Disposing of chattels in repossessed flat

catherine.elizabeth

Hi - I wonder if anyone has experience of buying a repossessed property which has lots of things left in it (chattels)?
We have just bought a flat and there are bags of old electronics, data storage (floppy discs etc.) furniture. I don't know whether we can dispose of it - the contract says that it does not belong to us, but that we are allowed to put it outside the property - I don't think the neighbours would be very pleased with that!
Any ideas gratefully received as we want to get on with renovating and can hardly get in at the moment

Thanks

Doozergirl

If there isn't anything which could potentially have finance against it then feel free to throw it out.

Whilst not exactly yours, you have no legal obligation to keep it for the previous occupiers either. They would have taken it if they really wanted it. A lot of the time they leave stuff behind because they don't feel the same obligations to leave the house nice for the next people, iyswim. Do what you want with it.

PasturesNew

As it's a repo, I'm guessing you saved quite a few quid on it. I'd investigate local self storage depots and stick it in their smallest room. My local ones (well, 15-20 miles are the two closest) each have a £25-30/month option, one of those provides a 1 metre square (8' tall) unit for that price, the other one offers a 1 metre square (2' tall) secure box.

I'd get it in there to get it out of the way, before finding out where it needs to go and how long I have to hang onto it.

FTBFun

When we were clearing out my brother's loft for the repo he bought just before christmas, we just took it all to the dump but kept a couple of other things (i have some shelves in the boot of my car still).

It'd be different in a straightforward property transaction, but in a repossession I don't see the problem of disposing of obviously unwanted property.

tyllwyd

You could leave it outside in a tidy container - something sturdy like a nice yellow skip .... If you did that, you'd probably find that most of it finds its way to a new home in a few days, especially any electrical stuff

Jonesy_McJones

When I bought my house last year (also a repossession), the contract stated I had no legal right to the chattels and my solicitor advised that i would have to keep hold of it for 'reasonable amount of time.' And there was a LOT of stuff left behind. Almost ten months later, the previous owner finally collected it all...

catherine.elizabeth

Jonesy_McJones wrote: »

When I bought my house last year (also a repossession), the contract stated I had no legal right to the chattels and my solicitor advised that i would have to keep hold of it for 'reasonable amount of time.' And there was a LOT of stuff left behind. Almost ten months later, the previous owner finally collected it all...

That seems an extremely reasonable amount of time! Did your solicitor give you any indication of how quickly you could have disposed of it? i wonder whether it can be shorter than 10 months if you write to the previous owner/tenant - although difficult with a repossession as they've usually done a bunk. There are lots of personal papers left in our flat - I'm thinking of trying to trace the person to ask him to remove his stuff.

Jonesy_McJones

catherine.elizabeth wrote: »

That seems an extremely reasonable amount of time! Did your solicitor give you any indication of how quickly you could have disposed of it? i wonder whether it can be shorter than 10 months if you write to the previous owner/tenant - although difficult with a repossession as they've usually done a bunk. There are lots of personal papers left in our flat - I'm thinking of trying to trace the person to ask him to remove his stuff.

My solicitor couldn't really define a reasonable amount of time! He just said that for example, if there was a heater, you might be expected to keep it until the after the winter... The previous owner turned up on the doorstep the day I completed and begged me not to throw it all away. Luckily I was able to move it all into the cellar, so it was kind of out of the way... Although if they hadn't have got back in touch when they did, it might have been a different story to be honest...

googler

FTBFun wrote: »

It'd be different in a straightforward property transaction, but in a repossession I don't see the problem of disposing of obviously unwanted property.

Why is property left in a repo 'obviously unwanted' as opposed to a standard transaction?

I would have thought chattels were more likely to be left behind in a repo (where the previous owner would have liked to keep them) when the house got repossessed and the owner hadn't been given the chance to remove everything.......

mlz1413

If you have paperwork with the ex-owners name on it try 192.com you may have to pay a small amount to get the full details of new address but then you could write to them and ask them to contact you within a certain time span to collect or you will dispose of.

poppysarah

mlz1413 wrote: »

If you have paperwork with the ex-owners name on it try 192.com you may have to pay a small amount to get the full details of new address but then you could write to them and ask them to contact you within a certain time span to collect or you will dispose of.

I'm just pointing this out - but the person whose house it used to be KNOWS where their old house is.
If they don't want to knock on the door and ask ...