Neighbour trying to sabotage house sale- please advise

momo_gogo

Hi, hoping somebody could advise me about a problem I am having selling my house:

We are currently trying to sell our house at the top of a small close (less than 30 properties) in a suburb of Nottingham where we have lived for 9 years. It is not the greatest area of the city but our road is generally very quiet and we know and get on ok with our immediate neighbours and have had no problems with anyone else who is living on the street.

On Tuesday we agreed a sale with a lovely couple who were in an excellent position due to their previous purchase falling through. However the lady turned up at the estate agents in tears on Wednesday and withdrew their offer. We had been away overnight and while we were out they had decided to come and look around the Close. During their visit they had been apparently intercepted by another resident of our road who told them it would be a terrible mistake to buy our property. They told our purchasers that a house on the opposite side of the close was being let out to different people every fortnight and that these various people were making life hell for everyone who lives here. We were completely blindsided by this as we have never had any issue or dealing with the property that is supposed to be a problem and the house in question has been let to the same people for over a year. Is there anything we can do about somebody telling lies to potential purchasers?

Our first problem is trying to track down who might have spoken to our purchasers. The estate agent tried to find out but the buyers refused to clarify as apparently the woman had asked not to be identified and they felt they should protect the person who had 'saved' them from making a bad buy!

I realise there is a possibility the buyers just got cold feet but having met them it seems very unlikely they would put on such a convoluted and detailed act of deception when they could have just said they have changed their mind/ couldn't get a mortgage etc. Likewise, I am sure the estate agent couldn't be bothered to dream up such a complicated set of lies. It seems most likely to me that somebody has taken it upon themselves to approach people who are looking around.

We have had other booked viewers mysteriously get cold feet which we just thought was to be expected, but now we are wondering if somebody is actively warning people off. The only possible suspect we can think of is an elderly lady who lives on the opposite side of the street fairly equidistant between us and the supposed problem house. She is in during the day and would have had our purchasers walk past her house if they were going to look at our garage. I was not aware of her having any problem but she would have been in her house at the time and we have once seen her disagree with her immediate next door neighbour about parking so we are now wondering if she is generally a grumpy/ unhappy and possibly confused person.

It doesn't seem in the interest of anyone who already lives here to put off nice respectable people from moving in, so it seems to me that the advice giver can only be misguided, have a problem with us, somehow believe they can profit from us having to sell for cheap or genuinely think they are giving good advice.
We are on very good terms with our next door neighbours so I will be going round tomorrow to see if they have any insight- luckily they are also friends with the people who on the opposite side of the close so they may help me get some information.

If anyone has any advice, legal or otherwise about what else I could do I would really appreciate it. Pretty devastated to recieve this information today having worked extremely hard to prepare our property for sale, and present it looking its best (not the easiest when you have a toddler following you around untidying all your tidying). I can barely believe that somebody would stitch us up like this! I am happy to provide more detail or background clarification if this would help.

Cheers

Electric_Monk

Could you set up a "mystery shopper"-type affair? Get some friends (not known to your neighbours) to view the house, sniff around, speak to some neighbours/etc. and simply root out the offending parties in that way? Then at the very least you'll know if someone is doing it, and if so, who

tommie1shunt

Electric_Monk wrote: »

Could you set up a "mystery shopper"-type affair? Get some friends (not known to your neighbours) to view the house, sniff around, speak to some neighbours/etc. and simply root out the offending parties in that way? Then at the very least you'll know if someone is doing it, and if so, who

Think Electric Monk plan is a good one, when you find out who is the culprit, you can napalm them, smells great first thing in the morning.....

m0bov

Why not speak with the buyers and ask them for description and explain its nonsense, sounds like they are gutted. You could even arrange for them to speak to the so could rented house to reassure them?

pinkteapot

m0bov wrote: »

Why not speak with the buyers and ask them for description and explain its nonsense, sounds like they are gutted. You could even arrange for them to speak to the so could rented house to reassure them?

Trouble is, they might be reassured on that front but the fact there's a barmy neighbour interfering and telling lies will probably be enough to put them off in itself!

Mystery shopper idea is a great one.

googler

If I were the agent, I'd be door-knocking the neighbours to promote the property to them, see if I could weed them out from the reaction to this.....

Time for your agent to get out of their office and out of their comfort zone if they want to achieve a sale.

momo_gogo

Thanks for the mystery buyer suggestion Electric_monk- I agree that would be the best way to unearth the culprit. A friend of mine is supposed to be coming to visit anyway so I will see if she can wander around with some estate agents particulars first and see if anyone approaches her. I agree with googler that the estate agent should do something and I will suggest as much to them tomorrow, but they have been pretty useless so far.

I noticed there is a builder working out the front of a house two doors down so I thought it would be worth asking him if he had seen what had happened on Wednesday morning. He said that he had seen and spoken to the couple who were looking at our house as they had driven up and asked him about the area. He said he told them that he didn't live here but in the time he had been working on the road that it had seemed very quiet. He was very vague about what he saw the buyers doing next, but he didn't seem at all surprised I was asking him about it or that the buyers had dropped out. In general he seemed evasive and like he felt awkward about what I was asking. I feel certain he knows who they spoke to as it would be almost impossible for him to miss it, given the road would be empty and very quiet. Unfortunately I couldn't speak to him for very long as I was running late and by the time I got back he was gone. I have been considering if I could actually bribe him to tell me what he saw, but I suppose it is just about possible it was him that stirred it up.

My estate agents suggested I call the police as say this person is causing harassment, but given I don't know who it is then I can't see the police can do much. I can't speak directly to the potential buyers to find out as I don't have their contact details and they refused to identify the person to the estate agent. Also as pinkteapot says, I am kind of caught either way- once I get the police involved then I do have a problem with my neighbours that I would need to tell any new potential buyers about.

I am going to speak to my next door neighbours who I get on really well with to see if they have any ideas and try and set up my friend to mystery shop. It probably needs to be during working hours on a weekday to get them to come out of the woodwork so I will see if she can do it.

Thanks for suggestions everyone. It is making me feel a bit less helpless about the whole mess.

duchy

I'd suggest you DON'T tell your neighbours about your Mystery shopper idea -just as a precaution.

Mojisola

This kind of thing sometimes happens when someone wants to drive the price of your house down so that they/friends/developers can buy it.

BobQ

In my view the mystery shopper idea is great but not if you also start asking people if they know who made such a comment. I would get your mystery couple to view and then ask them to come back when you are out and look as if they were looking around the area.

If someone bites I would ask a solicitor to write to them pointing out the legalities of what is being done. I suspect this will stop it happening.

If not, well you can always have a quite word about your mate who is an enforcer for an unsavoury debt collection agency!

evoke

OP: when did the prospective buyers turn up at your road to have another look? Was it on the Wednesday morning?