Bringing legal action against a house builder for mis-selling a property

Kare_Bear

Hi,

I was hoping somebody could help with this.

I would like to receive advice about whether the above is possible, or whether there are any previous cases that anyone knows about where this has happened.

I purchased my new property in March 2007. Behind it there is a working mens club, and while looking around the property, when the salesman saw our concern about it, we were advised that the housebuilder owned the land the WMC was built on and the WMC just leased the building. We were assured that the lease was coming to an end within 2 years and that it would not be renewed. This has not happened, and we have since found out that it is a members owned WMC and when the housebuilder tried to buy the land they refused, so there is no chance of this going away.

The second issue is that we were aware that all new housing estates now have to build a certain percentage of affordable housing, and having lived in an area surrounded by this at that time we didn't want to live in an area where there were alot of rentals and property developers, due to the problems we had already experienced. The salesman advised us that the affordable housing was to be built at the back of the estate (our house is near the front) so it wouldn't affect is in any way. This too has not been the case. It appears that a section of the affordable housing is next to us, so we look out over several gardens of rental properties that are in complete dissarray, the children from these houses play in our cul-de-sac causing noise, damaging property and making a mess all of the time. This has been reported to the police on several occasions.

I know it may sound like I am a snob, but we were excited to buy our property and it wasn't particularly cheap, but we were also looking at the long term and particularly taking one step, mortgage wise, to getting the family house we wanted in the near future. We thought we would be happy here, but we are not.

We are left with a house that has a WMC directly behind it, which we were assured wouldn't be, are surrounded by affordable housing which causes problems day in and day out, which again we were assured we wouldn't be, and because of this (and the obvious market crash, granted) our house isn't worth the paper its written on, and no one is interested in a buying a property with these very clear problems.

Any advice would be extremely welcome.

Thanks

Browntoa

do you have any of that in writing ?? otherwise you are throwing good money after bad

Richard_Webster

do you have any of that in writing ?? otherwise you are throwing good money after bad

Quite.

Did you tell your solicitor about these representations? You will almost certainly find that the contract for the sale of the house will contain a comprehensive set of disclaimers over representations, particularly any not in writing. You should have told your solicitor about what you had been told and asked him to get written confirmation from the seller's solicitors of such points.

GDB2222

It's one of the disadvantages of buying a new property. Even if the social housing was planned for one part of the site when you bought, there was nothing to stop the plans changing. Next time buy a secondhand house in an established area, so you can see what things are like. Even then, poor neighbours can move in, but it reduces teh risk.

As for what the salesman told you, it's like Browntoa says.

GDB2222

Richard_Webster wrote: »

You will almost certainly find that the contract for the sale of the house will contain a comprehensive set of disclaimers over representations, particularly any not in writing.

Possibly the disclaimers are not valid. See the recent case of Axa Sun Life Services v Campbell Martin Ltd in the COA.

In addition, the OFT apparently thinks these clauses may not be valid at all against consumers, although it's not clear whether OFT have house sales in mind - presumably this is under the Unfair Terms In Consumer Contracts Regulations.

SandC

Really it was up to you to investigate these things further if you had real issues with them.

The WMC, well that will have been there for years, why would you think it was suddenly going to be torn down due to new houses being built when it would no doubt bring in new business?

The salesman was wrong to tell you these things but without anything in writing connected with your sale I don't see there is anything you can do.

Kare_Bear

No we didn't unfortunately. But in terms of the WMC both neighbours were also told the same thing, would that help at all? I haven't asked about the other aspect.

ILW

Kare_Bear wrote: »

No we didn't unfortunately. But in terms of the WMC both neighbours were also told the same thing, would that help at all? I haven't asked about the other aspect.

This may sound a little harsh, but if you have such a problem with a WMC behind your house, why did you buy one that had such an establishment behind it?

DannyboyMidlands

It's just he said, she said and I don't think that you have a leg to stand on. Considering you were buying something that "wasn't particularly cheap" why not just spend 5 mins checking the plans of the development?

sonastin

GDB2222 wrote: »

Possibly the disclaimers are not valid. See the recent case of Axa Sun Life Services v Campbell Martin Ltd in the COA.

In addition, the OFT apparently thinks these clauses may not be valid at all against consumers, although it's not clear whether OFT have house sales in mind - presumably this is under the Unfair Terms In Consumer Contracts Regulations.

Even if that is the case, without anything in writing, the OP would have a hard time proving that they hadn't just misunderstood what the salesman was telling them.

mufi

GDB2222 wrote: »

Possibly the disclaimers are not valid. See the recent case of Axa Sun Life Services v Campbell Martin Ltd in the COA.

Possibly. However, there may have been Special Conditions in the contract, one of which probably read something like this:

"The Buyer admits that in relation to this sale and purchase the Buyer has not relied on any representation made by or on behalf of the Seller save for any such representation that may be contained in any written communication from the Seller's Solicitors to the Buyer's Solicitors".

In a fairly recent case the Judge ruled that this special condition was binding provided the purchaser had a solicitor advising him, thus presumably not unreasonable, and that the purchaser could not simply sign them, then cheerily decide they didn't mean it after all when a problem arose.

Seems fair enough to me...