Wild things happen in the self-storage business.
In 2023, Matt Engfer was at back-to-back lien auctions in Texas. At auctions like this, bidders buy abandoned units with no idea what’s inside, gambling on mysteries.
So, the opening of a unit can get dramatic. The lock comes off, the door curls up, and everyone inhales. And on this particular Texas day, that first unit was an out-of-left field treasure trove, filled with artwork worth tens of thousands of dollars. The second unit was even more memorable.
“They opened it up,” Engfer laughs. “And what did they find there? A mouse-breeding apparatus to feed snakes with. You’re definitely not supposed to keep live animals in a storage unit. But this thing was filled with mice that were being sold to snake owners.”
Is this the best story I’m going to hear this week? Almost definitely. But it’s also a view into how surprising the self-storage business can really get. Self-storage is one of those classic invisible but ubiquitous industries—the overflow of life needs to go somewhere, and there are a lot of people in the world. And because this is 2026, it tracks that it would have its own legacy software, which Engfer believes can be improved upon.
