Car Storage in Florida and Massachusetts

Indoor Storage Units and Outdoor Parking Spaces

Car storage at Value Store It comes in two forms, an enclosed indoor unit or a marked outdoor parking space, and the right one depends on your vehicle and on what the nearby facility offers. An indoor unit puts walls and a roof between the car and the weather. An outdoor space is a designated spot inside a secured lot, sized for a vehicle rather than for furniture and boxes.

Indoor units are measured in square feet, and our climate controlled units run from 25 to 300 square feet. A 10x20 unit is 200 square feet, about the footprint of a one car garage, and our own size guide lists a compact car among the things that fit inside one. A 10x30 unit gives you 300 square feet, enough for a car plus lawn care equipment.

Outdoor parking is the practical answer for a second car you simply don’t need for a while, and for anything longer than a compact. Pulling into an open space is easier than threading a car through a roll-up door, and there’s more room to walk around the vehicle. The trade-off is real: an outdoor car sits in sun, rain, and pollen, so a breathable cover does more work.

Availability of each option varies by facility, and unit sizes differ from market to market. Check the location page for the facility closest to you to see which storage type it sells and what’s open right now. Every location page also lets you reserve or rent online, so you can lock in a space before you drive over.

Who Car Storage Is For

Car storage suits people with more vehicles than parking. That includes the extra car nobody drives daily, the vintage car that deserves protection from the elements, the project car taking up the garage bay, and the vehicle left behind while somebody travels for months. In each of those cases the car isn’t the problem, the parking is.

Students are one of the clearest cases. A car parked on a city street through a semester abroad or a long summer at home is a car collecting tickets, and plenty of students have come back to find theirs towed and sitting in an impound lot with fees attached. A monthly storage space costs far less trouble than that, and the car stays exactly where you left it.

Snowbirds, deployed service members, and anyone taking a long work assignment use car storage the same way. So do households in the middle of a move, a renovation, or a downsizing, when the new place has one fewer parking spot than the old one. Because the rental is month to month, you’re not signing up for a year to cover a three-month gap.

Car storage also settles the HOA and city ordinance problem. Many neighborhoods limit how long a vehicle can sit in a driveway or on the street, and some ban certain vehicles outright. Moving the car to a storage facility resolves that without selling something you fully intend to drive again.

How to Prepare a Car for Storage

Preparing a car for storage takes an afternoon and prevents most of the problems people blame on storage itself. Wash and dry the exterior so bird droppings and road salt aren’t left to etch the paint, and clear the interior of food, papers, and anything else that attracts pests. Change the oil if it’s anywhere near due, because used oil holds contaminants that sit against engine parts.

A few steps matter most for a car that will sit longer than a month:

• Fill the fuel tank and add a fuel stabilizer to limit condensation and fuel breakdown
• Inflate the tires to the pressure on the door jamb sticker, slightly higher for long storage, to reduce flat spots
• Disconnect the battery or connect a trickle charger so it doesn’t drain down
• Leave the parking brake off and use wheel chocks instead, so pads don’t bond to the rotors
• Cover the car with a breathable cover, never a plastic tarp, which traps moisture underneath

Handle the paperwork before drop-off day. Keep the registration current, and call your insurer before you cancel coverage, since many carriers offer a reduced comprehensive-only rate for a stored vehicle and a lapse can cost you more later. Photograph the car’s condition on the day you park it. Then clear out the valuables, the garage remote, and any spare key hiding in the glovebox.

Security and Access at Value Store It

Security is the whole reason a stored car sits at a facility instead of on the street. Value Store It runs state of the art security, with individualized pin access and individual door alarms on our storage units. Access is controlled, which means the people on the property are renters and staff rather than anyone who happens to be walking past.

Access hours run 7 days a week including holidays, from 6 AM to 10 PM, with extended hours at some locations. You can collect the car early on a Saturday or drop it back after work on a weekday without booking anything. Office hours are shorter, Monday through Saturday 9 AM to 6 PM and Sunday 10 AM to 2 PM, so plan any paperwork or payment questions around those.

Our staff are trained storage professionals who know their own market, and they’ll tell you honestly whether a given vehicle fits the space you’re looking at before you rent it. If you want to see the gate, the lot, and the actual space, ask. Walking a property before renting is the fastest way to settle any doubt about where the car will sit.

Storing a Car for Six Months or Longer

There’s no limit on how long you can keep a car in storage with us. A month-to-month rental simply renews until you end it, so a six-month plan and a three-year plan work the same way. What changes over a longer stretch is the maintenance the car needs, not the paperwork you sign.

For storage beyond about a month, the battery and the tires are what fail first. A trickle charger handles the battery. Tires lose pressure slowly and can develop flat spots under a car that never moves, so set them correctly before you leave and check them when you return. Fluids, belts, and rubber seals age on a calendar rather than an odometer.

If you can visit every month or two, start the car and let it reach operating temperature, or better, drive it around the property. Circulating oil and coolant, working the brakes, and running through the gears keeps seals wet and parts moving. Because access runs 7 days a week, that maintenance visit takes about twenty minutes out of a weekend.

Car Storage Costs and How to Rent

Car storage is billed as a monthly fee with no contract, and you can cancel any time. What the fee comes to depends on the space and the market. An outdoor parking space and an enclosed climate controlled unit are different products and are priced differently, and so are a 10x20 unit and a 10x30 unit, or an upstairs inside unit and a downstairs one.

Local market and current availability move the number as much as anything else does. A facility in a dense Miami neighborhood and one in a smaller market don’t charge the same for the same square footage, and rates shift as spaces fill and open up. That’s why we publish live pricing on each location page instead of a single figure here that would be wrong somewhere.

Renting is short work. Find the facility closest to you, confirm it offers car storage, compare the indoor units and outdoor spaces it currently has open, then reserve or rent online. Find a Value Store It location near you to see live availability and pricing for car storage in your market, and park the car whenever you’re ready.