Since this is a quasi-legal question I’ll start here. You are not my lawyer, I am not your client, yadda yadda yadda. Mods, feel free to relocate as appropriate.
I enjoy watching the show “Storage Wars”. In it, people bid on storage units where renters have defaulted on payments, and the unit’s contents are sold. Usually, nothing of significance is found, but once in a while, something valuable is discovered. I read somewhere that the entire show is faked, but that’s a question for a Cafe Society thread.
My question is about the debt. Let’s say a renter owes $500 in unpaid rent and the owner of the facility files the appropriate legal paperwork and takes ownership of the abandoned contents. The owner decides to sell everything and because there are a few rare antiques they generated $1,000 from the sale.
Does the owner get to keep the entire $1,000 or just the amount the renter owed plus perhaps an administrative fee for selling the items? In other words, is the renter who defaulted entitled to any of the excess money from the sale?
As you note, it depends upon the laws of the state and the contract, but generally, if you abandon your property, you effectively abandon it to the storage unit owner who can do with it as they see fit.
I’m not a lawyer (though I have watched many episodes of US law firm TV shows such as ‘Franklin + Bash’. .)
I am confident that (as John T remarked) it all depends on the contract that the renter signed.
I would expect something like:
if the renter ever defaults, the storage firm must send them a warning notice demanding payment
if enough rent arrears then accrue, the renter defaults and all the contents now legally belong to the company.
This seems fair - the renter has had free storage and a warning … so they lose any value within the unit.
You may be interested in a somewhat similar (but pleasant!) experience.
I inherited a house (I already owned one), so found a buyer, who naturally asked that the house be cleared.
A friend recommended a local auction dealer, who offered to clear the house (as required) - but the dealer would then put up any suitable items at auction and give me a discount (based on his auction profit.)
Well the house had a fair amount of furniture and ornaments (none of which I wanted.)
So I agreed - and the dealer told me a couple of weeks later that I owed him nothing.
I don’t care how much profit he made - I was so pleased to have the house emptied and sold with no effort on my part.
I like that show too and wondered about the vehicles they sometimes find sans title. In Arizona, there is paperwork involved in getting a new title for abandoned , but its not a horribly onerous task and the fee is something like 50 bucks.
My wife started watching them when she was in the hospital, and now we’re binging on them.
In at least one show there was an issue about finding the paperwork for a car, which they finally did.
I wonder who defaults. Some of them have so much stuff in them, including cash, that you’d think someone died without heirs or without information about the locker for the heirs.
.)
