7 Reasons Your Prospective Customers Aren’t Renting Your Storage Units

If you’ve invested in some tenant storage, it can be more than a little disheartening to see that they aren’t taking advantage of the availability of these lockers. There are a lot of reasons why your tenants might not be renting them out, but what exactly are they? We’ve gone ahead and taken the liberty of looking into this question for you so you can get a better idea of their reasons, and maybe you can use this information to help you increase your revenue from these storage spaces that you’ve integrated into your property.

1. They Don’t Need the Extra Storage Space

Some people are very minimalistic and don’t have more possessions than they can store in their unit. Minimalism has been gaining a lot of traction over the last few years, especially with Marie Kondo’s series of Netflix shows that provide people with a roadmap to having a less cluttered life. When people are minimizing the number of things that they own, they also minimize their need for extra storage. Lots of people were already on the track to having fewer possessions, and Marie’s show only increased that number. All in all, it’s a good show that did what it set out to do, but that doesn’t help you.

On the other side of the coin, there are some groups, in particular, that wouldn’t have a lot of stuff and couldn’t justify renting out extra storage. For example, young adults renting out their first apartment usually don’t have very much. It’s common, especially for young men, to have nothing more than a T.V., a lamp, and a bed. There are also recently divorced people that got the short end of the stick and are starting over with nothing. It wouldn’t make much sense for either of these groups to rent out a tenant storage locker because they simply don’t have much.

2. They Can Get a Better Deal Elsewhere

The almighty dollar influences a lot of things. As the immortal Wu-Tang Clan once said, “Cash rules everything around me.” When people are looking to store their things, they’re likely to go with whatever approach is the most economical choice. If someone can get a storage unit of comparable size for even $5 less a month, they’ll likely do it. That $5 can make or break someone some months, so it’s important to them to keep their finances in order and get the best deal they can for their money. It only makes sense that people would want to go about it that way whenever possible.

3. The Idea of On-Site Storage isn’t Appealing to Them

Some people simply don’t like the idea of storing their stuff on-site for any number of reasons. Maybe they’re storing incredibly valuable family heirlooms and they want to make sure that they’re somewhere a little less accessible than in the apartment complex, or maybe they just don’t want to be able to access their storage that easily for personal reasons. Regardless of their reasons, there are plenty of people who simply don’t want to use any type of on-site storage. That would have a giant effect on whether or not they’d be willing to rent one of your on-site lockers to help them store their things.

4. They Could Be Unaware of The Existence of the On-Site Storage

Awareness is one of the most important things in marketing. If someone is unaware of a product, they won’t be able to purchase it. People don’t know what to be on the lookout for if they aren’t told what’s there. This can be a little tricky with on-site storage because there’s a good chance that it’s at least mentioned somewhere in the paperwork that you’ve given them. You have to keep in mind that not everyone reads documents before they sign them, and people are even less likely to read documents that don’t have any bearing on their situation.

It’s important to be completely sure that your tenants are aware that the on-site storage exists. You can do this in a number of ways, but it’s up to you to choose the right way. You know your property and thus know the best way to make sure that everyone is aware of the storage space that you have available for rent. It’s very well possible that if you make sure your tenants know that the space exists that at least a few of them will jump at the opportunity to rent it out for the duration of their residency.

5. They Can’t Afford It

It’s not uncommon for some people to be living paycheck to paycheck. Those people have to carefully budget every red cent to make sure that they can keep afloat. It’s understandable in many situations. People might have student loans, medical bills, child support payments, and any other kind of expense that they need to be sure to stay on top of lest they want to run into some major issues. For those people, an on-site storage locker might sound appealing but it would still be a luxury they couldn’t afford. It’s more than a little difficult to get around budget limitations for these people.

6. They Don’t Like Using Storage Space for Their Things

It may sound kind of strange to some people, but it’s not unheard of for people to simply not want to use storage for their things. Some people prefer to keep all of their belongings in their home so they don’t have to worry about it. It saves them money and gives them peace of mind because they know exactly where their belongings are and what condition they’re in at all times. For example, if someone breaks into their apartment, they’ll know right away and be able to see exactly what was stolen so they can include it in their police report. If they’re keeping things in storage and the unit gets broken into, they’d have to walk up to their storage unit just to discover that it has been pillaged. 

7. They Don’t Feel That They Should Pay Extra On Top of Their Rent for Storage Space

This one kind of ties into people not being able to afford it, but it also includes people that can afford it. Some people feel that they already spend enough on rent so they can stay on the property that they don’t think that it’s necessary to pay management any more money to keep their belongings in a locker. It’s not an uncommon sentiment in the slightest, and it’s actually an incredibly common sentiment. Rent can be incredibly expensive, and having to pay for a storage locker on top of that seems ridiculous to many people. 

Understanding Your Potential Clients

The better you understand your customer base, the more likely you’ll be able to make a sale. On-site storage isn’t always a cheap renovation to your property, so you want to make sure that you can get your money’s worth out of it. Fortunately, there are many ways that you can go about making these storage units more profitable and the first step is to understand why some of your tenants might be averse to the idea in the first place.