Flat/Garage Lease Q - Garage Need New Roof

Gooner81

Hi,

Just a quick question about my lease for my garage.

I own a flat and also have a seperate lease for my garage. Now the flat has a management company, which are supposed to look after the block of flats (tho they dont - if you have read my other post!!) but was wondering does that extend to garages....or any problems with my garage are my own issue??

Read my lease a few times and still not too sure - and as we (the entire) block are currently in dispute with the management company dont really want to call them up and ask them as they are likely to be unhelpful...
Just wanted to know if anyone knew anything about this type of thing...?

Thanks in advance

Richard_Webster

First question is who the "management company" is acting for. Usually these are actually simply agents for the landlord but sometimes they act for the residents if the freehold is owned by a company (a managements company) owned by the residents.

Given you are having problems I assume that they act for the landlord rather than the residents

Is your flat AND the garage part of the same freehold title. You should be able to find this out by doing a search on the Land Registry website firstly for your flat and it should give you two title numbers - one for the leasehold flat and another for the freehold - and the same with the garage. If the freehold title number is the same for both the flat and the garage then you know the landlord is the same for both.

You then need to look at your lease of the garage and see whether the lessor/landlord or the lessee/tenant is responsible for maintenance and repair of the garage. If repair of main structural items is the landlord's responsibility and the freehold of the garage is owned by the same people that own the flats then the managing agents should do something about it. If the lease says the roof is your responsibility it is up to you to repair it. If the freehold is in another title then the freeholder may be the same (with two pieces of land next to each other) or somebody else and that would need investigating further.