Losing a Home, Then Losing All Out of Storage

The New York Times reports:

The foreclosure crisis is hitting yet another American locale: the self-storage center.

As they lose their homes, people are turning to these humble cinderblock and sheet-metal boxes to store their stuff. But some people cannot keep up with their storage bills any better than they could handle their mortgage payments, and storage companies are auctioning off their property for a pittance.

A cottage industry has developed to profit from these lost and abandoned items. The other day in this Chicago suburb, Stephanie Donahou and her son Marcus had only a moment to decide whether to bid on a unit in default. They could see a couch, a sewing machine, a fish tank, a washer and dryer, lots of Christmas wrapping paper, a television and other trappings of daily life.

“This is someone’s house,” Mrs. Donahou said. Her bid, for $160, was the highest. Mr. Donahou was not impressed. “Ma, you bought a junker,” he said, rooting through the material. They began to fill their U-Haul. Good material they would auction on eBay; middling stuff would go to yard sales.

The auctioneer, Blair Auction & Appraisal, has been conducting sales at self-storage facilities in the Midwest for more than a decade. “If a site used to have 10 auctions, these days it has 15 or 20,” said Wayne Blair, the owner. At one site in Detroit, he auctioned off the contents of 45 units.