Hi all! Our family has owned two storage facilities for 40+ years. For many years our properties were run very old-school and we are currently in the process of upgrading everything. My hubby and I took over the management in January of this year. We are in the process of upgrading our fences to 7' iron with spikes, as chainlink is child's play to cut and enter. We have automatic gates with a key code box (integrated with our software) and our gate hours are 7AM - 8PM. We are upgrading our security cameras, but as a previous poster mentioned, if no-one is watching the cameras at night or the system is not setup to alert you, the cameras are only good for monitoring during office hours and playback for thefts that occur during the night. We have an office at our larger facility that manages both properties and is open 9-5, six days a week. We have had a very hard time with management and we are currently living at the facility managing ourselves. We are in our second eviction for our live on-site managers this year.
Managing remotely seems like a pipe-dream for us, to be honest. Maybe that works if you are in an upscale area where people always behave and follow rules...heh. We do a drive-through of the facility every night after gate hours to hustle people out who have not left, and to check all locks, and nooks and crannies for dumped trash, etc. Just last night we had a couple who had not left after the posted gate hours. My hubby told them they needed to wrap it up and leave within 10 minutes (they had stuff strewn about in front of their unit.) My hubby went back to the office. Then a neighbor (another storage facility owner that lives on-site) called him and said there were people screaming in our back units. My husband went out again and the couple were having a domestic dispute (this happens with our customers more often than we care for!) and the husband had thrown and broken things. They swept the items in a pile and covered it with a tarp for the night. The man was supposed to come back today to clean it up. People often stay past gate hours and have to be physically told to leave and watched to make sure they do. We've had domestic disputes that could have turned very ugly (guy had done time for shooting someone in the face) if we were not there to stop it, call police, etc. We've had homeless people attempting to live in their units and stay at the facility all day. It seems like we have people or unit issues on the daily.
We also do a drive through of the property first thing in the morning. We often notice that people have not secured their locks properly or have accidentally taken their lock with them and the unit is unsecured. We then secure the unit with our own lock and call the tenant to let them know. I'm not sure how this kind of thing would be accomplished remotely without having boots on the ground every day.
Regarding cleaning out units: We often get people who move out and leave stuff. We then have to load the trash in a utility trailer and haul it to the transfer station. We have also had people move out and dump things in a corner on the property so their unit looks clean to get their deposit back, but they've left a mountain of stuff in a corner somewhere. If a manager is not monitoring the cameras, this is not caught until later. We live in an area where there are black widows and other undesirable spiders, so we have a pest service come every single time someone moves out; however, if a unit is empty for a time, black widows move back in and must be exterminated before a tenant moves in, so we do an inspection of every unit before someone moves in to make sure it's ready to go. Sometimes people just move out without notice, so if we are not inspecting the place every single day, we would not know until our system charges them rent and we attempt to collect.
Even with all it's complexities, I prefer self-storage to residential rentals – at least the gate locks tenants out after 11 days if they are behind on rent. The lien process is lengthy though and labor intensive.
I would love to hear from other owners/managers on how they have accomplished remote management. We would like to work smarter, not harder. ;)
Thanks for listening and for any input you may have,
Jenny
