British self-storage company Safestore Holdings shared publicly this week a fiscal year pretax profit of 29.2 million ($46.4 million), along with its intent to buy more properties.

Safestore reported a 5.7 percent year-over-year revenue increase during the fiscal year ended Oct. 31. According to the source, the increase resulted from rebounding rental rates and property values, with the price per square foot at 25.55 ($40.65). In the previous year, the company reported a 9.4 million (about $15 million) loss resulting from a 41.6 million ($66.2 million) dip in its property portfolio.

Planned final dividend payments this year are 3.25 pence a share, up 8.3 percent from the previous year.

Company represenatives added that Safestore intends to acquire and open about five new stores each year for the next three years in both the United Kingdom and Paris.

CEO Steve Williams will step down this year. Peter Gowers, current CEO of InterContinental Hotels Group PLC's Asia Pacific arm, will replace Williams on March 1.

Many belongings of magician Jonathan Pendragon, whose real name is Claude Yarbrough, and his wife were sold this week at a self-storage lien auction in Arroyo Grande, Calif.

Fortress-Secure Mini Storage hosted the auction after Yarbrough began defaulting on rent in May, according to KSBY-TV. Yarbrough, a subject of local controversy for months, was sentenced to five years felony probation in April for allegedly firing a gun into the floor of his home during a fight with his wife.

Contents of the storage unit included TVs, slot machines, fountains, beer and road signs, and illustionist equipment.

The self-storage facility noted another celebrity's goods in the auction. A sofa, bed frame and other household items once ownded by Yvonne de Carlo, who played Lily Munster on the CBS TV series "The Munsters," were sold.

Michael Bishop, a self-storage consultant and technology specialist, is offering a webinar and e-book to guide self-storage owners and managers through the process of selecting a facility-management software suitable for their company.

Users will learn how to match their business processes with the functions and features of a software application, how to save time and money through software, and how to ease managers workflow. Theyll also gain an understanding of standalone vs. Web-based software, how software protects tenant data, and other issues critical to the decision-making process.

Bishop is currently accepting pre-orders for the 35-page e-book, titled Considerations in Selecting the Right Management Software. Scheduled for release in late January, it can be purchased for $35 by itself or in a package with other offerings.

The one-hour live webinar will take place on Feb. 10, 10:30 a.m. MT. Registration is limited and will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.

Webinar reservations and book purchases can made at http://storageland.net. Ten percent of all sales will be donated to Charity: Water, a non-profit organization that works to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations

In a press release, Bishop wrote that he does not represent or serve as a distributor of any management software, and all material will be presented with an unbiased approach. No particular brand or company name will be mentioned in the webinar or e-book.

Bishop has worked in the self-storage industry for six years, managing a portfolio of 14 properties and offering consulting services to facility owners and managers. In his new products, he has paired his prior technical expertise in computer systems and software with his understanding of daily self-storage operations.

Locks were cut at nearly 50 self-storage units earlier this week at two self-storage facilities located about five miles apart in Pennsylvania.

A break-in occurred at KeepSafe Storage in Manheim Township between Saturday and Tuesday. Locks were cut off 19 units. Twenty-eight locks were cut at New Danville Pike Self Storage in Lancaster Township between Sunday and Monday.

The self-storage tenants are being contacted and asked to report any missing items. One tenant said five cameras, valued at $50 each, were missing from the unit. Police said the thefts could be related.

The winners of a self-storage unit auction in Belchertown, Mass., last weekend called police after finding explosives and gunpowder in the unit. 

Investigators spent hours Monday combing through the contents of a unit at Amherst Self-Storage. They found ammunition, gunpowder and suspicious wiring.

The investigation team included FBI agents, the state police bomb squad and the fire marshals office. The hazardous materials were removed. Investigators plan to contact the person who rented the unit.

I wrote this article at the close of 2010, a time when many of us were taking stock of our blessings and making New Years resolutions. For me, its also a time when I look at the self-storage industry and think about what looms ahead legally for the upcoming year. Using David Lettermans famous top 10 format, I offer up the top five legal threats faced by every self-storage operator in 2011. I start with number five and work my way to the leading menace. Dont jump ahead and peek!

Legal Threat No. 5: Selling the Unit of a Tenant in Active Military Service

Many operators still dont know or understand the requirements of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), formerly called the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act. Many still dont have a question in their lease agreement that asks about military-service status. At a minimum, this lets you know whether to check if a tenant is still in the military, or worse, stationed overseas, before you enforce your lien rights.

SCRA is a federal law that requires you to know about the military service of your tenants. The statute protects you if someone lies and tells you he isnt in the service when he actually is. However, it doesnt allow you to bury your head in the sand, forego asking about military service, and then claim no knowledge.

There are two large problems with SCRA violation. First, youve broken a federal law, which comes with civil and possibly criminal penalties. Second, you have on your hands a public-relations nightmare once youre identified by the media and the public as an operator who sold the goods of a soldier overseas. This might be worse for your business than the potential of going to prison.

If you dont understand SCRA requirements, particularly if youre not even asking about military service on your rental agreement, make the change today. This threat is too big and risky to ignore.

While those with facilities nearby military bases will probably laugh at this one, Ive had several owners tell me they simply have their military-personnel tenants waive their SCRA rights. Ive looked for a provision that allows you to get a waiver of rights under SCRA and have yet to find one. Ive asked people in the military whether these rights can be waived, and they laugh at me. Until someone shows you where in the law a service member can waive his rights under SCRA, I dont think you can. Regardless, dont take the chance.

Legal Threat No. 4: Bankruptcy

In No. 5 I made no prediction about the number of brave men and women who will be serving overseas in 2011 and beyond. I will now make another bold prediction, but an easy one, about bankruptcies: The number of your tenants filing bankruptcy will skyrocket between now and 2012.

How can I say such a thing? If you remember, bankruptcy reform went into effect in October 2005. There was about a years advanced notice that reform was coming, and the rumor was that Chapter 7 bankruptcies were probably going to go away or be impossible to file. Therefore, everyone who even thought about filing bankruptcy did so before the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005 went into effect. You can only file one Chapter 7 bankruptcy every seven years, and were coming to the end of the seven-year cycle in which everyone rushed to file.

It turns out Chapter 7 didnt go away, and even after the Reform Act, the number of Chapter 7s filed has continued to grow. Theres a gigantic crop of people coming up on their seven-year filing anniversary that youll find are poised and ready to file again. These are your tenants.

If you dont understand your obligations under the bankruptcy law, nows the time to get educated about what you can and cannot do if your tenant files. Its my experience that operators who hadnt seen a bankrupt tenant until the last three or four years are now seeing several. Facilities that once had several bankruptcies are now seeing many. That number is going to skyrocket over the next few years. Everyone is going to have a bankrupt tenant.

The problem with bankruptcy is its sort of written like Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Anything that would seem right or make sense to you is the opposite under bankruptcy law. Its easyalmost too easyto accidentally violate bankruptcy laws because you proceeded in a logical manner rather than whats required under the code.

If you violate the bankruptcy laws, particularly a judges Automatic Stay Order, youre facing the possibility of monetary sanctions, some of which can be severe against you and in favor of your debtor/tenant. Think in terms of contempt of court. Judges dont like to have their orders ignored or violated. You may say its innocently ignored, but remember, in bankruptcy world, innocently ignoring an order is not much of a defense.

You also need to learn how to use PACER, or have someone that knows how to use it, to check bankruptcies before you send lien notices and conduct your sales. PACER is the Federal Courts docketing system, which allows you to quickly get a good idea about whether your tenant has filed a bankruptcy. Some would argue that youre obligated to check PACER before you begin a lien sale.

Legal Threat No. 3: Missing a Change in Your State Lien Laws or Lien-Sale Procedures

Many states have undertaken changes in lien laws over the last year or two. Many more are eyeing these types of changes in 2011 and 2012.

First, get involved with your state associations to make sure the lien-law changes they propose are in your businesses best interest. Dont let a committee of 12 make these decisions for you. Second, if and when your lien laws change, make sure you have a way of being aware of those changes so you dont sell or serve notices by a method thats no longer permitted under your state statutes.

Legal Threat No. 2: Wrongful Sale Verdicts

Wrongful-sale lawsuit verdicts rendered against self-storage owners and some courts refusal to enforce the value and negligence limitations in your rental agreement continues to be of great concern. Most of the large-dollar verdicts have come from cases in which the tenants property shouldnt have been sold in the first place. Some cases over the last few years have had verdicts ranging from $1 million to almost $4 million. Many other cases that resulted in lower-dollar verdicts$50,000 to $900,000were for other types of technical violations. Perhaps the tenant was delinquent but the operator didnt follow the statute exactly. All of these cases are alarming. (You can read more about cases such as Dubey v. Public Storage in the article archives at InsideSelfStorage.com.)

If youre going to conduct lien sales, you must have a system of checks and balances to avoid making a mistake, and you must really and truly understand how to properly conduct a lien sale. Note: Understanding how to properly conduct a sale doesnt include, I learned to do it that way from the previous manager. There are statutes that must be followed exactly to properly perform a lien sale.

If you havent read your state statute in a long time, you dont believe youre selling properly, or youre ignoring parts of the statute because theyre inconvenient or difficult, then buy yourself some legal advice and learn how to do sales properly by having your attorney create a protocol for you. Or you can buy a set of prepared protocols from an industry expert, customized to your state and preferably to your particular operation. If youre not going to do this, get out of the business of conducting lien sales.

Legal Threat No. 1: The TV Show Storage Wars

Much has been written recently about the new A&E Entertainment TV series Storage Wars, but from the perspective of an industry attorney, it represents a great threat to our industry in 2011. First, if youre one of the facilities where the show is filming, youre creating Exhibit A in a wrongful-sale triala videotaped, nationally televised copy of this particular lien sale for the tenant and his lawyer to pick apart.

As an lawyer, I see errors made in these sales, and it drives me crazy. I keep wondering, when is a tenant going to watch his own goods being sold on national television, recognize the facility did something in error, and file a lawsuit for violations, using the taped raw or edited footage of the sale as proof positive? That is perhaps the smaller of my two concerns.

My larger concern is judges and potential jury members, as well as self-storage tenants, are beginning to believe every self-storage unit is a treasure trove for which youll get so much more than what you paid (i.e., the operator never sells a unit for its full value). Ive had many judges ask if Im enjoying the show because they are. I politely answer this question affirmatively. However, I know they are starting to believe self-storage units are full of nifty and expensive items. This has bad implications.

Lets consider a theoretical wrongful sale at a self-storage facility. The tenants (victims) sue and allege all sorts of missing valuable property. (For the purposes of this example, you can substitute for wrongful sale other incidents such as theft while your overlock is on the unit, building fires, wrongful access, etc.). In the old days, we would at least have an argument that a tenant who was habitually late in paying his $75 a month rent probably didnt have $100,000 worth of antique guns in his unit. Judges simply didnt believe that people who struggle to pay their bills every month would have such valuable property, with the exception of emotional and sentimentally important items.

Now judges and juries are going to think differently. Were going to allege that what was sold at lien sale or what was in the unit when we inventoried it and put our overlock on it was a mattress, box spring and some old clothing. Tenants are going to allege items such as fishing poles, antique guns and commemorative coins, all of which have been featured on Storage Wars. From now on, were going to be in a battle to disprove the value of every item instead of trying to make the tenants prove there was value to their items.

Storage Wars has done some wonderful things for the industry, however. If nothing else, its put a lot more people on notice, in case they missed it when signing the rental agreement, that if you dont pay your rent, your goods are eventually sold to pay off your bill. Thats actually a great development.

The show should also encourage you to hire an independent third party like an auctioneer, even if your state doesnt require one, to cut the lock, inspect the goods, evaluate the value of the goods, and sell them for what somebody else other than you deems to be fair market value, lest you be in court someday with a judge who has developed what I will now coin Storage Wars Bias toward the value of the property in the unit.

As this industry has grown and matured, its clear the freedom to run your self-storage business exactly the way you want it to is gone. You must be a smart, savvy and aware businessperson with more policies and procedures as well as checks and cross-checks to avoid what have become obvious legal pitfalls to the industry in 2011. Good luck!

This article is for the purpose of providing general legal insight into the self-storage field and should not be substituted for the advice of your own attorney.

Jeffrey J. Greenberger is a partner with the law firm of Katz Greenberger & Norton LLP in Cincinnati and is licensed to practice in Kentucky and Ohio. Mr. Greenberger primarily represents the owners and operators of commercial real estate, including self-storage owners and operators. To reach him, call 513.721.5151; visit www.selfstoragelegal.com .

On Feb. 24, U-Store-It Trust will release its financial results for the year 2010 as well as the quarter that ended Dec. 31. An accompanying conference call will be held on Feb. 25, 11 a.m. ET.

A live webcast of the conference call will be available from the investor relations page at http://www.ustoreit.com. The dial-in numbers are 877.317.6789 for domestic callers and 412.317.6789 for international callers.

After the live event, a webcast recording will be available on the U-Store-It website for 30 days, and a telephonic replay of the call will be available until March 28. The replay dial-in number is 877.344.7529 for domestic callers and 412.317.0088 for international callers. The reservation number for both is 447639.

U-Store-It is a real estate investment trust that owns or manages 456 facilities across the United States and operates the U-Store-It Network, which consists of approximately 735 additional self-storage facilities.

On Jan. 25 the Arizona Self Storage Association (AZSSA) will host a regional workshop in Yuma focusing on changes in the states self-storage statute. Free for all AZSSA members, the workshop will take place 6:30-8:30 at the Clarion Inn Suites on 4^th Avenue. The cost for non-members is $15. Snacks and beverages will be served.

Attorney Richard Marmor, the chair of the AZSSA Legal & Legislative Subcommittee and the associations lobbyist at the Arizona legislature, will talk about the new law that went into effect on July 28, requiring a change in all leases for Arizona self-storage facilities. Hell address the specific changes that must be made, what AZSSA has done to help operators make the transition, and details of the new law such as how to take advantage of e-mail for some lien notices and new options for disposing of protected property such as documents, alcohol, guns and more.

Marmor is president of Arbour Development Co., through which he operates two Phoenix self-storage facilities. In the self-storage business since 1982, Marmor also works as a consultant to other storage operators. He served three years as AZSSAs founding president.

The Yuma workshop is open to all Arizona self-storage owners, managers and vendors. To register, contact Mike Perry, the AZSSA district liaison for Yuma, at [email protected] or 928.314.0680.

Extra Space Storage Inc. has obtained a commercial mortgage-backed security loan from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch for $82.2 million.

The loan, designated for general corporate purposes and to repay debt, has a fixed market rate of 5.8 percent for the life of the loan and is secured by 16 self-storage properties. Extra Space Chief Financial Officer Kent W. Christensen said in a company news release that Extra Space is one of the first self-storage real estate investment trusts to re-enter the CMBS market since the 2008 financial crisis.

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Extra Space owns or operates 820 self-storage properties in 34 states and Washington, D.C. The companys properties comprise approximately 550,000 units and more than 59 million square feet of rentable space.

Executive Self Storage Associates Inc., a third-party management company for the self-storage industry, is supporting a fundraising campaign for Wounded Warrior Outdoors Inc. (WWO), a non-profit organization that provides therapeutic outdoor excursions to wounded U.S. and Canadian veterans.

The groups One for the Troops campaign encourages self-storage operators nationwide to donate the rental proceeds from just one of their units to WWO. Operators can commit to a single month or make it an ongoing donation and can choose any size uniteven their smallest donation is a big help.

Every month Executive Self Storage will donate the rental income from one 5-by-5 unit for each of the 20 facilities it manages. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, company president Joe Niemczyk said he understands the challenges veterans face upon returning home. To give them something like this opportunity is worth every penny.

Launched a year ago, WWO works with each veterans rehabilitation team to create curative goals for his trip. The outings can be designed to help veterans get the equivalent of three months of the therapy theyd receive in a hospital setting, according Ron Raboud, the organizations founder. To find the right candidates, Raboud works with the patient-advocate representative at two U.S. military hospitals. Veteran applications are screened and verified by Walter Reed Army Medical Center, then forwarded to WWO for final selection.

WWO covers all expenses for the veterans trips including airfare, ground transportation, food and lodging. The goal is to provide excursions for up to 50 veterans every year as funding allows. The trips take place in four diverse locations such as Alaska, Florida and Texas as well as British Columbia, Canada.

Raboud is also the CEO of The Rabco Corp., which provides pre-engineered metal buildings for the self-storage industry.

WWO has 501(C)(3) status, making all contributions tax-deductible. For more information about Wounded Warrior Outdoors and the One for the Troops campaign, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.woundedwarrioroutdoors.com.