Seller lied in Property Information form

maninthestreet

if the water is run-off from the neighbouring properties, the property owners may have a duty to prevent this.

JQ.

Does your solicitor not have the details of the vendor's solicitor, they will know where they went, as they will have sent their bill there. Surely, your solicitor just writes to their solicitor.

"Property" means all that is demised within the red line of the Land Registry Plan, which will include both the shed and the lawn.

Woodieandco

Hi - read your posting with interest as we are in exactly the same situation. Please keep updating this forum if you have time.

holly_hobby

My garden situ is virtually the same(inc neighbours whom don't suffer with a perm waterlogged garden in winter !), the amout of re-turfing we've have to do every yr is ridiclous (and having a dog doesn't help either !), to which we are considering laying a layer of drainage stones, and just ripping the lawn up and laying the false lawn stuff you can get ....

Anhyoo, apart from that I would say that the question re flooding relates to that evidenced from river/stream breaking, where this is more of a waterlogged and drainage issue, and I believe the vendor may succesfully argue this question was ambiguous enough as a layman, for their interpretation to be that it related to a history of invasive destructive flooding to the propety/residential dwellling itself.

I presume you have blds and contents - within the app where they ask if there is a history of flooding, what did you say ?

Do you take this to mean any watertable issues within the property boundaries, and therefore answer yes ?

Or do you also interpret this to relate to water invasion of the brick built dwelling itself, and therefore answer no ?

I feel your pain, as I say I have almost the same situ, but I also feel that you may well fail in any sucessful court action for the reasons given, esp if within your own blds ins app you gave a negative response to any q re flooding - as it could be argued that although bringing a case for non-disclosure, your own interpretation of the same question (if you answered no), mirrors that of the vendors response, thereby indicating that this was not a deliberate act of concealment, but open to interpretation ie what is the diff between a water logged garden that takes weeks to drain (same as my own !), or a traditional understanding of flooding i.e gallons of water creating property and structual damage.

However, this is just an opinion and how I would defend, and is not based on any professional or private experience of such a claim, so please do bottom it out with your solicitor, whom is the individual to guide you on whether there is any merit in pursuing the vendors for non-disclosure of a material fact, that may otherwise have disuaded you from purchasing the property.

Wish you well

Holly

SisterAct

Remember to take photos showing the flooding

yoyoegg

The Property hasn't flooded, the shed has.

chris_m

yoyoegg wrote: »

The Property hasn't flooded, the shed has.

From the OP;

Note: 'Property' includes all buildings and land within its boundaries.

Therefore, from that definition, the property has flooded.

Yorkie1

OP, re. locating the seller:

Your solicitor will know which solicitor the seller used and should have some ideas about how to retrieve the new address of the seller.

The seller's solicitor may claim client privilege, but as I understand it, data held under the Data Protection Act may be provided if it is needed for court proceedings or potential such proceedings. I don't know how the solicitor duty sits alongside the DPA rules.

The other potential avenue, which I don't hold out much hope for, is for the seller's solicitor to accept documents on behalf of their former client e.g. a court claim form. However, the solicitor is unlikely to have instructions from the seller to act in this way. Your own solicitor is likely to have an idea whether the seller's solicitor will simply return any documents to you, or forward them onto the seller.

harrup

I am not a solicitor.

However, I could forsee that whatever the legal ramifications for the previous owner, due to lack of honest disclosure, might have been ....I am prepared to bet that they would be mitigated, if not dismissed, by you waiting 2 years and encountering EIGHT floodings prior to taking legal step. That is one heck of a timeframe to wait before taking up the issue.

Don't misunderstand, morally I am totally on your side. I hope that if you did pursue the matter that you'd win.

I just can't see it after letting that much time lapse. How much money are you prepared to spend on solicitors arguing back and forth? The most likely reply from the ex owners - if you locate them - is that they misunderstood/misread/misinterpreted the definition of "property". No ill intentions, no dishonest representation, just an error of comprehension. Plus they WOULD and could reasonably argue why it took 8 floodings before it bothered you to an extent that you wanted to sue them 2 years after the sale.

Hence, IMO and for what it's worth....I think you were wronged but you waited too long to address it. And now you have to decide whether it wouldn't add further insult to injury to spend money on solicitors instead of spending money rectifying the flooding problem.

Good luck and do keep us posted

Then what?

steve_f_3

The statute of limitations on a claim of misreprsentation or breach of contract relating to property purchase is 6 years in the UK.

I have sought legal advice from 2 distinct law firms and they are certain I have strong case, presuming I am not exaggeratig or lying.

These forms are written in plain Engish and are for sellers to fill out, not lawyers. The forms are designed to protect the buyer in scenarios exactly like these, where there are problems that are not necessarily discoverable on a legal search or structural survey.

They lied to us, if they disclosed this, we would certainly not have bought the house. Thus they induced us to sign a contract that we never would have signed if they had represented themselves honestly.

I am also in the situation where I could not honestly sell the house without disclosing this - there I have bouht a house thay is virtually un-sellable.

Te solicitor has also told me that I will not harm my case if I pay now to have it fixed, and later claim for those costs. Provide the work paid for is purely for fixing this problem, i.e. not a load of cosmetic landscaping thrown in again.

I will get 3 quotes from landscapers, get their written statement that there is a longstanding problem. I will pay them to fix it properly.
I will wait 6 months to see if it floods again. Presuming it doesn't, I will get written statements from both neighbours, saying they have observed this recurring problem for 20+ years, and stating their opinion that the seller should have disclosed this.

I will win this case, and I hope it bankrupts them, they have made life hell for me and my kids.