Most sales are simple. You bought the building, you own it, you want rid of it. But a fair number of the enquiries we take are not that, and the complication is usually only discovered when somebody goes looking for paperwork.
None of these situations stop a sale. They just have to be sorted out before rather than after, because once a building is on a lorry it is a great deal harder to unpick.
The building is on somebody else's land
This is the commonest one. A building has sat in the corner of a yard for years and the yard has changed hands, or the building belongs to a contractor and the land belongs to the client, or a tenant put it there and has since left.
Two separate questions have to be answered. Who owns the building, and who controls the land it is standing on. The person selling it needs the first. Getting a vehicle in and out needs the second. It is entirely possible to own a building you cannot get to, and it is equally possible to control the land while having no right to sell what is standing on it.
Where a building is being sold by one party and the access is granted by another, we want both confirmed in writing before the job is booked.
The building is still on finance or lease
Portable and modular buildings are frequently acquired on a lease, a hire purchase agreement or some other funding arrangement, and it is very easy for that to be forgotten a few years in, particularly after staff have changed.
If a finance agreement, lease or other charge remains over the building, it is not yours to sell until that is cleared. This matters more than people expect: selling something that is subject to a charge causes problems for you and for the buyer.
The check is straightforward. Look for the original purchase or hire paperwork, and if the building came with a business you acquired, check what the acquisition actually transferred.
Hired buildings that have quietly become permanent
Related, and more common than you would think. A building was hired for a job, the job ran on, the hire rolled over, invoices kept arriving and eventually somebody stopped querying them. That building belongs to the hire company. It cannot be sold, and the right call is a phone call to them rather than to us.
The tell is usually a plate, a sticker, a stencilled asset number, or an inventory reference on the door. If a building carries somebody else's asset markings, establish why before doing anything else.
Administrations, receiverships and probate
Where a company has failed or an owner has died, the buildings on the site are part of the estate, and the person with authority to sell is the appointed office holder or the executor, not the site manager, not the last remaining employee and not the landlord who wants the yard back.
We deal with insolvency practitioners and executors regularly and it is normal work. What it needs is the appointment confirmed and the instruction coming from the right person. Everything after that is the same as any other job.
Landlords clearing a site that has been abandoned
A tenant has gone and left buildings behind. The landlord wants the yard clear. Whether those buildings can simply be sold depends on the terms of the lease and on what has happened since, and it is a question for the landlord's solicitor rather than for us.
Where the position is unresolved, the honest answer is that this is a clearance job rather than a sale: the buildings are removed and disposed of, and nothing is paid for them, because nobody can properly warrant that they were theirs to sell.
What we ask for
By selling to us you confirm the building is yours to sell, or that you are authorised to sell it, and that no finance agreement, lease or other charge remains over it. That wording is in our terms, and it is there because it protects both ends of the transaction.
In practice, what we want to see before booking is:
- Who owns the building, and on what basis.
- Who controls the land, and confirmation that access is granted.
- That nothing is outstanding on it.
- Who is authorised to agree the sale, and their contact details.
Payment for buildings we buy is by bank transfer on collection, which also means there is a clear record of what was paid, to whom, and for what. On a complicated ownership that record is worth having.
If your situation is one of the awkward ones, say so at the start. It changes nothing about whether we are interested. Tell us what you have and we will tell you what we need to see.