Letting a parking space: what the building can regulate

Letting your space is a right. Handing a building access fob to a stranger is another question.

An unused parking space lets easily, often well. Demand is strong in dense areas, and the owner sees natural income. The building, meanwhile, sees vehicles and people it does not know, with access to the common areas.

Both views are legitimate, and the subject is handled badly case by case. It is handled well when the building has set clear rules once and for all.

The principle: letting is a right

A parking space forming a unit or a private area can be let by its owner, including to someone outside the building. The rules cannot simply prohibit it, save for particular provisions relating to the building’s designated use.

They can, however, regulate access and the use of the common areas crossed, which is very different — and that is where the whole subject sits. See the building rules.

What the building can legitimately regulate

• Informing the manager: tenant identity, vehicle registration, duration.
• How many fobs or remotes are issued per space, and the price beyond that.
• Returning the access devices at the end of the letting, and deactivating them.
• Banning other uses of the space: storage, workshop, vehicle servicing.
• Traffic and speed rules within the parking levels.

The second and third points drift fastest. With no deactivation procedure, fobs circulate for years after a letting ends: see regaining control of building access.

The usual friction points

The first is access to common areas other than the car park: a space tenant has no business in the cellars or on the upper floors. A fob opening the whole building creates a risk the association did not choose.

The second is a space occupied by another vehicle, or a let space whose vehicle has not moved for months: that then joins abandoned vehicles.

Insurance and liability

The building policy covers the common areas, not parked vehicles or their contents. That is the first misunderstanding after a theft or damage in a car park.

Restating it in an annual note prevents many arguments: see the building policy’s cover. The unit owner also remains answerable for the consequences of their tenant’s presence.

The charging point question

A space let to an outsider raises an extra question when the tenant wants a charging point: the installation concerns a unit they do not own, and the supply crosses the common areas.

The framework is the one described in charging points in a condo: the request goes through the unit owner, not the occupant alone.

The problem is never the space let: it is the fob handed over with it, and never taken back.

Keep the inventory with CoproHarmony

CoproHarmony lists spaces, issued access devices and declared occupants, so you can find who holds what when an incident occurs. Create your free space.