How Havebury Homes Achieved 96% Garage Occupancy

Havebury Homes has achieved something remarkable: 96% occupancy across approximately 3,500 garages, generating around £2 million in annual revenue with minimal team resources. In an industry where garage occupancy typically ranges from 40-65%, this level of performance is exceptional.

Most housing associations face genuine challenges with their garage portfolios. With competing priorities like compliance, retrofit, and new development all demanding attention and budget, garages often don't receive the strategic focus needed to maximise their potential. The result is thousands of garages sitting empty, missing revenue opportunities while deteriorating faster without regular use and requiring significant investment to return to lettable condition.

Havebury's success shows what's possible when garages are treated as revenue-generating assets worth optimising, through strategic decisions, intelligent automation, and a fundamental shift in how they're managed.

The cost of empty garages

Havebury's garage portfolio generates approximately £2 million in annual revenue.

“It's a substantial amount of money to lose if you choose not to let out your garages, and the alternative is demolition, which is quite a high cost as well, leaving you with no revenue coming into the business.”

Neil Whatley, Letting Manager, Havebury Homes

Not only do empty garages lose revenue, but they also deteriorate faster without regular use, attract antisocial behaviour, and drain team resources due to the time it takes to deal with complaints and security issues. And unlike parking spaces, garages generate significantly more revenue and are in higher demand, making demolition for parking lots a poor alternative.

Removing waiting lists

With waiting lists, a prospective tenant expresses interest in an area, gets added to a list and sometimes has to wait for six months or more. When a garage finally becomes available, the team manually contact people who may have moved, lost interest, or found alternative solutions. This results in high resource costs, low conversion rates, and garages sitting empty for weeks or months between tenancies.

Havebury eliminated waiting lists entirely. Instead, prospective tenants see available garages on an interactive map with exact locations. Each garage shows whether it's suitable for a vehicle plus storage or storage only, and displays the weekly rent.

The shift removes all the manual matching work. The team don't spend time calling people who've moved on, garages don't sit empty, and available garages are visible in real time for people to book.

Creating a self-service journey

Automated booking system

Havebury built a fully automated booking system where the entire customer journey happens with almost zero human interaction. Prospective tenants visit the website, select their garage from the map, set up a direct debit, and receive their tenancy agreement via DocuSign. Once payment clears and the agreement is signed, the system automatically releases the key safe code. They collect their key from a block-level key safe and move in.

The critical design choice was requiring payment upfront before proceeding. This wasn't always how Havebury did things. They used to set people up, get the tenancy running, and then they wouldn't pay. The team would waste weeks cancelling agreements and starting over.

Key management

One of the smartest operational decisions Havebury made was moving away from physical key management entirely. They fit key safes to garage blocks, and the key remains in the safe until the tenant's payment clears and the agreement is signed; the system then releases the code. The tenant collects it themselves. The logic is simple. If you're in an organisation where you've got loads of keys, not only is there great potential to lose them, but there's also huge operational costs involved.

Getting Internal Buy-In for Automation

The key to securing buy-in is speaking the language of value to senior management. Rather than pitching garage automation as a standalone project, it's important to frame it within your asset strategy - showing how it would reduce long-term maintenance costs, cut compliance risks, and free up staff resources for core services. When competing for budget against retrofit and compliance work, demonstrating how garages support rather than compete with these priorities is essential.

Resource Allocation

Managing 3,500 garages at 96% occupancy sounds like it would require a dedicated team. It doesn't.

"There's usually one person who looks after it, but it's certainly not what they do as a main job. They do that, as well as lots of other things. So resource-wise, it's not particularly high on the team.”

Compare that to what they needed before automation: "I think we probably had two people working on it pretty much full time at one time. But as time has passed, it's got easier really from an admin perspective. They kind of keep an eye on it rather than having to run it."

Data Quality

Good automation requires accurate data. Fortunately, Havebury had this foundation already in place. The data they hold has been well maintained for 50 years. This includes detailed contract maps showing garage locations, block configurations, and who maintains access roads - whether it's the local authority, county council, or Havebury itself. The team can put the address of a garage into the housing system and click an icon to see where it is on a map.

For housing associations without this level of data quality - and most don't - this is the foundation that needs to be built first. The accurate data underpins the map-based customer journey and reduces disputes and confusion about which garage is which.

Strategic Asset Management

Havebury actively manages garages as assets.

“We actively assess our garage portfolio. We evaluate which garages are economical to repair, which need capital investment to remain viable, and which should be considered for redevelopment,” Neil explained.

When garages are actively let and maintained, ongoing costs are minimal. As Neil put it:

"Maintenance is fairly minimal. A garage door lasts 25 years. They're not a difficult asset to maintain."

This stands in stark contrast to empty garages that deteriorate rapidly without use, eventually requiring major investment just to get back to lettable condition.

Being Pragmatic About Usage

Modern cars don't fit in garages built 50 years ago. Some housing associations maintain strict "vehicle only" policies. Havebury took a more pragmatic approach. The practical conclusion is simple. If you're already struggling to get people to apply for garages, you don't want to put any more obstacles in the way. According to Stashbee's research, 83% of all garages in the UK are used for storage.

Why this matters for social housing

Havebury proves what's possible when garages are treated as revenue-generating assets worth optimising rather than non-core problems to ignore.

The automation delivered the biggest efficiency gains. The result is a portfolio of approximately 3,500 garages operating at 96% occupancy, generating around £2 million annually, requiring minimal team resources - effectively less than half a person's time.

What matters most is strategic decisions that most housing associations need to think about:

• Eliminating waiting lists and enabling real-time booking of specific garages
• Payment-first filtering that prevents wasted void time
• End-to-end automation with human involvement only for exceptions
• Key safes that eliminate physical key management overhead

For housing associations looking at their own portfolios sitting at 40-65% occupancy, this is what's possible with smart systems and strategic thinking.

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Stashbee works with housing associations and councils across the UK to help maximise garage occupancy and revenue. We've built the complete automation toolkit that makes results like the above achievable: from interactive map-based booking systems and automated tenant vetting to payment processing and contract management. Start with a free garage rent review to uncover your portfolio's revenue potential.