How do I pursue placing a lien on someone's property that is stored at my storage facility. They are over 4 months late in paying rent and have also accrued late fees. They have just recently responded to a letter, after 4 months of trying to get a hold of them. All attempts are documented and the property will be inventoried.

There should be laws in place in your area. If you have friendly contacts that are in the same business, they may be able to assist you with the specifics. You may have additional rules to follow depending on the type of property. I know that items such as boats and cars need to go through a process to obtain an abandoned title before you can sell them.

Consult an attorney, but after a certain time of nonpayment, the property is considered abandoned, as long as you can show evidence of trying to contact the rentor. The laws are probably different from one area to another so please talk to attorney before you find yourself getting into troubles that cost even more money.

Hello jm:

What does your contract say? If it doesn't address it, you need a NEW contract.

In the Absence of a contract, you're in untested territory. Therefore, I would hire an attorney.

excon

You can obtain an effective lien, from Yale or Medeco. Its called a padlock.

Your storage contract should allow to prevent access to the storage facility until rental fees are paid in full. Even if the contract does not state this I think a court would uphold it.

The problem comes when you want to remove the items so you can rent the facility to another tenant. Especially if you want to try and recoup your losses by selling off the items. For that you would have to obtain a judgement against the renters and get a courto rder seizing the contents.

Thank you for your input. I think we will be selling items at auction, but in the town we are in, auction is not readily accepted. I spoke to our lawyer, who proposed selling the items, but some of the items are rather large and not typically saleable. However, I will be giving these customer to the end of 2007... any more suggestions would be welcome.

I'm assuming your lawyer said you have to sue him first. Unless your contract specifies that you have the right to dispose of abandoned property and defines what abandonment means, you can't just sell them.

1. Don't give anyone any extra time, you will start a trend and be stuck into giving any and everyone the exact amount of time.
Since if you treat one customer one way and another a differnet way, you are asking to be sued.

2. What happens should be spelled out exactly in a written storage contract.

3. each state has specific laws to storage, and often selling at auction is required and the owner of the storage can not bid, in some states they can bid the amount of storage owed but not required.

4. Auctions are done everywhere, some more than others, adverstise it, and you will find auction people coming out of the wood work.

5. most larger storage places have them once a month or once a quarter, people have till the day of the sale.

6. you will be surprised at what sales, honestly.

Also be specific on your state law, for example, in one state, you have to sell the entire locker contents as one sell, you can not divide up items and sell separate. In another state you can not even let people go into the locker and look, you open the door and they look from the door way and bid on what is in there. ** my favorite, since you get all sorts of hidden treasures at time

If you get rid of someone's things wrongly, you can end up oweing them a lot of money. Also if you sell the goods for more than the rent owed, you have to pay it to the owner.

And lastly you should not even be in business of storage, if you don't know the laws, don't have a contract that says exactly what you will do.

I must say, I'm slightly offended being told I should not be in the storage business. You don't even know my situation, but since you opened the door.. I am taking over management of the facility for my mother. My brother has run it since my father died 2 years ago and has almost run it bankrupt. I am new into running the business and am asking for help, not to be told I shouldn't be in the storage business if I don't know the laws. That is why I joined this group and have been in contact with my lawyer.

That said, it is in the contract that we are able to sell the items at auction after 60 days of non-payment of rent. We need to attempt to contact the lessee through writing and document all attempts by phone. Which I have done. As a matter of fact, it has been beneficial for me to again attempt to contact the deliquent customers, because I have gotten payments in full on two accounts.

Sounds like you/re on the road to success! You might be able to act as sort of your own auctioneer on the property, accepting individual bids from interested parties who might respond to a newspaper add etc... I have bought out abandoned storage units in this manner from individual owners. In other situations, people who own auction houses are willing to come with their own truck to pick up the items, and split any proceeds with you on whatever rate you agree too... some are 50/50... Once it becomes your property, you might consider donating it to some charity that way you will get tax benefits... you'd have to talk to accountant about the value... market value or whatever that you could claim on taxes... but it might be easier than the hassles of selling. People who do flea marketing might also be interested in buying items... but they like them very cheap so they can try to make a profit.