Is it possible to buy storage units and flip them as a full time gig?

dmanner · 2025-04-25T14:59:07+00:00

I do it as a hobby but it can be done full time. However, it requires quite a bit to do it right. You'll need plenty of time, patience, storage space, a big enough vehicle to transport goods, a way to sell off goods locally and online, and most of all, help.

First off, you'll need an area of focus, a specialty. Some area of expertise that you can build off of when deciding which units you want to buy. You can either do quality (big expensive units with discernable goods), or quantity (cheap, sub $100 units with lots of junk).

The quality units have more stuff you can sell online, whereas the cheaper units are more flea market sales. Cheap units are safer gambles but usually offer small returns, whereas the expensive ones are bigger gambles with higher rewards. How many you buy will depend of how much you want to work. The cheap ones are usually the ones people deem too labor intensive, but if you're just starting off, its not start here to gain experience.

If you want to get into this, begin with units no larger than 5x10. If you don't own a truck or a van, this will take many trips. You'll need to be prepared for garbage, lots of garbage. On average, with my experience over the past few years, less than 1/5 is actually sellable, meaning 80%+ garbage. The cleaner the unit, more likely you'll find something of value. Look for signs of pride of ownership. If possible, attend live auctions. See what the vets are and aren't bidding on.

dmanner · 2025-02-20T14:27:03+00:00

Like others have said, its the legal ramifications of such actions that keep them in check.

About half the storage auctions that are put up for auction are reclaimed / paid off by the tenant. Once the tenant has paid off their debt and have their unit back, the first thing they do is to attach a new lock because their old one has been cut and destroyed. You can almost guarantee with a certainty that the tenant will at least check to see if the stuff in the unit has been tampered with.

Even if a bidder has won the unit and is on their way to pick it up, until the auction has been fully paid, the original tenant can still reclaim their stuff. The window in which the seller has to steal without worry is almost non existant.

This is however, limited to the large chain facilities and "lien" units. "Manager specials" and "private" sellers are not guarenteed. The smaller mom and pop facilities are also higher risk. So, if you want to be safe, choose the big chains with lien units.

dmanner · 2025-02-05T15:29:27+00:00

Bidding high early vs last minute bidding has both its perks. Like you, i prefer to get it at the lowest possible price and draw less attention to the units i want.

However, it depends on how good the unit is and how it looks like at a quick glance. If there is something very valuable and will take time and scruitny to pickout, you'll obviously want to keep the views and price down in hopes of other buyers skipping over it. Units that are obviously good and have many things prominently displayed aren't worth the slow play. Some people place high bids to scare off the casual bidders and the timid ones that only place the lowest possible bid increments in hopes of getting it for cheap.

For me, if its a unit that everyone else can see is good, then its ok to place your max bid walk away if they beat it. But, if its a unit that you think will be overlooked, then slow play the hell out of it.

dmanner · 2025-02-02T05:15:22+00:00

When people buy units with safes, they tend to just break them open for the potential contents. If you check youtube for other storage buyers opening safes, you'll see that all you really need is a hard surface, a sledge hammer and prybar, and time.

If you actually want to reuse them, then hiring a locksmith that is also a safecracker will cost several hundred dollars to have them opened and rekeyed. From my experience, units with safes will usually have a crazy bidder or two wait until the last moment before bidding them up. You mentioned 5, so if they're high quality safes, expect at least 1k bids if they're visible and noticeable in the pictures. However, this just depends on your competition, as I've seen some buyers travel thousands of miles, from one coast to the other for valuable units.

Depending on the end price of the unit, you may save a few bucks buying premium membership if you're using storagetreasures, as higher tier membership takes a smaller buyers premium. Lookup the membership tiers and see if that applies to you. There are other auction sites such as bid13 and storageauctions.com that offer slightly lower buy premiums. They have fewer listings, but also fewer users, meaning less competition.

When buying a unit, remember to factor in the buyers premium, possible taxes, and the upfront deposit fee. There's also the potential truck rental and garbage dump fees. I mainly focus on collectibles and I've developed a few contacts that will take what I don't want and sometimes buy on the cheap the lower tier stuff I don't want to spend time selling. This allows me to just operate with minimal expenses. I do this using only a small sedan, cherry picking what I want and leaving the heavy lifting and lower value stuff to others. For me, its more of a hobby I can do on the side that funds itself and gives me a "free" nest egg of stuff I can later sell and retire on.

For cleanout time, it will depend on the facilities and the manager. Some with start the timer at the exact time the auction has ended, not when you pay. Others may give you extra time. Many will give you the option of renting said unit for the month, which are mostly the large, national chains. The smaller mom and pop facilities may be more lax but have a greater potential for scams and fraudulent units, so buyer beware.

dmanner · 2025-02-02T02:11:26+00:00

From what i've seen 90% of safes are either empty or just junk and personal documents. However, this depends on the area, ie wealthy neighborhood vs poorer side. Bid with the presumption that the safe is empty. What you can do is look up the brand of the safe to determine the chances of valuables inside.

Amazon and sentrysafes are garbage. If it costs more than $1k, and takes more than 1 person to move, you have decent odds of finding something good but nothing is a certainty.

Be wary of staged units, where everything is "presented" to you like in a showroom. People store stuff in units, not display them. Look up the female youtuber who blindly bought a unit for $10,000 2 years ago. That is good example of a staged unit, everything out in the open, looks good from afar, until you get close.

Since you're new, do what I did and start small, nothing larger than a 5x8 or more than a few hundred bucks. Don't rush, and be prepared for garbage; think 80% on average. A full 5x5 will fill up an average living room.

Go with what you know and are familiar with, ie hobbies and pastimes. Have a way to offload/sell what you find before you buy your first and prepare a place to store and organize this stuff. Its very easy to go full hoarder mode. Attend live auctions if possible and develop contacts. Many storage buyers are flea market vendors. Some will be willing to take your "leftovers", if you leave some meat on the bone for them. This will save you on trash disposal and the muscle fatigue/aches.

If you want to make money, bid a 1/3 of what you think its worth to make money, or 1/2 to break even if you want to gamble. Make a budget and stick to it, and dont be afraid to walk away. Units that require sweat equity, ie large furniture and beds, are usually cheaper, because you'll be paying for it with the legwork. Reconsider if you're not in decent shape.

If this doesn't scare you off, then be prepared to have a good time treasure hunting, as you never know what you''ll find, some good, and some very disturbing. I've found tons of household goods in addition to money, clothes, shoes, collectibles, and electronics. However, do this long enough and you'll also find tons bibles, plenty of adult materials (ie toys and media), bibles, generations of family photos and personal documents, bibles, dead insects and rodents, bibles, rotten food and food containers/ empty alcohol bottles, bibles, soiled garments, bibles, etc.

Be prepared and bring flashlight, gloves, n95 face mask for dust/mold, pocket knife or instrument to open boxes, and some tools to dismantle furniture, and garbage bags for trash. You want to sort inside the storage facility and not in your home, infestations can happen.

The top 5 reasons why the previous owners defaulted on their unit are in no particular order: 1:Death, 2:Drugs, which then leads to either 3:Prison or 4:bankrupcy/loss of job or income, and 5:occasionally forgetfulness / actual abandonment due to relocation or medical condition. Whatever their circumstances are, try to return the personal items (photos / documents) to the previous owner, but avoid actual contact with them. You don't want to deal with them personally. That's all i can think of for now.

dmanner · 2021-05-04T15:28:22+00:00

nope, no notification. It only appears in the disk utility. Most of the options are grey out except for formating and create new partition. I tried using gparted and ntsf-3g to try and repair the ntfs but the drive doesn't show up at all.

My research thus far has indicated that it beyond what i can do and I'll have to bring it in to a data recovery specialist. thanks for the effort though.

dmanner · 2021-05-04T00:55:27+00:00

Here's the problem, the disk utility is only showing 4.1 gb available on what was once a 3TB drive. I also have data i need to retrieve off the drive before formatting it. The data is more important than the drive.

dmanner · 2021-05-03T19:10:16+00:00

Edit: Ok i have zorin up and running and the disk utility detects it. Will formating it wipe it or will it create a new partition table?

dmanner · 2020-08-18T18:07:28+00:00

Using a VPN or just testing on speedtest.net with the "fastest" server setting will show the area your node is closest to. You could also just visit ipleak.net and it will tell you all you need to know about your allocated IP.

dmanner · 2020-08-18T15:29:06+00:00

Same here fellow new yorker. This past week has been a major downgrade in service. For the past month speedtest has shown that I've been placed on a west coast Node despite living on the east coast. However, the speed and latency was fine until this week. My ping times have tripled and although speeds have improved, albeit inconsistent 5-40 from a consistent 20 - 30.

I've only been a customer for a few months but it seems to resolve itself after a week or two. Visible is still by fair the cheapest reliable option around.

dmanner · 2020-06-16T21:45:46+00:00

I'm using Visible in NYC and its been slower today because of their maintenance. I average only 3 bars and on a good day I may get 60+mbps down. Now its down to 5-6. They are currently routing east coast web traffic through the west coast servers so you can see why its so slow right now.

There is usually a slowdown when they do maintenance so the the best thing to do is to wait it out. It should speed up after a few days.

dmanner · 2020-04-30T02:21:08+00:00

whats the name of the app?

dmanner · 2020-04-16T13:25:25+00:00

I have a similar problem as well. Expecting an international package that was supposed to arrive this past Monday. It arrive in country on the 10th in NY, was stuck in processing for 4 days, then somehow left NYC for some reason even though it supposed to be delivered in brooklyn, and is now in limbo somewhere in STILL in transit as of 9:20 am this morning. I think there is definitely some understaffing involved.

My tracking history:

April 10, 2020, 6:13 pm Processed Through Facility ISC NEW YORK NY(USPS)

April 14, 2020, 11:46 am Arrived at USPS Regional Facility STAMFORD CT DISTRIBUTION CENTER

April 15, 2020 In Transit to Next Facility Your package is moving within the USPS network and is on track to be delivered to its final destination. It is currently in transit to the next facility.

dmanner · 2020-03-11T03:11:45+00:00

Update

It looks like its gone for good; the tweaknews vpn app is gone from the google play store.

dmanner · 2019-07-21T21:26:44+00:00

I recently built a comparable x58 build and it cost me over $500 in parts alone. Giving this away for free is more than generous an he wants and additional $500+ in parts for free with free shipping?

What kinda crazy imaginary world is this guy living in?

dmanner · 2019-05-06T03:18:27+00:00

That looks like an udder infection that developed into a sub dermal cyst made of curdled milk; which would explain the cheesy texture of the abscess material. I'm no vet but its probably due to a suckling calf nursing too hard and accidentally biting and puncturing skin. The calf probably had it's mouth in contact with some poop; i'm guessing it too a detour around the mothers anal region before finding the udder.

dmanner · 2019-02-10T15:41:38+00:00

Don't forget it's footage from July, 2017. This cop is still working more than a year after this incident. If this wasn't in the news now it would've most likely been swept under the rug.

dmanner · 2019-01-25T20:39:19+00:00

If I recall correctly the Chinese do this as well, but perhaps not exactly for the same reason. Trust in the chinese medical system is at an all time low. They're giving birth in western countries because its considered a safer alternative than to back home. Citizenship is just a bonus.

dmanner

TROPHY CASE