Renting a garage

[hopefulhousehunter]

A garage has come up for sale just round the corner from our house - I've just gone to 'view' (as much as you can view a single garage!)

It's basically a glorified shed, wooden, concrete floor, seems solid, used to store a car, no power or light, in a row of similar 'lock-up' style garages. £98 a year, payable to the council.

My question is - aside from having a bit more space to store tools and bikes, would having this garage add value to our house when we come to sell? We currently have no garage attached to our house, just a small shed, but there is room to build one - if you replaced the patio with it. Would potential buyers look favourably on a garage option, albeit a lock-up round the corner?

One complication may be - apparently you're not allowed to sell a property with the garage included. But presumably you could inform buyers they could buy it separately, even if you couldn't advertise it in the property details? Anyone got experience of this? We're a Scottish council area btw.

Bumping for evening crowd

Ok- new question to add, in light of a recent conversation. How much to offer for such a garage?? The sellers are saying 'make an offer' but have absolutely no amount in mind. We have no experience or knowledge of this either - what's a ballpark figure?

We don't mind making a cheeky offer - I think they're mostly just wanting it off their hands - selling on behalf of an elderly relative.

What's the going rate for a lockup garage?

in a city centre, millions.

In most places they are quite rare.

I think the monthly rent round here is about £50, and this is a small town.

It would be an advantage to rebuild it in brick with a secure roof and door.

Measure it carefully to make sure a large modern car will fit in (including opening the car door). Mine won't.

I think you need to find out the situation with the council. I must confess that when I saw the fact that you pay the council £98 a year, I assumed that this was for a licence from the council for the garage. If its a licence to occupy, then I don't think they can sell it on to a third party. You need to know if they have the right to ask for 'offers' (which would mean it was a lease, although again, you would need to check it could be transferred to you).

There are a couple of ways of valuing it - you could look for comparables? Ie other garages that have sold in the surrounding area.

If there aren't any, then you could look at the houses which have sold locally, some with garages and some without and check for differences in the prices. If the properties are of a similar size, quality and location, this could give you an idea of the value which having a garage adds to the property.

Finally, you could do an investment valuation whereby you take the annual rent (by finding figures locally) and times it by a multiplier based on likely return and the length of the lease. This gets a bit complicated but I could explain more in a pm if you want to go that far!

Thanks for the replies.

Yes Daisy it seems strange to me that we would be paying rent to the council for the garage, but that we're also having to 'buy' the garage?

Pigletjohn we're on the outskirts of a small city (Scotland) so, while these things are quite in demand - I think- it's not quite the situation you would find elsewhere.

We're swithering over what to do - we were discussing this last night and it boils down to the fact that we would hope to move in the not-too-distant, and it may not be worth our while spending the money on a garage which we don't strictly need and won't obviously boost the value of our house. It's looking like an 'if in doubt, don't' kind of situation!

I assumed the £98 would be for council tax or similar.

I wonder if the £98 is a ground rent - ie the garage is held on a long lease from the council. But you need to know the details before you offer as a lease of 50 years is worth considerably more than one of 5...