Allocated Parking and Car Park Repairs

Weathergirl_76

Good morning all, 

I have just had the survey completed on my purchase property, which is a 1992 freehold terrace house with 2 parking spaces in a residents car park at the back. My understanding is that the vendor pays £10 a month to a management company (run by one of the residents) for the maintenance of the car park. 

I didn’t expect anything to come up in the survey, however the surveyor told me the wooden retaining wall to the longest side of the car park is going to be needing replacing or repairing soon. He said the bottom ones were rotten and the top ones were slightly pushed out. I asked him a ball park figure and he wasn’t really sure, but said £20K being the ‘ridiculous’ guesstimate, but there may be a way to repair it. Now, this car park serves about 10 properties. I have 2 spaces with my house number on them. 

I am not overly worried about this, as the repairs won’t fall solely on my shoulders and this isn’t a deal breaker for me at all. I anticipate I will (however far down the line) be asked to contribute and will have to park elsewhere while the work is being done. I spoke to a friend who has said this is a risk, because what happens if some of the residents don’t have the money to pay for the repairs? Do the ones that can pay have to pay out for everyone else, it’s now making me think this could end up costing me a lot more, if others are not willing to pay their share. I also appreciate this is a ‘what if’ scenario and there is no way of knowing what will happen.  Should I be concerned? 

The property is a freehold and comes with 2 allocated spaces, are these mine forever more (!) or can they be taken away? Do I own them? Both spaces have the house number painted on them. Because I have 2 spaces would I be liable for two lots of shares of the repair? Would my conveyancer look into this? Thanks in advance for your thoughts. 

HampshireH

Do the spaces (for this possible purchase) form part of the freehold title? If so you would own them unless it's a seperate lease.

If not do you just have use of them? If this is the case then you don't own them.


Example I have two spaces allocated in a carpark serving 4 and the space Infront of them. They are part of my title marked in red like the house and I am expected to contribute to any maintenance of the carpark. 


My neighbour has theirs and the entrance in their deeds.

The other two spaces are between two hourses, one each and they have the same maintenance clause. There is no % in our deeds for costs distribution. We would need to sort it out between us

What do the ones for your purchase say?

Weathergirl_76

HampshireH said:

Do the spaces (for this possible purchase) form part of the freehold title? If so you would own them unless it's a seperate lease.

If not do you just have use of them? If this is the case then you don't own them.


Example I have two spaces allocated in a carpark serving 4 and the space Infront of them. They are part of my title marked in red like the house and I am expected to contribute to any maintenance of the carpark. 


My neighbour has theirs and the entrance in their deeds.

The other two spaces are between two hourses, one each and they have the same maintenance clause. There is no % in our deeds for costs distribution. We would need to sort it out between us

What do the ones for your purchase say?

Hi, Thanks for your reply. I haven’t had anything through from my conveyancer yet. I’m told the seller dropped his paperwork off last week. 

eddddy

The way it would almost certainly work is...

• The management company would take legal action against the non-payers  - and a court would order them to pay.

• (If they still didn't pay - there's court enforcement by bailiffs, attachment of earnings, third party debt orders and maybe other options. It would be difficult if they were genuinely penniless. But is that likely?)

• And the non-payers would probably end up with huge legal fees on top.

The issue from your perspective is that this might take 6 months, 12 months or more to go through that process. So the car park might remain unrepaired for that time.

If the repairs were vital/urgent - e.g. the car park had become unusable until the repairs were done - other car park users like you might agree to lend the short-fall to the management company, until the non-payers paid up.

The precise details will depend on what your deeds say - which your solicitor will check, and you can ask about.

Jeepers_Creepers

How tall and how long is this wooden wall? And what land is behind it?

That £20k figure was clearly pulled out of the air and is almost certainly a ridiculous guestimate as he admits.

And I wonder how much maintenance has been carried out on the carpark already? I suspect very little, so I'd hope that these £10pm contributions from the (how many?) others will actually have accumulated to a nice sum for just these sorts of eventualities.

So another thing for your conveyancer to ask for is a gander at the MC's accounts.

Section62

Jeepers_Creepers said:

How tall and how long is this wooden wall? And what land is behind it?

That £20k figure was clearly pulled out of the air and is almost certainly a ridiculous guestimate as he admits.

^^This.

£20k sounds very cheap for any repair work being done on a retaining wall, unless it is just a 'landscaping' one rather than having any significant structural function.

Do you have any photos of the wall OP?

sheramber

Would the cost not come out of the maintenance fund?

Weathergirl_76

Thanks for your comments.

I don’t unfortunately have a photo of the wall and it’s not shown on the pictures online. It’s a timber retaining wall, that is about 5fth high (from memory) the timbers look similar to railway sleepers and they are arranged in a ‘Jenga’ type Beyond them is a grass bank which slopes upwards, and a wooden area with trees, that’s all you can see. Beyond that is gardens to private properties. The car park is a rectangle shape, with entry/exit in the middle and spaces either side for residents. 

The vendor told me when I viewed he pays £10 a month for maintenance, and someone comes along every few weeks to sweep up the leaves and cut down branches from the trees once a year. I did have a nosey on companies house but don’t really understand what’s it’s telling me. 

I have a attached a picture from maps, but it doesn’t show the wall. I do remember the timbers at the top in the middle were pushed out slightly into a very subtle V shape. This is the only thing of concern, the surveyor pointed out over the phone. 

eddddy

I imagine your £10 per month covers leaf sweeping, branch cutting and admin fees - so I doubt that there's any fund building up for future repairs.


But as section62 says, it depends whether the timbers are actually 'holding-up' the car park. Instead, there might be a few tonnes of concrete 'holding-up' the car park - but they covered the concrete with chunky pieces of timber as a decorative finish, because chunky timber is prettier than concrete.


Replacing / 'patching-up' decorative timber would be much cheaper than replacing structural timber.

HampshireH

Has it been confirmed that this timber retaining wall is actually owned by the freeholder and not the responsibility of whoever owns the land it's holding back?

It doesn't sound from your recent post, that it's holding up the carpark, but instead the grassy slope which leads to people's gardens.

Weathergirl_76

@HampshireH I have no idea who owns the timber wall, and my purchase is a month in, I haven’t had anything through yet from my conveyancer, but I will be raising the point. The timber retaining wall holds back the grass bank behind it. I don’t know who owns that. Will this all be confirmed as part of the sale? Sorry I’m new to this, I’ve only purchased properties with private parking/driveways.