuff and Storage Auctions: How Much Stuff Changes Hands?

The virtues of capitalism are many, and one of them, is abundance. Unfortunately, abundance sometimes leads to excess of material goods. In the United States, this excess overflow, oftentimes ends up in self-storage. America is unique among other developed countries in terms of the number of self-storage facilities around the country. There are more than 55,000 of them, one facility per 6,300 residents, or about 6.1 sq ft. of rentable storage space per person (adults and children) nationwide. Approximately 11% of Americans rent storage space outside of their houses and garages.

Too much excess?

Once something gets into storage, it is very likely to stay there for a very long time. According to Neighbor.com, a peer-to-peer storage and garage rental company, 43% of tenants leave their stuff in storage for more than 24 months. Given that the average storage unit rent is $114.51/month, by the end of the second year, these tenants have spent almost $2,800 to rent a storage unit to house their extra stuff.

By then, some give up, move, or forget about it. Of the 23 million storage units in the United States, approximately 155,000 get repossessed by self-storage companies and sold off at auctions annually. So about 0.7% of the unit inventory is in default, and contents are sold to third parties. Given that an average unit is about 70 square feet, about 10.9 million square feet of space, often chock full of stuff to their 6 ft ceilings ceiling. Assuming they are 3/4 full, that is about 50 million cubic feet of stuff, that gets auctioned off every single year in America!