deed to a limited common area

We are a 43 (senior) unit apartment style condominium with 31 inside parking spaces. These parking spaces are described in our documents as limited common areas. Some of our owners have made the extra effort to get a separate deed for his/her garage space,

As I thought more about the parking issue and I am wondering how an owner can get a deed to a limited common area? Some months ago I spend hours at the court house (although the parking spaces were not the reason I went to the court house, while there I did check on parking spaces) and some owners do indeed have a deed to the garage space that had been assigned to the owner's unit.

I will be glad to provide as much more information as I can if I am asked to do so. There is more to the story, but I am trying to keep the post short.

My thoughts are the same as NpS'.

In a condo, one normally owns only his own living area formed by the walls. All else is commonly owned with each owner having an undivided interest. I would question who granted the deed and under what circumstances. The common areas are owned by all owners collectively and not by the association.

FREE-STANDING PARKING UNITS
Subject to jurisdictional differences, Declarations of multi-storey condominium corporations can be drafted to create - immediately upon registration - what might be described as free-standing parking, service or accessory entities.

These entities usually have land registration particulars unique from -for example - a residential unit owned by the same owner.

These Declarant-retained private entities can be deliberately registered as neither "common element" nor legally linked at date of registration to any particular end user residential or commercial unit.

These can happily provide a Declarant - or any assignee therefrom - an ongoing stream of income and/or ultimate cash out by sale to someone wanting an extra space. As parking they may for example allow a Declarant/assignee to profit from general rising equity of the building. Or from scarcity in urban core areas.

Thus these free-standings or side deals might spend many happy years side by side within what superficially appears to be a uniform parking area alongside others spaces that had been pre-packaged and entrenched within the description/plat etc as linked to specific units. ( Unit-tied parking spaces may be owned by deed or merely unit-allocated by Board Resolution or whatever. Or the others may only be "First come-First served".)

Sometimes - having discrete registry identifiers - they even get overlooked by lazy realtors and conveyancers. One purchaser here only discovered such almost 18 years after the sale that "orphaned" the free-standing parking unit still in name of the long-departed former owner.

SERVICE UNITS

In jurisdictions like mine, Declarants may also retain "service units" that suppress initial residential unit prices. For example, these may allow the Declarant to merrily collect rent for years from the condo corporation for use of building systems like HVAC, water distribution, onsite staff accommodation etc . . . All in the fine print . . .

SOME NOTORIOUS ABUSES

In one famous conversion from downtown residential/commercial, a clever Declarant-converter deliberately exempted the existing highpriced downtown parking spaces from being legally added into the Declaration. He was unlucky enough to be caught like a feudal lord using that parking ( and actual withholding of such ) to coerce obedience from condo Board Directors wanting to obey the law.

Free-standing parking units here have been caught being sold in Hong Kong to unsuspecting investors believing they were acquiring a residential unit.

My jurisdiction's condo law prohibits any voting rights for free-standing parking units, but the downside may be that lots of such vote-deprived units' owners get oppressed.