SSA Blog

TALKING TO "THE MAN" Whether you are a self storage feasibility analyst or an individual researching your next project, we often need to contact local government to find out if there are any other self storage projects in the works. Because these agencies vary on a city level in both sophistication and responsiveness, this may prove to be a frustrating process. Here’s how to cut through the red tape.

As busy as the self storage industry has been over the last five to seven years, not much has been written or discussed recently about the language of loan covenants for buying or building self storage facilities.

Self storage tenants have many reasons for not paying their rent and storage operators are often sympathetic to their circumstances.

Separate and apart from the Court’s earlier holding in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (2011) that businesses could include arbitration provisions with class action waivers in their consumer contracts, the Supreme Court added to their support for arbitration provisions with class action waivers as part of their recent holding in the cases of Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris and National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil, Inc., decided May 21, 2018.

The Third Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals issued its decision in late April in the case of Spade v. Select Comfort Corp. This case arose from class actions pending in New Jersey that were based on the state’s Truth in Consumer Contract, Warranty and Notice Act (otherwise coined the “TCCWNA law”).

The California Supreme Court last week unanimously ruled that a protection plan is not insurance. The decision ended five years of litigation against A-1 Self Storage.

The self storage industry has been a take-all-comers business since its inception. Self Storage operators do not typically run credit checks on their customers before renting a space and require minimum identification.

Although credit reporting has been in use for sixty years, it has not yet been fully applied in the self storage industry, except in limited circumstances where post sale collection deficiencies have been sent to collection agencies who try to post the debt with the credit reporting agencies.

A lot of attention has been generated recently regarding what “late fees” may be charged by self storage operators to their tenants based on state law requirements.

Contracts of all varieties place an obligation on one or both parties to use their “best effort” or “commercially reasonable efforts” or some variation on the efforts theme to accomplish the goals of the contract.