I am not the original poster. Original poster is u/sir2fluffy2 . Posted in 2020 in r/LegalAdviceUK.

Reposted with permission, thank you, sir2fluffy2!

Someone thinks they’ve bought our garage (2 Aug 2020)

In England About 10 years ago we (my family) bought a garage with a little garden to keep an extra car in a couple miles away from our home. We visit occasionally (once every couple of years) to cut the hedges etc.

The car has no battery and doesn’t run but other than that is in good condition and been kept dry.

We have now decided to sell the garage and when going over there to see it and to take photos we see that the garden has been concreted, there is building debris stacked up against the wall and that there is a new lock on the door.

We later found out that the lady we originally bought it from has sadly passed away and her niece inherited the property. The niece has either sold or is renting out the house, the family now living in the house has locked the garage and refuses to let us even see if the car is still there (I’m growing to suspect that it is not). We have looked on the land registry and they do not appear on it it also clearly states that the garage is no longer part of that house’s title deed and has a new title deed number.

The land being made a separate title deed happened about 9 years after we bought it (we thought it had been done already and didn’t check the paper work, lesson learnt) and a couple months before they moved into the property.

How should we handle this? Should we report the car stolen? Is there anything stopping us cutting their lock off and towing the car (if it’s still there? We’ve already contacted our solicitor and are waiting for a reply.

This is my first time posting here if I’ve missed any details or broken any sub rules I’ll try my best to fix it in the comments.

Thanks for all the advice and feed back. I’ll update when possible.

Edit: As lots of people have asked the car is a mint condition classic with less than 8k miles on it, its worth £20000 and the garage its self is worth about another £20000. It does run but has been drained for storage.

Edit 2: the car is present and safe only a couple small dents on the bonnet we are waiting to get it moved to our new house

Relevant Background/Comments:

Commenter: I remember being able to go to the land registree website, selecting any property from their interactive map, and downloading a copy of the deeds for £10 with the name of the legal owner. Does that not work any more?

OOP: It does and we have done that. You can get a unofficial copy for free

Commenter: .. just for clarity - according to the land registry, who owns the garage?

OOP: We do, a new deed was made to treat the garage separately from the house that they bought/rent and we are listed as the owners on the garage deed.

Commenter: To clarify, what you're saying is you have registered title - as in on the Register, you are the owners. I'm not an expert on land law, but I recall from law school that this is pretty conclusive.

OOP: yep we have registered it.

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[update] someone thinks they bought our garage (27 Aug 2020)

A big thank you to everyone that offered advice.

Original post here: https://reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/i2mq72/someone_thinks_theyve_bought_our_garage/

to keep things easy to understand I’m going to do a timeline of events.

Saturday night: we discover that the hedge and garden at our garage has been removed and concreted over.

Sunday afternoon: my parents and myself go to the garage to see what’s up, when I arrive there is a group of people mid argument with my parents. We get each other’s contact info.

Sunday night: my parents return without me to demand to be let on to their property and is refused, the police are called but say there is nothing they can do.

Monday: spent the day trying to contact our solicitor and researching the people who thought they’ve bought it.

Tuesday: finally get into our garage have to endure a speech from the other party but the car is safe and the garage is secured once again.

Detailed version: We discovered the situation with the garage when someone interested in buying it said it didn’t look like the description and then sent us a picture. It was rather late at night by this point so we decided to go there tomorrow.

My parents and I travelled separately as I was on my to work (I work nights). I arrived a couple minutes after my parents, there is a black car parked on the road in front of it, 3 people standing around and couple tonnes of construction debris on the concreted lawn. There was the mother (aka B), the son (aka A) and the sons partner , All of them were defensive (which is reasonable in that situation), when asked they said they keep tools in it when we asked to open the garage they told us they couldn’t open it as the only key was with Mr W (the antagonist of this story) who was working till 8pm on a Sunday. I gave my number to A then I went to work and my parents went home.

(Relevant detail: my parents had me late and are both well over 65 while I am 20)

Later that evening my parents returned to see if they could see the car as we weren’t even told that the car was still there, Mr W answered the door and my mother tried to present him with relevant paper work (land registry, proof of sale etc) he refused the papers and got aggressive (balling up his fists), my parents left.

Monday after I had got back from work we spent the day finding out what information we could about them; they bought the house and the 2 garages attached (ours garage being the third) 6 weeks after we had submitted the land registry paper work, they had converted one a garage into a living room with out planning (but that’s not relevant). We considered reporting the car stolen but decided against it, we did call 111; they said that they can’t send an officer in case something happens only when something happens, expected but it did make my mother feel a bit better.

On Tuesday my parents, myself and my uncle (he had helped move the car originally) arrive a bit before the agreed time, my parents parked in front of the garage, my uncle up the street and I parked a street over.

My first interaction with Mr W went as follow it’s all be paraphrased but the gist is about right.

Generic greetings

Mr W: we should introduce our selves properly I am Mr W

Me: good idea, I am Mr Y

Mum: I am Mrs Y

Dad: I am Dr Y

Mr W: well you’re not a doctor tho are you you’re a mister

a bit of back and forth here but we soon gave up

Uncle: I am Mr C

Me: I think we’ve waited long enough unless there is any reason not to shall we open it?

Mr W: well there is some stuff I want to say so if you’d all come inside we can talk as I don’t want the neighbours hearing

Me: well due to C19 I think it’s best we stay out here.

we comprise and go to his back garden

We has done our research we knew there was nothing new he could tell us, Mr W gets himself worked up and starts going on about the land registry and how he spent £26 to get the papers (they’re £3 so he probably got scammed). A way into the conversation;

Mr W: it cost us thousands to get it like that. I don’t understand why you’re being so rude about this

directed at me as I’d done most the talking

Me: I think we’ve been very patient, we’ve come at a time that suits you on a day that suits you, keeping in mind we could have come at any time cut off your lock and put our own on then sue for the cost to replant the hedge and lawn.

Mr W: people were complaining about the overgrown hedges no one has cut them for at least 10 years

Mum: we cut them less than two years ago

while I agree the hedges were over grown gross exaggeration doesn’t help, we try to keep them cut but we forget

Mr W: people have said they like looking at it now it looks so much better

Me: they like looking at rubble and rusting metal?

Eventually he takes us to the garage, he had cleared the tools out and moved all the rubble and junk onto the foot path behind it, which explains why he wanted Monday to himself. We uncover the car and inspect everything all the gardening tools we left that were gone, the car was fine but a few small dents on the bonnet at the front (some tools probably fell onto it, we know he did it as it was inspect it as show room condition shortly before it went into storage) He denied the damage while doing so he was leaning against our car, I told him get off (and he call us rude) he does. He goes inside his home we stay in the garage, my uncle drove a concrete lorry his entire working life so knows that at most there was a couple hundred £ worth of material there not thousands.

Aftermath: we get the car moved to our new house, I put up some “no parking” signs and we only hear from Mr W 3 more times, once to ask for copies of the paper work he refused, he asked us for permission to park his work van on the concreted lawn we said no as it was back on the market and people would’ve viewing it and finally to tell him to move his van after he ignored us and parked there anyway.

The garage door was fine they had bent the locking mechanism breaking in but we quickly fixed it. While the gardening tools being stolen is annoying we don’t care that much. We’re not going to sue him for the cost of restoring it as the total property value is about the same, we gave him first refusal and didn’t hear anything before the deadline.

(This bits will be boring if you don’t like cars) The car is a 94 mint condition Suzuki with less than 5k miles on the clock, about £20000 we think from a quick google, obviously we wanted to get the car out ASAP, there is a garage that works on the brand near by (we’ve used them before they’re excellent), they tell us the fuel pump has ceased, we could buy a new on from Japan for £522 but we found a second hand one for £70 locally so we bought that and it’s now sat on our drive way waiting for someone from Poland to arrange its collection.

FAQ: Q:why didn’t your report it as stolen A: we didn’t want to have the headache of having to get it unreported stolen if we were able to recover it.

Q: how much would it have cost to restore the hedge and lawn A: were not sure but lots, they were very tall old trees making up the hedge and paying the labour needed to tear up the concrete would have been a massive cost as well. In total easily £10k

Apologise for the very long post but a lot has happened. My final note is that A and B were both incredibly pleasant and genuinely wanted to get it sorted they were let down by Mr W’s attitude, who in my opinion knew they didn’t have a claim to the garage but wanted to chance it (if they had genuinely no idea then they should sue the solicitor they bought the house with for the market cost of the garage).In the end we lost nothing but it was a lot of unneeded stress. The junk is still blocking the door path to this day.

TLDR: the family of the house owner were pleasant and understanding the step father however not so much, he’s was aggressive, rude and had no sense of irony. The car and garage are in the final stages of sale and soon we’ll no long have to think about it.

If I can figure out how to I’ll link some pictures, if there are any questions let me know and I’ll try my best to answer

Relevant Comment:

• The car is a suzuki cappuccino, 1994 and 4400 ish miles, mint condition.
• OOP confirms that his dad is, in fact, a doctor. It is speculated that Mr W was a provocative asscake, given his response to OOP's dad introducing himself as Dr Y.

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Reminder: I am not the original poster. Original poster is u/sir2fluffy2 . Posted in 2020 in r/LegalAdviceUK.