Garage Rental - Help

Summercherry

Hi - So we have been renting a garage through a letting agent for 18 months.

We haven’t been using it a lot for the past few months as our car has been in for repairs. 

We went up there over the weekend and found that the locks had been changed.  Upon asking neighbours, long story short, it turns out that it’s someone else’s garage! 

Some of our stuff we had in there was ‘disposed of’ by the actual owner so we’re missing items valued at several hundred pounds. 

 We did a quick search on the land registry and it turns out our landlord owns a car parking space (not a garage) in an adjacent area.

We contacted the agent who confirmed today that a mistake has been made and simply offered us another garage that had recently come onto the market. 

When we went to initially view the garage with the agent they said that they had broken the lock, put on a new one because the last tenant didn’t leave the old keys and gave us the new set of keys,  

What are our rights? Are we entitled to our rent back? After all our agreement states that we’re renting a garage that doesn’t exist or one that we’ve not seen or agreed to rent…also who is responsible for the cost of our missing stuff? In my view the landlord has claimed rent fraudulently and at best the agency hasn’t done reasonable due diligence checks to ensure that the landlord actually had a garage to rent. 

Can anyone advise please?

Many thanks.

Herzlos

That's a fun one. So you've been paying a letting agency for the use of a garage they had no right to? That's a pretty significant screw up.

I'd be asking them to reimburse you for the lost property and your 18 months rent first, taking it to small claims court, trade bodies etc if needed.

Then if they provide you with another garage, I'd verify they have rights to it. But it sounds like you don't need a garage going forward anyway so that may be a moot point.

Summercherry

Yes, that’s my thinking.  At the end of the day, the landlord has our money fraudulently so in my view is not entitled to it and if the agency had done a simple land registry check (as we did) they would have known where the garage (or space) was instead of renting us someone else’s by mistake.

I was thinking of contacting the property ombudsman but as a garage is classed as commercial didn’t know if they have jurisdiction or if they just deal with residential….

HampshireH

Do you also rent a house on the same tenancy agreement? Or is the solely a garage you rent from a letting agent.

I'm struggling to get my head around how a letting agent would get just a random garage on their books (when it isn't available,) whereas I could understand how they screwed up if there was a house with a garage involved

Full written complaint required either way 

silvercar

“  We did a quick search on the land registry and it turns out our landlord owns a car parking space (not a garage) in an adjacent area.”

I’m curious how you managed this search. Did you pay £5 to download the deeds for every garage and piece of land in the area? How else do you find the ownership of a piece of land?

silvercar

I’d concentrate on getting your goods back, several hundred pounds is a lot more than a monthly garage rental I would think. 

The owner of the garage can’t dispose of property without giving you notice to claim it. Obviously they had no way of contacting you, unless they knew the agent was handling it, but they could have taped a note to the garage door.

Summercherry

silvercar said:

“  We did a quick search on the land registry and it turns out our landlord owns a car parking space (not a garage) in an adjacent area.”

I’m curious how you managed this search. Did you pay £5 to download the deeds for every garage and piece of land in the area? How else do you find the ownership of a piece of land?

It’s £7 each from the land registry online. I put the address in of the property to which the garage was actually attached to, and it was on their plans.  I then put in the address of the landlord (as per our tenancy agreement) and the plans showed it was a car parking space, adjacent to where the garage is. 

Summercherry

HampshireH said:

Do you also rent a house on the same tenancy agreement? Or is the solely a garage you rent from a letting agent.

I'm struggling to get my head around how a letting agent would get just a random garage on their books (when it isn't available,) whereas I could understand how they screwed up if there was a house with a garage involved

Full written complaint required either way 

We don’t rent the house (flat actually) only the garage. But the same letting agent rents out both.  Apparently, the landlord let out the flat but the tenant didn’t need the ‘garage’ so the landlord rented out the ‘garage’ separately (to us). 

Summercherry

silvercar said:

I’d concentrate on getting your goods back, several hundred pounds is a lot more than a monthly garage rental I would think. 

The owner of the garage can’t dispose of property without giving you notice to claim it. Obviously they had no way of contacting you, unless they knew the agent was handling it, but they could have taped a note to the garage door.

The ‘disposed’ of goods equate to around £500.  Personally, I think they’ve either kept or sold the goods, as they didn’t ‘dispose’ of everything which doesn’t make sense to me.  Only the stuff worth anything was ‘disposed’ of. Hmmmm but that’s what the owner told us and we have no proof to the contrary.

We’ve paid around £2000 in rent in total.  

Apparently, allegedly, the actual owners did pin a note to the door, so they told us, but as we’ve not been down there in a couple of months didn’t see it.  However, there was nothing on the door when we arrived, we just knocked on a few doors in the area and just so happened that one of those doors was the owner. 

user1977

HampshireH said:

I'm struggling to get my head around how a letting agent would get just a random garage on their books (when it isn't available,)

Why? Lots of places where there's a market in garages/parking spaces - agents will handle them.

WIAWSNB

Summercherry, do you have Legal Protection included in your house insurance? If so, call them up for advice - and likely action.

You surely do have a valid case here.