I’m hoping someone can help me with this… If someone can explain in simple terms what this means in regards to the self storage facility’s responsibility to “notify” the occupant before stored items can be sent to auction. Am I understanding notification should be done by certified mail BEFORE the storage unit’s contents can be sent to auction? Also, does this mean the owner should wait until confirmation from the occupant that the notice was received BEFORE the storage unit’s contents can be sent to auction?
This is 10. on a self storage space rental agreement. The self storage facility is located in Las Vegas, Nevada. I triple checked to be sure the following appears exactly like it is on the contract. Any typos are theirs…
OWNERS LIEN: Occupants personal property in or on the premises will be subject to a claim for a lien in favor of owner and may be sold to satisfy the lien of the rent or other charges due under the rental agreement that remain unpaid for fourteen (14) consecutive days, in addition, if rent or other charges due under the rental agreement remain unpaid for 14 days or more owner may deny occupant access to his individual space. Notice by certified mail to the occupants last know address and to the alternate address provided by the occupants, herein above, which notice shall state that of the occupant fails to cure the default within 14 days after such notice was mailed to occupant default the owner shall be entitled to terminate this rental agreement and exercise his rights hereunder and as provided otherwise by law. Occupant shall not be deemed to have given owner notice of any facts or matter pertaining to this rental agreement unless such notice is in writing and delivered to the address set forth herein above either in person for which such notice is receipt by the owner or alternatively by certified mail return receipt requested, N.R.S. 108.4755.1.(B)
It means if you are 14 days late in paying the rent, they can change the locks and sell your stuff and keep the money. It also means that all communications between you and them have to be in writing.
The owner must notify occupant by certified mail, then wait 14 days with no response by occupant before they can exercise their rights of selling the contents. Any response by occupant must be in writing and delivered to owner’s address.
No the owner, doesn’t have to wait until confirmation of the notice is received, just the 14 days from mailing the notice, and not receiving a response from the occupant.
Not sure but the only satisfactory response to stop the owner from exercising his rights, would be payment of all late rents and fees.
Maybe I should clarify what I’m unsure about here since it’s not quite that simple. Based upon what is stated in the contract if the occupant WASN’T notified by “certified” mail hence the owner never received confirmation that the occupant was in receipt of the notification but he sold the contents anyway… am I understanding that the owner would be in violation of his own contract?
Owner merely needs to give occupant notice by certified mail. 14 days after such mailing, the owner may terminate the agreement and foreclose on the lien created by 14 days of unpaid rent.
“Certified mail” just means there is proof it was mailed. “Certified mail” does NOT provide proof of delivery. That’s a separate postal product (and legal principal) called “return receipt” or “proof of delivery”.
So the way the contact reads, once the account is delinquent the owner waits 14 days, changes the locks, then sends the letter to the renter obtaining a proof of sending called “certified mail”. Then he waits 14 more days and if he’s not been paid he owns the stuff and can sell it. There is NO requirement for the renter to actually receive the letter nor any obligation for the owner to wait for that to happen.
The rules for the renter as slightly different and more restrictive. Unsurprisingly.
If the renter wants to communicate with the owner, he must do so in person. Or else by sending a certified letter *with *the receipt-of-delivery feature. And the renter can only legally assume the owner got the letter if/when the renter gets that receipt back. So if that letter never makes it to the owner, the renter is still screwed, not the owner.
I’m not a lawyer, but do read legal agreements on occasion.
First of all, it’s very poorly written: the second sentence has no verb, and no very obvious verb to stick in there. I mean, it’s reasonable to think that the sentence is supposed to be about the owner giving notice to the occupant, but even so, is it intended to say the owner ‘must’ give notice, or that the owner ‘may’ give notice?
It would come down to what a judge thought the two parties were agreeing to. Theoretically the occupant should get the benefit of the doubt, since the renter wrote the contract and the occupant had no real power to change it. But who knows what would happen, with a local company versus a possibly out-of-state occupant in Las Vegas?
Again, I’m not a lawyer. I’m not giving legal advice. But if I was looking at that contract as a renter, I’d be tempted to hand write in “The owner must provide” before the second sentence (and change the capital ‘N’ in ‘Notice’ to lower-case) before signing it. And maker sure the owner’s representative saw it and initialed it if possible.
What LSLGuy says. If the owner sends a certified letter to your last known address and to the alternate address you put on the rental agreement, then you did “get notified” even if you say you weren’t.
As he also mentioned, the standard for whether or not you notified him is higher. You have to send letters to him via registered mail, and get the receipt back saying that the letter was delivered, before the owner will be considered “notified”. Or you can hand him a letter in person, but you have to get a receipt from him saying he received the letter, or again, he ain’t “notified”. So he could refuse to accept the letter, or accept it but refuse to give you a receipt, and you would then have to send him a registered letter and wait for the receipt.
Renting a storage unit is different from renting a place where you live. Landlords don’t need to mess around because no human is being evicted. Two weeks late - they mail two letters, open up your unit and sell whatever is inside, and you are SOL.
I think that last part is where her confusion came in… I think she thought the wording of the contract meant the owner needed to hear from the occupant before moving forward with the auction… I’ve been trying to offer support and help her out. I’ll let her know the bad news. Thanks.
One more thing … she said she signed and returned a form to them a year ago stating that all correspondence would be by email if she signed it. So she’s been receiving emails from them ever since… everything but a notice that her things were going to auction by a certain date. She’d been late once before due to lack of work but she said the owners/managers were understanding about it. She was 15 days late this time.
She has since found out there is a new/owner manager… she lost practically everything she owns.
You’re right. I didn’t say that as clearly as I should have.
The rent is due on some particular day. The rent is delinquent 14 days after that. That very day the owner may send his certified notice.
So the letter goes out 14 days after the rent was due, but 0 days after the delinquency starts. And 14 days after the letter is sent = 28 days after the rent was due, the owner owns the goods and may sell them.
This is a real trap that many people have fallen into and will continue falling into.
We all get more and more correspondence by email. So we all begin to think of snail mail as all junk and advertising. Wrong.
It’s all junk and advertising, plus all the very utmost important papers you’ll ever get in your life. Making damn sure you have a reliable snail mail address and everybody who matters has the correct address is vital to avoid screwing up the important ones.
Doing everything by email is dangerous because it eliminates the cross check you get every month when the snail mail bill from whoever shows up. That the routine stuff shows up proves they know how to find you for the vital stuff. Cutting off that cross-check can bite you (any you) big time.
I guess there’s a chance the form she signed had language that made it clear it overrode the rental contract, which could possibly mean e-mail notification was required, but we’d have to see that form to have any clue about that.
If she never actually received the certified mail, there’s some hope that the owner sent it to the wrong address or otherwise messed up. In which case she’s in slightly better shape, legally.
But most likely, her best bet is to ask them for a detailed accounting of how much she owed and how much they got when they sold her stuff. I don’t see anything (in the quoted paragraph at least) that lets them keep the difference. And make sure they didn’t both take her 15-days late payment and sell her stuff, or any other shenanigans. (I imagine storage locker rental places are used to dealing with people who may not always check things like that or keep pushing when they find something wrong…)
That’s possible. Based on the wording of the original contract, it might not be - does she have a copy of the form she says she signed?
According to the original contract, it doesn’t matter if she received it - it only matters that the owners sent it.
IOW she says “I never got the mail” and the owners produce the receipt saying that they sent it to her last known address and the alternate address, and the contract saying that this is all they need, and she is SOL.
Good point. I believe the owners are only entitled to keep the proceeds of selling her stuff up to the point where the debt is settled. IOW if she owes $500 and her stuff sells for $600, the owners are supposed to give her a check for $100. The owners would not have much motivation to sell her stuff for anything more than $500. They just want their money as fast as possible. What the owners might do is just sell the contents to a junk dealer sight unseen for $500. If the contents include Grandma’s diamond ring worth $5000, the junk dealer makes a nice profit, but I don’t expect that people keep high-value items in storage very often. And used furniture and things like that aren’t high-value, apart from sentimental value.
It sounds like your friends is, or is about to be, screwed. Sorry about that.
I am very sorry that your friend lost all her stuff, but this part is unlikely to be true. Either she was at least 28 days late or the new owner violated the contract. In reality, most storage companies - in fact all that I’ve ever dealt with as a buyer - don’t go the auction route until the unit is multiple months past due.
Also, the option to receive email notifications instead of paper likely does not apply to the delinquency sale notification. Certified mail notification is normally required by law in these cases and an agreement with the owner can’t override law.