One thing I've noticed over the years reading old wills and probate records (16th -18th century) is just how few physical possessions even fairly well-off people owned. Estate inventories often list individual coats, shirts, bedding, bowls, tools, etc. I think the material wealth we have today is so incredible we don't even realize how much we've accumulated and could probably do without.
How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
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Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#22Living space cost per sq-ft has grown while storage space cost per sq-ft has stayed the same. Why? Handicap accessibility regulations, parking regulations, etc etc have greatly increased the construction cost of new houses. i.e. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-... Storage facilities do not have people living in them and are therefore immune from lots of these expensive regulations. Hence,…
That has almost nothing to do with the price changes.
The vast majority of price changes is cities becoming more desirable via lower crime and reduced pollution + failing to keep up with housing demand + lower effective interest rates.
Consider the infrastructure changes around DC in the last 30 years vs the changes in population. In 2010 DC had 600k people in 2017 it hit 694k that's a dramatic shift. On the other hand it's population had been falling from 1945 to 2000. The people who left still commuted to DC, but infrastructure was not keeping up.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#23A lot of storage is a real estate play. Buy land in the direction of where cities are growing. Pay your mortgage with storage facilities sitting on top until the land appreciates.
Last year, I looked at buying a turnkey storage business. It was $4M and it wasn't that big of a place. I think the owners were smoking crack, but it does seem to be the going price. I ended up not going forwards with the project because it would take too many years to recover the investment much less make any money.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#24Living space cost per sq-ft has grown while storage space cost per sq-ft has stayed the same. Why? Handicap accessibility regulations, parking regulations, etc etc have greatly increased the construction cost of new houses. i.e. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-... Storage facilities do not have people living in them and are therefore immune from lots of these expensive regulations. Hence,…
Ah, so that's how we end up at Snow Crash-esque storage-units-turned-housing...
People not living in storage units is definitely not a cost thing, it's a regulatory thing.
If it were allowed, I would have absolutely lived in a storage unit through most of my 20s, and I think a lot of my friends would have too.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#25I try to be pretty slow to criticize people for taking advantage of a service that they find valuable. Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement that's repeated a bit early on and then cast off to make room for the more mundane rundown of the market analysis. In the end, there's no way to know the ratio of people getting good value out of this storage to the number of people throwing good mone…
Wouldn't call it all junk, but there is a high statistic of storage units filled by people who "set it and forget it"
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#26I try to be pretty slow to criticize people for taking advantage of a service that they find valuable. Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement that's repeated a bit early on and then cast off to make room for the more mundane rundown of the market analysis. In the end, there's no way to know the ratio of people getting good value out of this storage to the number of people throwing good mone…
Sure, what if the rent/mortgage you pay per square foot in your home is greater than the rent for a storage locker down the road? And there are reasonable use cases for medium-long term storage, such as seasonal items. I don't know how many people use them this way, but I can see reasonable uses too.
This is exactly the situation I'm in. My storage unit is about 200 yards away, and the size of a small walk-in closet. I visit it about once a week. It's, essentially, a detached closet for my wife and me. Mostly seasonal items,
camping/backpacking gear, and a small number of keepsakes.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#27One thing I've noticed over the years reading old wills and probate records (16th -18th century) is just how few physical possessions even fairly well-off people owned. Estate inventories often list individual coats, shirts, bedding, bowls, tools, etc. I think the material wealth we have today is so incredible we don't even realize how much we've accumulated and could probably do without.
Based on a phase I went through involving getting rid of almost all my possessions, you can get rid of ~50% of your stuff and barely notice. But that last 10-20% is so amazingly critical, you come to appreciate it and the work that must have gone into it more. That said, having things that are useful and last never gets old, just make donating something you do as often as shopping. Also that is a pretty strange but interesting hobby.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#28I try to be pretty slow to criticize people for taking advantage of a service that they find valuable. Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement that's repeated a bit early on and then cast off to make room for the more mundane rundown of the market analysis. In the end, there's no way to know the ratio of people getting good value out of this storage to the number of people throwing good mone…
As we have all learned from reality-TV, a good quarter of the units are choke-full with anything but junk: you will find sculpted furniture in pristine condition, civil war artifacts, expensive professional equipment and tens of thousands of dollars in rare baseball cards. The industry must be really struggling to provide adequate security.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#29I try to be pretty slow to criticize people for taking advantage of a service that they find valuable. Calling things in these storage units "junk" is a moral judgement that's repeated a bit early on and then cast off to make room for the more mundane rundown of the market analysis. In the end, there's no way to know the ratio of people getting good value out of this storage to the number of people throwing good mone…
As we have all learned from reality-TV, a good quarter of the units are choke-full with anything but junk: you will find sculpted furniture in pristine condition, civil war artifacts, expensive professional equipment and tens of thousands of dollars in rare baseball cards. The industry must be really struggling to provide adequate security.
But they show only the cream of the crop. never gonna air that episode where they found water-logged bundles of newspapers, old Byte magazines in mouse-chewed boxes and a raccoon mummy.
Re: How warehouses for personal junk became a $38B industry
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
As we have all learned from reality-TV, a good quarter of the units are choke-full with anything but junk: you will find sculpted furniture in pristine condition, civil war artifacts, expensive professional equipment and tens of thousands of dollars in rare baseball cards. The industry must be really struggling to provide adequate security.
But they show only the cream of the crop. never gonna air that episode where they found water-logged bundles of newspapers, old Byte magazines in mouse-chewed boxes and a raccoon mummy.
Dunno, that too would make for some compelling TV drama.