My coach house experience

Katyamy

So I have for years seen posts on this forum about coach houses and wanted to put out my experience to help others when deciding to buy a coach house or not.

We purchased a coach house in 2016 and I can now talk about this as it doesn't affect me as much as we have been in a new house for over a year.

Was the biggest mistake of my life buying a coach house. Though remember not everyone's experience would be the same.

So the 2 garages were owned by the neighbours and we had freehold over the plot and had to insure. They had a peppercorn leasehold on the garage and they were not permitted to changing the garage in to a room, adding media and using it for storage of cars, items etc as lomg as they weren't flammable.

One neighbour installed electrics without our consent. His garden was joined to the side of the garage with a door.

The second neighbour we caught installing electrics to his garage through the first neighbours garage on Christmas eve a year or 2 after we had moved in.

He claimed the first neighbour had done it and told him to do it. He was installing without a qualified electrician, in fact it was his family member.

We proceeded to write to the neighbours asking them to remove the electrics with copies of the leasehold contracts as this would void our insurance.
Both neighbours were hostile already.

The second neighbour removed his electrics begrudgingly and we had nothing to do with each other.

The first neighbour proceeded to make probably the worst years of my life. He wrote letters back and basically kept deflecting it on us.

So to check our rights we got a house solicitor involved to read the leasehold contract and explain and help us understand we were definitely right and we were.

We spoke to the insurance company who said it would effect the policy if something happened.

Some of the harassment we got from this whole thing from neighbour 1:
- knocking at the door shouting at us.
- taking pictures of my husbands car as it was parked a few inches from the space one day as my husband had to come in the house quickly. He put the pictures on to a letter saying what we were doing wrong with parking and threatening us.
- we think he placed nails or screws behind where I reversed my car in as we had installed a camera to our parking spaces and believe he had dropped them as caught him back on that land for no reason, we had no proof for this, but had to replace the same tyre twice in a few months.
- by far the worst experience was as he had a door under our bedroom he used to slam the door loudly at night and one night went our revved the car, slammed the door multiple times and banged around. I was signed off by the doctor the following day for mental health and thoughts relating to the s word.

In the end we let him have his electrics and got a solicitor to draw up a new contract, stating these had been added to protect us. He got angry as we billed him for costs, though he payed he wanted to just give us money and make us go away, I wanted to protect our house and wanted to do this through a solicitor.

We sold very quickly and lost 14k. In hind sight the new build coach houses are overpriced, so if you do buy one, try and get the proce down.

I'm not saying everyone will have the same experience, but would strongly advice to think before buying one of these and wanted to post this, not to scare but to warn.

Myself and my husband have flashbacks whenever we hear a door slam. 

We never took to the police as didn't want there to be issues with a sale.

Any place that involves land sharing, I would be very careful about as it would depend on the neighbour.

dimbo61

Well over 50+ people have read your post and No replies?
Buying a property with Two garages underneath can cause issues.
I have installed electric power and lighting in MY shed 
Didn't use an electrician but I know it's

safe as I had it inspected by a qualified electrician.

Glad you have sold up and moved on to a detached house ? 
Buying New builds always run the risk of poor build quality and losing money.
Like a new car if you buy the right one and look after it then you might well make money.
I did watch a Grand designs episode involving a Coach house with new extension which was done well.
I am sure they needed the help and cooperation of the garage owners.

RM_2013

Sorry to hear of your experience.  I guess any property with shared boundaries/freehold etc can cause issues.  We are on the other side of things as we are buying a house (freehold) with a leasehold garage (with coach house over)

after reading issues on this forum we are very aware of the limitations.  We don’t plan to try and use the garage for any other purpose than a garage.  We don’t plan to install electrics as won’t need it in the garage so we aren’t massively concerned but we do hope that there is no issues with parking etc (we have space allocated to us on the freehold deeds) that allows us to park in front of the garage.

I am nervous as used to having our own drive and garage but the move will give us a much bigger house than we have at present.

wishing you much luck in your new home

Katyamy

dimbo61 said:

Well over 50+ people have read your post and No replies?
Buying a property with Two garages underneath can cause issues.
I have installed electric power and lighting in MY shed 
Didn't use an electrician but I know it's

safe as I had it inspected by a qualified electrician.

Glad you have sold up and moved on to a detached house ? 
Buying New builds always run the risk of poor build quality and losing money.
Like a new car if you buy the right one and look after it then you might well make money.
I did watch a Grand designs episode involving a Coach house with new extension which was done well.
I am sure they needed the help and cooperation of the garage owners.

I'm not expecting replies, I wanted to share as I know others have questioned this.
I live in a mid terraced, lucky for us the new neighbours are lovely.
It's a mixture of the the design with being a landlord but not being a landlord with who you end up living next to.

At the end of the day, if something had happened and they had caused it and we hadn't known about the change, the insurance company would have asked why didn't we as landlords do anything. We were protecting ourselves.

At the time this is all we could afford, we didn't have options.

Realistically if the neighbour had discussed we could have done what we did in the end as the electrics weren't the problem, the aggression and harassment were, without being told.

Not sure if your post is designed to make me feel any smaller than I already do.

People will make their own choice in the end, but I wanted to offer my personal experience.

Katyamy

RM_2013 said:

Sorry to hear of your experience.  I guess any property with shared boundaries/freehold etc can cause issues.  We are on the other side of things as we are buying a house (freehold) with a leasehold garage (with coach house over)

after reading issues on this forum we are very aware of the limitations.  We don’t plan to try and use the garage for any other purpose than a garage.  We don’t plan to install electrics as won’t need it in the garage so we aren’t massively concerned but we do hope that there is no issues with parking etc (we have space allocated to us on the freehold deeds) that allows us to park in front of the garage.

I am nervous as used to having our own drive and garage but the move will give us a much bigger house than we have at present.

wishing you much luck in your new home

Good luck, it can be a minefield from the other side.
I think if you know limitations and understand what your going in to, it should be OK.

The electrics weren't the problem, it was the harassment and bullying. 
Also I don't think the solicitors had been thorough enough on either side.

The parking space shouldn't be an issue, we never had problems.

RM_2013

Katyamy said:

RM_2013 said:

Sorry to hear of your experience.  I guess any property with shared boundaries/freehold etc can cause issues.  We are on the other side of things as we are buying a house (freehold) with a leasehold garage (with coach house over)

after reading issues on this forum we are very aware of the limitations.  We don’t plan to try and use the garage for any other purpose than a garage.  We don’t plan to install electrics as won’t need it in the garage so we aren’t massively concerned but we do hope that there is no issues with parking etc (we have space allocated to us on the freehold deeds) that allows us to park in front of the garage.

I am nervous as used to having our own drive and garage but the move will give us a much bigger house than we have at present.

wishing you much luck in your new home

Good luck, it can be a minefield from the other side.
I think if you know limitations and understand what your going in to, it should be OK.

The electrics weren't the problem, it was the harassment and bullying. 
Also I don't think the solicitors had been thorough enough on either side.

The parking space shouldn't be an issue, we never had problems.

Thanks for your reply.  After reading a lot of posts on this forum before we made an offer we were fully aware that there would be limitations on the garage - this may or may not cause issues in the future but for us the house ticked enough boxes and we loved the house enough to not mind that we won’t have a driveway in front of our house and an attached freehold garage.
id like to think we are quite reasonable people and would be mortified to think we had caused anyone any distress. 

It does sound as though being a coach house owner and a landlord but not a landlord could potentially be stressful.
thanks for sharing your experiences as I’m sure others will find it helpful

justcat01

Katyamy said:

dimbo61 said:

Well over 50+ people have read your post and No replies?
Buying a property with Two garages underneath can cause issues.
I have installed electric power and lighting in MY shed 
Didn't use an electrician but I know it's

safe as I had it inspected by a qualified electrician.

Glad you have sold up and moved on to a detached house ? 
Buying New builds always run the risk of poor build quality and losing money.
Like a new car if you buy the right one and look after it then you might well make money.
I did watch a Grand designs episode involving a Coach house with new extension which was done well.
I am sure they needed the help and cooperation of the garage owners.

I'm not expecting replies, I wanted to share as I know others have questioned this.
I live in a mid terraced, lucky for us the new neighbours are lovely.
It's a mixture of the the design with being a landlord but not being a landlord with who you end up living next to.

At the end of the day, if something had happened and they had caused it and we hadn't known about the change, the insurance company would have asked why didn't we as landlords do anything. We were protecting ourselves.

At the time this is all we could afford, we didn't have options.

Realistically if the neighbour had discussed we could have done what we did in the end as the electrics weren't the problem, the aggression and harassment were, without being told.

Not sure if your post is designed to make me feel any smaller than I already do.

People will make their own choice in the end, but I wanted to offer my personal experience.

I don't think dimbo was try to make you feel small. What did you read that made you think that was their intent? I think they were just agreeing with you and was asking if you were glad to have sold and moved.

I previously lived in a detatched house with a double garage under the coach house. It was a bit awkward to sell as most people asked about being able to add electrics, and we told them that they'd need to speak to the owner of the coach house to arrange. It was overall quite frustrating and I was glad to get out of there!
I also agree that people will just think that they can do whatever they want and not think about the consequences. Thankfully, there were no major accidents cause by the retrofitted electrics.

This has obviously upset you and caused some trauma. I hope you will be able to move on from it soon