These "Sell Your House Fast" Businesses

Gaz83

Right guys, I'm getting no-where here.

These are the issues that I sent in a PM to G_M. I didn't want to go into them here, but maybe this will help you all understant WHY it's not going to sell on the open market.

Our next-door neighbour is a drug dealer who has "clients" come to his house at all times of day and night.

We stay in a block of eight flats, not one of whose owners can agree on the land owned by each flat. There are constant disputes over parking spaces.

To compound the above problem, my girlfriend's father built a garage on communal ground which the neighbours now want taken down.

Our driveway comes out onto a main road near a train station and we are frequently being blocked in our house all day by drivers parking in front of our driveway, despite there being double-yellow lines. Those who don't park directly opposite the driveway park to the side of it (still on double-yellow lines) and greatly obscure our view of the main road, which has led to several near misses.

Because of this my fiancee runs the risk of getting dismissed from her job, as she is a teacher.

Across the driveway is a convenience store which receives deliveries all through the night.

Underneat our flat is a now-closed sandwich cafe which is in the process of being converted into a hot-food takeaway. On their planning permission they have specified they intend to use our land as parking spaces and erect a chimney up the side of our building - the council aren't interested in getting involved in this dispute and we don't have the funds to take it to court.

Once this is open we are going to have noise and smell pollution every single day.

My girlfriend's father used to own the whole block. He sold off the flats one by one but kept their shares of the land, which buyers knew when they bought. Now several of these properties have been sold again and the NEW owners (who bought it from the person her dad sold it to) do not accept that they do not have a share in the land and are wanting to dispute this through the courts.

As you can see these issues are making the flat virtually impossible to sell on the open market. It was valued at £115,000 at the time of the Home Report (last October) and went on the market for F/P £110,000. We have reduced and reduced the price to F/P £80,000 (the lowest we can go is £75,000 to settle the mortgage) but every time someone comes to see it the viewing is interrupted by one of our next door neighbour's "clients". We've been with four different estate agents and have the same problems each time.

The police and council aren't interested. We have tried and tried to sell it on the open market and it is not shifting. Heh, would you buy it, based on the above description?

Again, we do not have money problems - we have never missed a payment on our mortgage (or any other bill or agreement we have).

Hopefully now you understand. I do not want to go into these details on the open forum. We are at our wit's end and have no other option bar these companies or auction. That's why I'm looking for advice on them. People responding saying that we should give it another couple of months aren't helping. We wouldn't be considering this if we hadn't tried everything else.

Gaz83

And to answer the guy a few posts back, we are not trying to sell it for more than we bought it for. These problems all began shortly after we bought it - the drug dealer moving in next door, the sandwich shop closing down and being bought to turn it into a hot-food takeaway, people buying the other flats who then claimed to have an entitlement to the land etc.. If we'd been able to forsee these problems occurring we wouldn't have bought the place in the first instance.

googler

OK, I know this is only dealing with a small portion of your problem, but....

"Underneat our flat is a now-closed sandwich cafe which is in the process of being converted into a hot-food takeaway. On their planning permission they have specified they intend to use our land as parking spaces and erect a chimney up the side of our building - the council aren't interested in getting involved in this dispute and we don't have the funds to take it to court."

Has their planning appln been approved? If not, you object to it. If you have valid grounds for objection, the appln should be rejected by the planning committee at your local council. You don't have to go to court to object. Valid grounds for objection may include the design of the flue that they intend to construct - if it appears it may not conduct cooking odour away from neighbours to a satisfactory degree, that's grounds to object. If it impairs the 'visual amenity' of the building, or is in plain terms, an eyesore, that's also grounds to object.

Research similar planning apps on your local council's website to establish if there's anything you can object to.

"My girlfriend's father used to own the whole block. He sold off the flats one by one but kept their shares of the land, which buyers knew when they bought. Now several of these properties have been sold again and the NEW owners (who bought it from the person her dad sold it to) do not accept that they do not have a share in the land and are wanting to dispute this through the courts."

Their solicitors should have noticed, I would have thought.....

"The police and council aren't interested."


The police aren't interested in drug dealing? If you've tried the local plod, then escalate the matter to the Chief Constable, your MP, your local counciller.

Tell the local paper (or a national one) and see if they'll run a story on either your misery, or the police's lack of action. That should get things moving.

Gaz83

googler wrote: »

OK, I know this is only dealing with a small portion of your problem, but....

"Underneat our flat is a now-closed sandwich cafe which is in the process of being converted into a hot-food takeaway. On their planning permission they have specified they intend to use our land as parking spaces and erect a chimney up the side of our building - the council aren't interested in getting involved in this dispute and we don't have the funds to take it to court."

Has their planning appln been approved? If not, you object to it. If you have valid grounds for objection, the appln should be rejected by the planning committee at your local council. You don't have to go to court to object. Valid grounds for objection may include the design of the flue that they intend to construct - if it appears it may not conduct cooking odour away from neighbours to a satisfactory degree, that's grounds to object. If it impairs the 'visual amenity' of the building, or is in plain terms, an eyesore, that's also grounds to object.

Research similar planning apps on your local council's website to establish if there's anything you can object to.

"My girlfriend's father used to own the whole block. He sold off the flats one by one but kept their shares of the land, which buyers knew when they bought. Now several of these properties have been sold again and the NEW owners (who bought it from the person her dad sold it to) do not accept that they do not have a share in the land and are wanting to dispute this through the courts."

Their solicitors should have noticed, I would have thought.....

"The police and council aren't interested."


The police aren't interested in drug dealing? If you've tried the local plod, then escalate the matter to the Chief Constable, your MP, your local counciller.

Tell the local paper (or a national one) and see if they'll run a story on either your misery, or the police's lack of action. That should get things moving.

I appreciate what you're saying, but one of the reasons I didn't want to go into them here was that I didn't want the thread to get bogged down with talking about the issues. I'll address what you're saying though.

The planning application has not been fully approved. However it doesn't really matter. For example, their planning application included plans to put a chimney up the side of our flat. That part was rejected. Yesterday, they put the chimney up anyway. When I challenged them about it, they "dared" me (for want of a better term) to get the council or our lawyers down to stop them. Of course there's no chance of that happening on a Saturday or today, so the chimney's up. It doesn't matter if they now have to remove it, the wall has been knocked through and the brackets to hold it up have damaged the wall.

With regards to the land ownership, the new owners dispute that they have no access to the land. The only way it will get resolved is through the courts and we don't have the money to go down that road.

The police aren't interested in him because they can't prove it. They've been at his door countless times but (and I've no idea how he does it) he always seems to know when they're going to be there and has nothing on him. They seem to have given up. He doesn't cause any trouble of the violent kind so perhaps that's one of the reasons why.

Look, I know that each of the above issues could be resolved but it would take a) time, b) patience and c) money. We don't want to resolve them. We have nothing but unhappy memories here now and it is putting our relationship under an enormous strain. We just want to be rid of the place as quickly as possible.

Sometimes you just have to recognise that an extra few thousand pounds isn't worth losing a relationship over. Sometimes you have to cut your losses and get out. That's what we have to do.

ILW

Put it to auction with a reserve of say £75k.
A BTL investor may buy it with a vies to renting to the council or similar. Some only make a cursory viewing. it must be worth a try. Not sure but I believe you have to state any ongoing disputes though.

frank.hopper

Agree! I would try the auction route, the charges are next to nothing if it doesn't sell.

neverdespairgirl

Gaz83 wrote: »

Guys, I appreciate the replies, but comments along the lines of "it will sell in a couple of months" and the like aren't really helping.

We've been trying to sell it for about eighteen months now. I wouldn't be considering one of these companies if I hadn't looked at every single other option available.

Auction sounds your best bet.

LONDON_ONLINE_EST_AGENTS

Yes, I have some third party experience of 'sell homes fast'. We have acted as estate agents for vendors who tried the 'sell fast' deal; but it fell through and they came to us.
Briefly, the problems they cited were:
- drastically reduced price
- a lot of paperwork
- the organisation was too slow

If you do choose to go this route, ask them a lot of questions first!

Karl
LONDON ONLINE EST AGENTS