Foreclosures create boon for storage companies
The economy may be lagging, but at least one local enterprise is
booming
– storage units are difficult to come by throughout San Benito
County.
”
We’ve noticed a change in the last four months,
”
said Tim Anderson, an employee at the 166-unit Premiere Storage
on McCray Street behind Premiere Cinemas.
”
Everybody is downsizing. We used to have maybe 10 or so
vacancies at a time, but we’ve been pretty much full recently.
”
Foreclosures create boon for storage companies
The economy may be lagging, but at least one local enterprise is booming – storage units are difficult to come by throughout San Benito County.
“We’ve noticed a change in the last four months,” said Tim Anderson, an employee at the 166-unit Premiere Storage on McCray Street behind Premiere Cinemas. “Everybody is downsizing. We used to have maybe 10 or so vacancies at a time, but we’ve been pretty much full recently.”
The larger 10-by-10 foot units are particularly popular, according to Anderson, because they can accommodate the household items such as furniture that people who are forced to leave their homes must store somewhere.
“When a guy walked in and we told him we had no vacancy, he said ‘That’s the story everywhere I go,'” Anderson said.
Gretchen Gutierrez, manager of Flynn Road RV and Mini Storage on Flynn Road reported having just three vacancies out of 253 units last week – and that was only in the 5-by-5-foot units, the smallest available.
“We’re pretty much full all year-round,” she said. “It’s been really full in the last few months. I think it’s because of the foreclosures.”
The 13-year-old business’s recreational vehicle lot is also full and has a waiting list, Gutierrez said.
Socorro Barajas of Galaxy Self Storage on San Felipe Road confirmed that “finding storage space locally is a problem across the board.”
“It’s not like we’re completely locked up,” she said, noting that the business has some vacancies in its nearly 500 units. “It’s more transitional now than ever. It’s the housing situation in Hollister that’s causing it.”
Many rental space businesses are reporting that potential customers are looking to quickly rent a unit to store their items, as they have recently been forced out of a home due to a foreclosure or they are in the process of moving from one place to another and they have nowhere to keep their possessions in the interim.
“The urgency is there because it’s so important for people to move quickly to find room for the items,” Barajas said.
At San Benito Mini Storage on Industrial Drive, manager Lorena Texeira said last week that none of the 435 units were vacant.
“We’ve moved through the waiting list for the last couple of years, but I notice a lot more demand now,” she said. “Before, it wasn’t so tight. Now, we get five to six customers a day looking for a unit. They say they’ve checked everywhere.”
Texeira, like the others in the industry locally, attributes the demand to the state of the local housing market.
“A lot of times people are switching from one house to another and a good percentage of those are because of foreclosures,” she said. “We’ve had a higher demand for the past year.”
Another result of the tough financial times are people who are willing to give up on the possessions they had paid to store because they can no longer afford the bill or they have no interest in retaining the items.
“Before, we could work out payment plans with customers,” Texeira said. “Now, a lot of people have already lost their property so they don’t care about losing what they put in storage, which often is extra furniture.”
San Benito Mini Storage typically holds four auctions per year of items abandoned in approximately a dozen units.
