The storage facility says it will auction your unit. Here is what it must do first.

NY LIEN LAW § 182

The lien and the statute that governs it.

New York Lien Law § 182 gives the owner of a self-storage facility a lien on all personal property stored in a leased space for rent, labor, and other charges, and for expenses reasonably incurred in the sale. The lien attaches from the time the property is brought to the facility. That is the facility's side of the bargain. Your side is that the lien can only be enforced by sale if the facility follows the statute's procedure, step by step, and that a sale made without following it exposes the facility to liability for the value of what was sold.

Two points frame everything else. First, the rental agreement must disclose the lien in a conspicuous way; a facility that never told you about the lien in the agreement has a problem before the procedure even begins. Second, the statute's steps are mandatory, not suggestions. Courts treat the power to sell a person's belongings without a court order as a privilege that must be exercised strictly.

The procedure, in order.

We describe the steps in words rather than quoting day counts and dollar figures, because the statute has been amended and the details should be checked against the current text for your dates. The structure is this:

1. Default. You fall behind on rent or other charges under the rental agreement. The facility may deny you access to the unit while you are in default, which is usually the first sign something is happening.
2. Written notice. The facility must send you a written notice of its intent to enforce the lien, delivered by a method the statute permits, which has traditionally meant verified or certified mail to your last known address and, after amendments, may include email where you agreed to electronic notice in the rental agreement. The notice must include an itemized statement of the facility's claim showing the amounts due and the dates they became due, a demand for payment within a specified period that the statute sets as a minimum, a statement that the contents will be advertised and sold if the claim is not paid by that deadline, and a description of the property or the unit sufficient to identify it.
3. Time to cure. You have the period stated in the notice, which cannot be shorter than the statutory minimum, to pay what is owed. Paying the itemized amount before the sale stops it; the facility cannot sell property once the claim has been satisfied.
4. Advertising. After the cure period passes, the facility must advertise the sale. The statute specifies the manner and timing, which has traditionally required publication in a newspaper of general circulation in the area and, after amendments, may permit publication on a publicly accessible website, with the advertisement running for a set number of times before the sale date and including a description of the goods, the name of the occupant, and the time and place of sale.
5. The sale. The sale must be held at the time and place advertised, in a commercially reasonable manner, which today often means an online auction. The facility may buy at the sale.
6. Surplus. If the sale brings more than the facility's claim and sale costs, the surplus belongs to you. The facility must hold it for you and pay it over on demand.

Every step is a place where facilities cut corners: a notice sent to an old address when the facility had your new one; no itemized statement; a deadline shorter than the statutory minimum; no advertisement at all or one that does not describe the goods; a sale held on a different day; a surplus quietly kept. Each of these is a defect, and a defect in the notice or advertising is generally treated as fatal to the facility's right to sell.

What you can do before the sale date.

If you have received a notice and the sale has not happened, you have options, and they are time-sensitive.

• Pay and retrieve. If you can pay the itemized amount, do it, in a form you can prove, and get the property out. You can dispute overcharges afterward; the belongings are worth more than the argument.
• Demand the itemization and challenge it. Facilities add late fees, lien fees, and "administrative" charges that the rental agreement may not authorize. A written demand for a compliant itemized statement, with a tender of the undisputed rent, puts the facility in a difficult position if it proceeds.
• Identify the defects in writing. If the notice was not sent as the statute requires, lacks the itemization, or gives too little time, say so in writing before the sale. A facility on written notice that its procedure is defective and that sells anyway has no good-faith argument later.
• Ask for a short extension. Many facilities will agree to a brief hold on a sale if a payment is coming; get it in writing.
• Court. In rare cases with valuable property and a clearly defective notice, a court application to stop the sale is possible, but it is expensive and fast-moving. A demand letter that makes the defect undeniable is usually the practical alternative.

Our spoke on the post-sale situation, the storage facility sold my belongings, covers what changes once the auction has happened.

What you can do after the sale.

Once the unit is sold, the property is generally gone; the statute protects a good-faith purchaser at a compliant sale. Your claim converts to money. There are three pieces.

The surplus. If the sale brought more than the claim, the facility owes you the difference and must account for it. Demand the accounting and the payment in writing.

Damages for a non-compliant sale. If the facility failed to follow the statute, its sale was not authorized, and it is liable for the value of the property it disposed of. The theory is conversion: the facility exercised dominion over your property without legal right. Damages are the fair market value of the goods at the time of the sale, and where the facility's conduct was egregious, punitive damages are at least arguable. A facility cannot set off a claim for rent against conversion damages if its own breach of the statute is what stripped it of the right to sell.

Overcharges. Fees the rental agreement did not authorize, charged in the itemization and deducted from the proceeds, are recoverable separately.

The evidence problem is valuation. You no longer have the property, so you have to reconstruct what was in the unit and what it was worth: inventory lists, photographs, receipts, insurance schedules, the facility's own advertisement describing the contents. Start that reconstruction immediately.

A worked example.

A Westchester facility sends a tenant one letter, by regular mail, to the address on a three-year-old rental agreement, stating "your unit will be sold if you do not pay" and a balance with no dates or breakdown. The tenant had updated her address by email the previous year. No advertisement runs. The unit, containing furniture, a piano, and boxes of family documents, is auctioned for $900 against a claimed balance of $1,100. The tenant learns of it when her access code stops working.

The notice failed on method, on address, and on content. There was no advertisement. Under § 182 the facility had no right to sell. Its liability is the fair market value of the contents at sale, which on the tenant's inventory and photographs is around $9,000, and the documents have their own damages argument. The $1,100 rent claim does not offset that. A letter setting out each statutory defect and the valuation, with a demand for payment, is the step before a lawsuit, and this is the kind of letter a facility's insurer settles.

What a demand letter does here.

Before a sale, our letter demands a statutory itemized statement, identifies each defect in the facility's notice, tenders the undisputed amount where you can pay it, and states that a sale held on a defective notice will be treated as conversion. Facilities that receive that letter from counsel very often pause the sale and fix their process, which buys you time and a compliant itemization to work from.

After a sale, the letter reconstructs the statutory timeline, identifies where the facility departed from it, states the value of the property with the supporting inventory, demands the surplus accounting, and demands payment of conversion damages by a date. It goes to the facility and, where we can identify it, the corporate owner, because many local facilities are franchise or managed locations of national operators with legal departments that respond to a well-documented claim.

When a letter is not the right tool: if the facility followed the statute and the sale was compliant, there is no claim beyond the surplus. If the contents had little value, the cost of pursuing it may not be proportionate, and we will say so. See flat-fee demand letters for how the service works.

If the facility does not respond.

Conversion and surplus claims within the small claims limit can be brought there without a lawyer; our New York small claims court guide and demand letter vs. small claims explain how. Larger claims go to civil court or Supreme Court. Where the facility's conduct looks like a pattern, the Attorney General's consumer bureau accepts complaints. If the stored property belonged to someone else, or someone else is holding your belongings outside a storage context, see an ex won't return my belongings, which covers the general law of demand, refusal, and conversion.

Read next.

• The storage facility sold my belongings: surplus, notice defects, valuation, and small claims after the sale.
• Someone won't return my belongings: conversion and property-return demands generally.
• New York small claims court guide: filing a conversion claim yourself.
• Flat-fee demand letters: how our letters work.