Question for current facility owners. Shane and I have never had a problem allowing our any of our BOG to have a free unit (depending on occupancy, of course). It gives them a different prospective utilizing the facility as a customer as well as an employee. Do any of you do this? If so, what issues have you experienced? Positive or Negative..

You have a 90% occupied facility but a new competitor just opened down the street. Do you lower prices or hold steady?

A big part of self storage ownership is dealing with delinquent customers. While do try to work with people and get them caught up through payment plans, we sometimes end up needing to auction their unit. We just had an auction at our site in SC. There were 6 units up for bid, only 1 was sold and the total amount we collected was $8. Now we were left with 5 units full of mostly junk that we needed to get cleaned out and made rent ready. Instead of calling our BOG, we used the "request cleanout" feature that Storage Treasures offers. Within 30 minutes we had 2 separate people accept the cleanout offer. We still collected the $100 cleaning fee, gave them access like any other auction winner and now have our 5 other units cleaned out and rent ready. It cost us nothing, and now we have a local that has offered to clean out any abandoned units we have. Anyone that has had to pay to have junk removed knows this is a huge win! Even though $8 from an auction seems like nothing, the true value is having clean and rent ready space for the next customer to come in at market rates. We have a few good auction stories to tell but I would love to hear from some of you as well. What's the craziest auction experience you've had at your facility?

Shane and I are very specific with what we look for while on location doing a site visit. We drive around the town and surrounding areas with an entire mental check list. I’m curious what everyone feels is the number one most important thing that you look for in a prospective area

Storable just rolled out a credit card surcharging feature for ESS users, and I’m curious where everyone in here stands on this. For those who haven’t seen it yet, the feature basically allows operators to pass the credit card processing fee (up to around 3%) directly to the tenant when they choose to pay with a credit card. So instead of the facility paying the merchant fees, the tenant pays the convenience fee. Pretty simple concept. But operators seem to be split right down the middle on this. Side #1: “It’s Just a Cost of Doing Business” Some operators don’t love the idea of charging tenants extra fees. Their thinking is: If someone is paying you $100–$150 a month for storage, why nickel and dime them over a few dollars? They’d rather focus on increasing revenue through things like: • Better rate management • Tenant protection plans • Operational efficiencies In their mind, credit card fees are just another operating expense like utilities or software. Side #2: “Why Should I Pay for Their Credit Card Rewards?” Then you’ve got the other side of the fence. These operators look at their merchant statements and say: "Wait a minute… I'm paying thousands of dollars a year so tenants can earn airline miles and cashback points?" Their argument is that credit cards are a convenience for the customer, not the operator. So if a tenant wants that convenience, they should pay the fee. Some operators are even encouraging ACH autopay instead, which usually has little or no processing cost. I’ve also heard of a few operators switching software platforms just to get lower merchant fees and the ability to surcharge. Here’s My Real Question For You If you were running a facility today… Would you: A) Absorb the credit card fees as a normal operating expense B) Pass the surcharge to tenants who use credit cards C) Encourage ACH and bank draft and try to move people away from cards altogether No right or wrong answer here. I just think this is one of those interesting operational decisions that affects both NOI and customer experience.