By ERIC C. RODENBERG
Antique Week Associate Editor

DICKINSON, Texas — Storage unit auctioneers have never seen anything like it. It’s like the Wild West out there – but, this time, the pandemonium is coming from Michigan, Florida, New York, Texas, California and all over the country.
“I don’t know where all these people are coming from,” said Rex Frost, owner of Storage Protection Auction Services, in Florida, “they’ve just been coming out of the woodwork.”

“It’s phenomenal,” said storage unit auctioneer Lisa Gay from LL Auction in Dickinson, Texas. “Just last Saturday (Jan. 8) at an auction where we might have 20-30 bidders, we saw more than 90 bidders.” Some professional auctioneers, according to Gay, are seeing turnouts at delinquent storage unit auction increase as much as 400 percent.

Wayne Blair, owner of Wayne Blair Auctions in Muskegon, Mich., is getting so many phone calls for storage bin auctions that he carries two cell phones. Right now, he has nearly 1,000 storage units scheduled for sale in Michigan alone. He employs associates who auction units in Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Massachusetts and Minnesota among other locations.

“If you would have told me 10 or 15 years ago that I would be specializing in storage unit sales I would have said, ‘you’re crazy,’” Blair joked. “But, I’ve been doing this since around 1998 or 1999 … and in the last four years we’ve seen more auctions, and more and more people coming to the auctions … a lot of them are just ‘lookers,’ but … there’s still some good money to be made.”

In part, it’s the economy driving the business. “The economy has many people looking for ways to put a few extra dollars in their pocket,” Auctioneer Gay said. Another driving force are the television shows like Storage Wars, Auction Hunters (see AntiqueWeek editorial on Dec. 10), and the many local spin-offs that have spurred the notion that “true treasures” can be found in abandoned units.

“One of the most frequent questions we are asked is, if it’s like the TV shows,” said Gay. “I tell new bidders it’s just like sitting in front of a slot machine, you can spend money and lose, break even or you just might hit the jackpot. We’ve heard of cash, guns and motorcycles being buried in the back of some units. It’s the mystery and the thrill of the hunt that keeps bidders coming back.”

How it works

Storage units are put up for auction only after the property owner has failed to pay rent to the storage unit company for a specific period of time. In some cases, the storage unit owners will immediately “lock down” a unit after the first day of delinquency. In many states, the property owner can “redeem” their possessions by paying the rent right up to the fall of the hammer. In some states, should a property owner owe, say $100 in rent, and the property brings $300 at auction, the property owner – not the storage unit owner – is entitled to the $200 difference.

But, it’s wild and wooly out there. The laws regulating the auctioneering of seized property differ in every state. And anytime you’re dealing with “seized” property – and the stakes start getting higher – the odds of conflict will only become greater.

In Florida, for example, anyone can conduct a storage unit auction. The requirement for a professional auctioneer was dropped by Florida legislators in the 1980s.

As founder of Storage Protection Auction Services, Frost who claims to be the first and largest company in the United States doing such auctions thought he was going to be put out of business.

“But, we didn’t lose a single facility,” he mentioned, “because we safeguard these storage facility owners from lawsuits. There’s a lot of money floating around … and there’s a lot of gray areas in Florida law. They (the legislators) need to get it back with licensed auctioneers. If some fly-by-night company screws up, they just move on … if we screw up, we’ve got a lot more on the line.”
On its website, Frost’s company maintains it has never been to court, or been forced to make an out-of-court settlement.

These potentials for “big money” and “gray areas” can put the auctioneer on a tightrope, as Michigan auctioneer Blair recently explained.

“I personally know guys that make more than $100,000 a year buying and selling this stuff,” Blair claims.

“I know there was this one unit which had an older Rolls Royce convertible with about 33,000 original miles on it,” Blair said. “The lady had paid on it all along … she had it on autopay, paid by her credit card. But, she got a new credit card, and the company denied it … they never heard from her, she was out of the country … the storage company hadn’t been paid, and we started making our checks, and located the woman overseas. She had no idea her property was in jeopardy … she was very thankful.

“But sometimes, things happen … especially with old money, like in the bigger automotive towns here like Detroit … people die, and their heirs never know they had a storage unit … we had one storage unit that belonged to a doctor who now lives in Texas. He had been paying on it for 30 years … all of a sudden he quits paying, his daughter never knew about it … the unit sold for $2,400 or $2,500. I knew two items that each sold on eBay immediately for a $950 ‘buy-it-now.’ There was a lot more in that unit; the guy who bought it said he’s ‘going to do very well with it.’ … I see a lot of stuff that I’d like to bid on, but I never bid on stuff I’m auctioning … but I’m seeing some awfully good stuff going cheap.”

And, at auctions that once accommodated a dozen potential buyers, there are certain adjustments that have to be made to service 100-200 bidders.
“Now we’ve got issues like crowd control, parking, asset protection,” Frost said. “I just don’t think it’s good for the industry. People all over Florida ask me why didn’t we get into this television thing? I don’t want any part of it … at least, not until things get better … I still have a heart. I don’t like TV coming in … sometimes the owner’s there bidding on his own stuff, or people see the show and they know that it’s the guy down the street that lost his stuff … we really make an effort to get in touch with the property owner and try to work something out.

“I just think all this commotion makes for a bad decision,” said Frost. “I’m hoping that it will all just blow over.”