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Hi everyone! We moved from Maryland to Washington state last June as my husbands job said they were paying for our move. We found out in November that they aren't paying for it due to budgeting which I think is a bunch of bs anyways. We ended up puting our stuff in storage as we had to fly our here quickly. We moved into a place in October and can't afford to move our stuff and are trying to figure out if there is a company that would sell your stuff from storage as we don't want to default on our payments and ruin credit. Wondering if the storage place has people that would auction it off or if thats for people that have defaulted on the payments. I tried to call the storage place but as usual no answer. My landlord has let us use some of her furniture but now she needs it back to furnish another one of her units. Anyone have any good ideas? Thank you!
The warehouseman may be able to recommend an auctioneer/liquidator that handles their storage accounts when customers default on their bill, but I doubt that they can act as your agent to arrange the sale of your property to satisfy your contractual obligations to them before the state's lien laws kick in. Seems like that would be a conflict of interest. Who would protect your rights to make sure you got fair value for your belongings?
The autioners used by the storage places can auction a unit for a customer not in default but it follows the exact same rules in most places as a defaulted unit. They open it and aution it off as a entire unit and keep a set percentage of the sale. They can not sell off the items individually for the best price, only aution the unit off. They may not be allowed to identify which units are default and which are customer aution units. Whatever the high bid price is, is what it is regardless of the value. If its worth $5,000 but only a few people show up and the higfhest bidder is $50, that's the price so beware.
You can contact for profit thrift stores or second hand dealers who will pay you a price based on what they think its worth, but they don;t pay retail fair market value because they are buying the whole thing and often may have to spend money to get rid of anything that isn't of resale value, so they usually offer less.
If you have family or friends, they can sell off the stuff for you at whatever price they can.
Storage companies aren't in the business of conducting auctions simply because a tenant no longer wants their stuff. I used to be a manager for a storage company, and the only way we would get involved with auctioning off the contents of a unit was if the tenant missed 3 monthly rent payments. And before we could do that, we had to go through a series of steps to cover our butts legally just so we could cut the lock on the unit and take an inventory of it.
My suggestion to you would be to see if there is someone you know in Maryland who would be willing to sign a new rental contract for your unit (but you'd probably still have to sign a document allowing that to take place), effectively taking over responsibility for it. But where I worked, a tenant was not allowed to sell anything directly out of their unit. The person you sign the unit over to would probably have to vacate it themselves - whereby they could sell the property in a yard sale or something.
Thanks everyone for the responses. I should have known there wasn't a company out there that would do that. Thought maybe I wasn't looking up the right thing. Oh well guess thats what friends are for. Boy are they going to be busy. Thanks again!
what would you estimate the value of the items in the unit? If I was in your shoes- and couldn't afford to return to MD, rent a uhaul and return to WA- I think I would probably fly back to MD- get my personal items out of storage and donate the rest to Habitat for Humanity-If you are looking for stuff to furnish your apt in Wa- just look on craigslist- you can find tons of nice stuff for cheap- good luck.
You know I had a friend who had a lady off the internet I think sell her items for her for a fee. I would only work with someone like that is they were insured and bonded. My friend lived in that state though but did not feel like the hassle.
How much is your furniture worth? How much is a plane ticket? Do you have a friend in the area that may want to help you out? You could have them sell your items off craisglist? When I moved out of state cause it is so expensive to ship items I sold all my furniture in 2 days. I did not get a lot but it was ok and I saved money on moving company. I agree that donating is a nice idea but if you are tight for funds I understand that may not be an option.
On a side note it does not seem right of the company your husband works for to change their mind. I am surprised it was not in writing.
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