True, it isn't my garage, technically.
If it is part of the lease, it is for all practical purposes your garage.
JetX, do you actually stop to think before you write or are you just scrawling freely without remembering we are adults? I wouldn't ask questions if I knew the answers or where to go to find them. "No stupid questions, just stupid answers," ever hear that one? I know little about legal issues and thankfully have had little experience with needing legal advice. If you can't be helpful, just refrain from saying anything. I think aol chat rooms thrive on the type of childish banter you apparently find entertaining. You may be appreciated there.
Actually JETX is appreciated right here where he gives advice for free instead of charging his usaul hourly fee as an attorney since he graduated law school and becam a member of the bar. If you had any clue you would understand he gave you very correct advice. He even cited germane statutes for you. What else do you need to show you you are wrong?
Does the FACT that they expected me to deliver money for these items, which is why they were here to begin with, have any weight?
Gee, it sounds like you actually made a contract to purchase the items. I wonder if the prior owners (you would be the new/current owner) of the items could sue YOU for the money you owe them. You see, you agreed to buy them, arranged a menas of payment so they left YOUR items. If the prior owners didn't sell them to you, they would have taken other actions, I am sure, with the property. Now since you reneged on your contract and didn't pay as you had agreed, the property is not legally yours and you want to sell their property and keep some of the money on top of it all. Brilliant.
I could feasibly tell them I would pay for them,
You already said you would pay them and failed that. Since you didn't, you would be committing a crime such as JETX listed above.
It is completely logical and I hardly think it makes me a theif.
Oh how wrong you are. It does make you a thief. It does make some convoluted logic but without agreement of the true owners, it does make you a thief.
How's this for a solution. Pay what you agreed to pay and then re-sell the items or burn them or whatever you want since they will then legally be yours.
or maybe a lolution the true owners might agree to such as; ask them if you could sell the items for whatever you agreed to pay and then forward all the money to them. If you do not recieve the amount you agreed to from the sale, you could chip in the rest so you were not in breach of your original or the newly negotiated contract.
Everybody that deserves to be happy is happy. You have to remember, you actually caused this entire situation, nobody else.