Left Behind: Self-Storage's Abandonment Issues

When tenants move out, not everything goes with them. Mattresses, busted couches, bags of clothes—it often looks like the aftermath of a bad breakup. Sometimes these unwanted items aren’t even left in the unit. Instead, they’re hidden elsewhere on the property to avoid traceability and shirk responsibility.

 

Enter Anna Bean. She’s the director of self-storage and multifamily operations at Island Equity Partners, and she has a superpower: The ability to spot a devious dumper with nothing more than a sharp eye and a reel of footage.

 

“My sneaky little tenants are always so surprised when I call them to ask about the items they’ve dumped on the property,” she says. “They don’t know that their girl is a security cam wizard, and I will find the perpetrator, every time.”

 

Once the dumper has been identified, what comes next? Bean and others share their experiences, plus we look at abandonment through a legal lens.

 

“The first thing to know is that not all dumpers are the same,” says Bean. “They have different methods of operation.”

 

Bean explains that some dumpers are blatant, leaving things behind without care or concern. Others are more calculated. “They’ll tuck it away in a spot where they don’t think cameras will catch it,” she says. “But I always catch it. I’m a busy lady, but I’m not too busy to figure out who’s leaving junk on my properties.”

 

Bean relishes the challenge. “I’ll find the camera with the best angle, zoom in close, and then take my best guess when the items were dumped based on when I last visited the property.” At one of the remotely managed properties, that might mean rewinding four to five days’ worth of footage, but she says she’ll still sleuth them out in no time. “I keep skipping ahead to see when the stuff appears. Once I see it, I’ll back up every hour until I narrow the time down. Then, I go to my gate software and look at the codes and timestamps of when people came and went. It sounds time consuming, but we’re talking 10 minutes max.”

 

Sue Haviland, owner of Haviland Storage Services, which has a focus on third-party management, has similar stories. “The most common is the old mattress, couches with missing cushions, and old dressers,” she says. “Tires used to be a big one as well. They’d store tires in their unit for years and then leave them when they’d vacate.”

 

Like Bean, Haviland will track down the dumper by scrolling through camera footage. “It’s not that hard to catch them in the act.”

Haviland provides two photos of some of the more shocking dumps she’s discovered while doing a property audit. “These might provide some shock value,” she says. “It highlights the importance of doing regular rounds and knowing your tenants.”

 

The Home Depot buckets that were tucked in a corner under some foliage were full of “tar, oil, and God knows what else,” says Haviland, who isn’t sure what was in the metal drums left behind at a loading dock, though they look like something straight out of an episode of “Criminal Minds.”

Once an operator has determined who was behind the dump, it’s time to pick up the phone. “We let them know we have them on camera dumping their items,” says Haviland. “We tell them if they don’t come get it, per their lease, we will be charging the dumping fee. Most come and get it, but occasionally we have to charge them.”

 

When Bean makes those calls, the ex-tenants often play stupid. “I often get, ‘Oh, wait, is that not allowed?’ And I’m like, ‘No. It’s actually not allowed.’”

 

The rest of the ex-tenants tend to claim that they’re coming back for it. Of course, Bean knows that 99 percent of the time that’s a lie, but she’ll play along. “I just say, ‘OK, perfect; just let me know when you’re gonna come pick it up.”

 

She says it’s tempting to toss some subtle sarcasm their way, an “Mmm-hmmm” or similar, but she ultimately believes you can catch many more flies with honey than vinegar. “I’m very professional about it when I call; besides, you tick somebody off and then they may go and leave a bad review, and that’s another headache.”

 

Plus, there is that one percent chance they’re not lying, which Bean also experienced when, earlier in her career, she saw someone on camera appear to be dumping bicycles from their unit by the dumpster. “I wasn’t rude when I called, but I was definitely more firm about it than I would be these days,” she recalls. As it turned out, the tenant was leaving the bikes for her nephew to come pick up so he could fix them up and give them to a local charity that collected bicycles for low-income families with children. “Of all things,” says Bean. “Again, that’s why it’s important to not go in with all guns blazing. You don’t always get the full story from a camera!”

 

Are departing tenants less likely to leave behind unwanted items if they know there’s a manager on site? Denee Burns, chief of staff for Sunbird Storage, says they run a pretty tight ship and believes this to be true. “Our facility managers get to know the tenants really, really well. So, the tenants will tell them when they’re going to move out. That means they’re held accountable, and managers can look at the space and make sure everything was taken on move-out day. I’m not saying that it never happens. Things have been abandoned, but it’s very rare because our managers take good care of their tenants, which leads to mutual respect.”

 

Remote management is not a path Sunbird will go down, says Burns. “We’re proponents of the human factor,” she says. “I think, when people leave stuff behind, it’s because there’s no one looking over the tenant’s shoulder, or they don’t even know the manager. If there’s no relationship, there’s less reason for them to care.”

 

Bean isn’t so sure. She runs multiple managed and remote properties and has not seen a difference based upon this. “I feel like dumping happens regardless,” she states. “Even at the apartment complex I manage, where there’s someone always on site and we have fantastic relationships with people, there’s stuff left by the dumpster. Ultimately, I think laziness supersedes loyalty.”

 

While it appears most operators will reach out to anyone abandoning items, if they receive no response and dispose of the items (only to learn later that they weren’t left behind intentionally), are there legal repercussions?

 

“The question of ‘abandonment’ of stored property is challenging in the self-storage industry,” says Scott Zucker, who specializes in self-storage as a partner in the law firm Weissmann Zucker Euster + Katz. “When moving out, some tenants intentionally leave items behind, others leave items by mistake, and then there are others who, based on circumstances often out of their control, simply elect to forego all of their stored items because they can’t pay the outstanding rent needed to retrieve the property or the cost to remove them.”

 

How does a self-storage operator determine whether the items left behind in a storage unit have been abandoned by their owner? Other than obtaining a written abandonment form, which Zucker says is the best solution, video and a phone call seems to be a safe bet.

“If they’re tucking it away or moving it to the opposite side of the facility, rest assured they’re trying to take it off their hands and put it in yours,” says Bean. “But with the proper follow-up, there shouldn’t be cause for concern, except maybe on their part!”

 

Adds Zucker, “Communication and verification are the best options. After that, each operator must decide for themselves whether the property left behind was left by mistake or was left intentionally.”

It seems it’s true: Whether you have a carefree dumper or a cunning one, breaking up can be hard to do.

 

–