Dry Rot in 1st foor flat - who is responsible?

katherine12

Hi Everyone,

I wondered if anyone can advise me on responsibilities for fixing dry rot in flats? I live in a converted house in the ground floor flat and my neighbour upstairs has just informed me that she has dry rot on the joists of her floor (my ceiling). When she told me this actually made total sense since the vibrations from their washing machine above are really strong.

Anyway she seems to think that it is a joint responsibility to fix it (since we both own our flats as well as sharing the freehold), but I'm not sure. Last year I had my walls re-plastered and damp proof course fitted but I didn't try to make her pay (since it was in my flat). Also if it were my floor i'm not sure she would be willing to share the cost.

Has anyone had any experience of this? my opinion is that the roof is shared responsibility but each of us should be fully responsible for our own floors.

thanks
Kath

G_M

I'm afraid I don't have access to your lease.

I suspect no one else here has access to your lease.

So it's impossible to answer your question!

Doozergirl

You need to read the terms of the lease but it is far from unusual for you to be jointly responsible for all maintenance work to the building.

It's usually either everyone jointly responsible for all building maintenance or that the ground floor is responsible for everything on the ground, upper floors everything above. What you describe where you are responsible for below your flat, she is resp for everything above yours and below hers and you are both resp for the roof isn't usual and makes little sense to me as financially, the law of probability says that you would end up paying out far more than her. It's unusual for the joists between floors to go.

The joists between your flat and hers are important to both of you - that is your ceiling and without it both your flat and hers are worthless. Makes sense to me, although your lease may say different, that you are both responsible.

Have you checked whether the work is insured under the building's insurance? It's going to be a very nasty job.

Read your lease for confirmation (might have been a good idea before you started work last year) - if it isn't clear then you can check with us or better still with the Leasehold Advisory Service
http://www.lease-advice.org/ 020 7383 9800

PasturesNew

I'm getting really strong deja vu.... I'm sure somebody asked this exact question about 8 months ago..... it's going to drive me mad now while I google it.

Edit:
Maybe it was this I was thinking of:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2580469

So not the same... still niggling me though.

benood

I vaguely remember one like this too - not an uncommon problem I think. We once looked at a flat and our survey found dry rot - we left the freeholders to bicker.

My advice to the OP would be it is such a major problem try to be as reasonable as possible - perhaps it was lack of ventilation from the lower flat that encouraged the conditions for dry rot? You'll possibly never know for sure.

Best of luck

katherine12

Thanks for the advice guys, much appreciated!

I've since looked at my lease which says that we are responsible for the following "one half part in depth of the joists between the ceilings of the demised premises and the floors of the upper maisonette"

Although it's difficult to interpret this old english legal spheil, I interpret that as joint responsibility - wouldn't you? (assuming that there are only 1 set of joists up there, not 2 sets - and i'm not an expert in joists).

thanks again!

tyllwyd

I'd read that as meaning that you are responsible for the bottom half of the joists above your ceiling, and she is responsible for the top half - since you can't treat one without the other, yes, sounds like joint responsibility to me. She is probably responsible for making good her floor afterwards, and you are responsible for your ceiling.

But I thought dry rot was very likely to spread to other timbers - you probably need to sit down and discuss what else the contractors are going to look at, and who will be reponsible for any additional work. Better to get it sorted out up front. Are there any other flats? What if the roof timbers need treatment? How is general maintenance of the building paid for? Does your building insurance cover dry rot?

katherine12

Thanks for the advice.

This is a converted house so there are only 2 flats here and we both own a share of the freehold. After enquiring about dry rot our insurance doesn't cover it (i think that most don't). I don;t know if the other areas are infected but anything related to the roof would most likely be joint responsibility too. I don't know how long these things take to spread but I have impressed upon the neighbours to proceed in getting quotes asap and offered my help as i would like to see an objective view/report as to where the problem is and what caused it (and not sure if I will get that visibility it i'm not involved).

Another thing i am concerned about is that they don;t have the money to fix it now so we may have to wait until they have saved up by which time the problem may have gotten worse (also we were planning to sell the flat this year at some point so don't have all the time in the world to sort this).

I am hoping that the problem isn't wide spread (obviously) and that the neighbour can afford their part of it ASAP as i don;t want to be delayed in fixing it because of their situation (and no i don't know them well enough to pay for it all upfront).

Jenniefour

Difficult situation - it would also be helpful to ask your neighbour what the dry rot specialist/surveyor said about how long this can be left. This is a job that could well be worth your neighbour seeing if she can get a loan for, so you both have peace of mind about the issue being dealt with before it spreads. And it might be worth asking her if there is some way of getting her washing machine more stable so it does not cause disintegration to any of the joists meantime. I imagine neither of you want it to get to the point where there could be a bit of your ceiling coming adrift and so on.

You definitely need to see any report she has already got, along with quotes. And, to be on the safe side, this is a problem that is definitely worth you getting your own specialist survey done - in her flat as well. I believe with issues like this she must allow access and there may be clause in your lease which says so.

This is probably a job where, if neighbour does not have money to hand, worthwhile her/them considering a loan.

Doozergirl

Jenniefour wrote: »

You definitely need to see any report she has already got, along with quotes. And, to be on the safe side, this is a problem that is definitely worth you getting your own specialist survey done - in her flat as well. I believe with issues like this she must allow access and there may be clause in your lease which says so.

If the neighbour hasn't paid for a proper survey, then I think you should both bite the bullet and pay for one by an independent surveyor agreed by the two of you.

You will at least get an objective view - what you don't want to do is rip up the house when there isn't a massive problem and the people were just trying to make money.

But the other problem with dry rot is that you don't know how much of it there is until you start ripping up floors and ceilings and tracing it back to source - or away from source.

Until the issue is resolved, either by disproving it's existence, or getting it fixed, you're not going to be able to sell! It won't sell if you declare it to people - not for full value. And if you sell without telling people, your upstairs neighbour is going to make it pretty clear that you knew about it when they're surprised at a potential bill.

katherine12

thanks for the advice guys, this has been really helpful. I never thought about asking the neighbour to get a loan to get it sorted but that seems like a great option if they can't afford to pay upfront and we want to sell this year.

I am hoping the dry rot is contained in their kitchen since they recently had their whole flat re-carpeted which was done without problem, until the carpet layer got to the kitchen and refused to do it telling them that they had to get the dry rot sorted first.

In terms of getting a surveyor... I presume this just means getting a few people over who offer the service to fix it to take a look and give us a quote? Or is there another type of independent "surveyor" who would assess the damage for dry rot but not from the perspective of trying to get the job to fix it? I'm going to Google it now to try and find out.

Many thanks!!