Need advice: bad neighbours

Smi1er

Fighting them will take years. Stress, stress and some more stress. You'll be keeping a diary of this, and that. Meeting with that person, meetings with that person. Meanwhile they'll be making your life a complete misery.

You do have one major advantage. You rent.

I know you said you don't want to move but I think you have no choice. Give notice now and find somewhere else to live.

garth549

I know it's not what you want to hear (and you shouldn't have to) but from experience I agree you might be better simply moving. If you're renting I'd say it's the much easier option.

At our last house we had major problems with our neighbour's 3 dogs barking aggressively and howling for hours upon hours all day, every day. Often this also extended late or into the early hours when they were working late or out.

They even went on holiday and left them all at home with someone just nipping in once a day to feed them. We literally got no sleep the entire time they were away. My wife had to go and sleep at her mums. Looking back it was absolutely ridiculous - I even went as far as taping sheets over their front windows so the dogs couldn't see out and bark at everything that moved! Didn't help

The neighbours simply didn't care and wouldn't do anything. We eventually got to our wits end and sold up and moved. We couldn't put up with it for one more week, let alone the 6 months it would have probably taken by going down official channels (complaining to environmental health etc). Even then it might not have gotten sorted.

Davesnave

garth549 wrote: »

The neighbours simply didn't care and wouldn't do anything. We eventually got to our wits end and sold up and moved. We couldn't put up with it for one more week, let alone the 6 months it would have probably taken by going down official channels (complaining to environmental health etc). Even then it might not have gotten sorted.

How did you sell your house with all that noise going on? What did you write on Form TA6 where the question asks about anything which has caused, or might cause,a dispute?

corell

Hi, I realise I've missed some responses so will answer what I can.
I'm unsure how they got references for the house as they were thrown out of their last one.
Our rent is one of the lowest priced for the type of house in the area. We wouldn't get another in this condition for this price, it would be an older/colder house.
We have another 6 months on our tenancy. We have family just a few doors away, so we would rather not move if we didn't have to, but are considering it if we can't get a solution here. A move to another house would be possibly an extra 100-200 a month, which although isn't impossible, it's moving away from family and friends and we have children who don't want to move. We have lived here happily for 5 years, and every other surrounding property have had an issue with these people at some point since they moved in.

I've been trying to find the property owner's details, and what I have believed all along is that it belongs to "Mrs A", however having paid for the title plan on the land registry and it's showing the owners as "Mr & Mrs D" and their address as our neighbours address. So obviously we cannot send a letter there! Any idea why this would be listed as such? I'm unsure what to do now as I'm assuming "Mrs A" is just the agent (possibly) and I have overheard the tenants referring to "A" in the past. The company "Mrs A" advertised with doesn't seem to have a contact number, just an address. So I can't call to check the details. Feeling stuck.

Why would the land registry show the owners details as the property address if they do not live there?
Thanks if you got this far, I appreciate the advice.

Hutch100uk

God I sympathise with you. I spent 3 years in a house where our next door neighbour's son got progressively worse. He used to have wild parties every time his parents went on holiday (which was several times a year). I tried ringing the police every time - they would knock on the door, tell them off but then it would all just happen again. I tried complaining to the mother but she just acted all shocked and said she would have a word - made no difference. Unfortunately I rented and they owned so couldn't try to get them out. We ended up moving and it was the best decision we ever made. The stress completely vanished and we just enjoyed living a nice quiet life, in a quiet house.
You can't put a price on peace in your own home so I think I would be making plans to move when you're tenancy is up.
In the meantime, can you possibly try recording/videoing any illegal behaviour (discretely) and please start calling the police every time something happens. Keep persevering with contacting the landlord because they may not care, but they may also be unimpressed and want them out.

corell

Hutch100uk wrote: »

please start calling the police every time something happens.

All this does is cause them to come shouting at our door. This is why I wanted to try the landlord. The police do absolutely nothing! They are told to go away but less politely, and this time without checking the other tenant was ok, they left! I called the police back straight away as soon as they were at my door banging and shouting and they said they would send someone back but no one came, not even the officers who had just left a minute before and would have still been on this road.

We had family move here to be with us as it was such a good neighbourhood. I'd rather the bad neighbours leave if I can help it. If not, we will move. I just want to make sure I have tried.

Davesnave

corell wrote: »

Why would the land registry show the owners details as the property address if they do not live there?

Because it's not the Land Registry's business to know the details of people's lives, like whether they rent out the property. These details may change from time to time.


They simply record who owns it.

SeasideSally

A number of years back, my husband and I went down the route of fighting bad neighbours, and I know how soul destroying it can be when you have no peace in your own home.

We were initially advised by the police to try mediation. We did this. It made things worse. We were also told by the police to log everything, so we did. We were told to record and photograph the bad behaviour, and we did that too. Eventually, when we asked the police to actually do something about the problem (other than telling us to get more evidence), the community officer informed us that the logs, photographs and videos could be regarded as a form of harassment, so we should stop what we were doing.

We decided to go down the civil route, which basically involved a solicitor charging us a lot of money to send letters to our neighbours insisting their behaviour should stop. The neighbours wrote similar letters to our solicitor, claiming that we were the problem. We played solicitor-neighbour ping-pong for months and ran up a large bill in the process. This did nothing to resolve the problem.

Our neighbours were notorious. Countless people (not just in the street, but around the town) had problems with them. Nobody wanted to get involved. They'd stand there and watch, but they never saw or heard anything.

We moved away. My only regret is that we didn't do it sooner. I would never give up so much of my life for such a futile enterprise again. Life is just too short.

Noctu

FBaby wrote: »

There are only two options, you take it full on, involve the police, joint complaints with other neighbours etc..., although this will be stressful and no assurance that it will lead to them going, at least not for some time.... or you move.

Completely agree.

If they're on a 6 month AST, and you really don't want to move... then you could try to tackle it full on and see if they get evicted soon after the 6 month mark.

Then if no joy, move.

Murphybear

It's not only tenants who are awful neighbours. We rented a property which was mid terrace. One of the neighbours was definitely the neighbour from hell but as he owned his house there wasn't a lot we could do. He really disliked us but we really don't know why. We were quiet, no children or dogs and no loud music. He and his 4 kids were noisy. My OH asked him once to turn the music down a little and the neighbour turned on him being verbally abusive and threatening him physically. Most of the street could hear. We decided to move, it was the best thing we ever did.

We found out afterwards that this was his normal behaviour, it wasn't just us.