Selling House - Nightmare Neighbour/Drain Issue

Brock_and_Roll

Exactly, there's always a price that will sell!

I'll bid £10k today in cash without even looking a the place !!!

Smodlet

No-one should have to put up with any of the issues the OP has had to. No-one, imho, should have to put up with unpleasant neighbours ever, in an ideal world. The law regarding antisocial behaviour in this country is crying out for drastic change, imo.

We should not have to live in a world where Channel 5 and its ilk make documentaries about people's misery for the amusement of the smug who do not have to endure such circumstances.

I wish you all the luck in the world, OP, and second the idea you should consider selling at any price, especially to the council. Here's hoping your scumbag neighbours get an overdose of their own medicine.

phoebe1989seb

Really sorry to hear you've been having to put up with this for so long, OP, especially the poisoning of your pets

I'm in the auction camp, although having put our own house into a traditional auction a couple of years ago I can confirm that if your property is unique - as ours was - it isn't always a foregone conclusion that it will sell. Despite tons of viewings/downloading of the legal pack our house - priced far lower than similarly sized/condition period houses - failed to sell. We ended up selling after the auction to a couple who had missed out when we'd purchased the house three years previously. Eventually we achieved slightly above the auction reserve price.... which was a stonking loss on what we'd paid but we were glad to move on and fortunately were still able to buy another house with cash.

I'm wondering how much lower you can go though if you said you'd already reduced the price by £100k?

Good luck whatever you do......

parkrunner

phoebe1989seb wrote: »

Really sorry to hear you've been having to put up with this for so long, OP, especially the poisoning of your pets

I'm in the auction camp, although having put our own house into a traditional auction a couple of years ago I can confirm that if your property is unique - as ours was - it isn't always a foregone conclusion that it will sell. Despite tons of viewings/downloading of the legal pack our house - priced far lower than similarly sized/condition period houses - failed to sell. We ended up selling after the auction to a couple who had missed out when we'd purchased the house three years previously. Eventually we achieved slightly above the auction reserve price.... which was a stonking loss on what we'd paid but we were glad to move on and fortunately were still able to buy another house with cash.

I'm wondering how much lower you can go though if you said you'd already reduced the price by £100k?

Good luck whatever you do......

Very little based on this,

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/23061485#Comment_23061485

jamie_128

webuyanyhouse. com

smartpicture

Since your specific issue is the drains, you could pay (if you can afford it) to replace the shared connection with a direct connection. I did this while I was having an extension installed, so already had builders on-site to dig the trench, so not sure how much it would cost if starting from scratch. And then you can buy a lockable manhole cover so they can't access it. Although it may be throwing good money after bad.

You could maybe ask the water board if they would consider replacing the manhole cover the neighbours are using with a lockable one that only they can access, in order to save themselves the cost of keep coming out to fix the issue?

Davesnave

Post 21 and I'm asking why you didn't just sell the house many years ago at the price that would have shifted it?

That's what I'd have done, because there is a price at which someone else's desire to own will overcome any doubts they have. Just look at all the properties still sold in areas of high flood risk.

I think that while you may hate the situation, you fear the remedy even more. While that state of mind continues, nothing can change.


PS. If your garden is large enough, you could possibly go independent with drains via a package treatment facility of your own, like we have in the country.

Brock_and_Roll

If the OP goes down the auction route it will definitely sell straight away. Maybe not top dollar but then with the dispute issues, top dollar might be achieved with a private sale.

Many investors/developers/landlords that buy at auction will be like myself - not give a monkeys about any troublesome neighbours that will soon find they have bitten off a lot more than they can chew if they cause trouble.

Romano10

I actually was all set to sell to a cash buying company, reluctantly, and at a great loss, but had had enough, up until two weeks ago. When the estate agent for the house I was meant to be buying (I am severely limited with the houses I can buy due to the obviously terrifically low amount cash companies offer) suddenly announced out of nowhere, that the house was suddenly to be sold to someone else, who had apparently viewed the house before me and made an offer, but had for some reason failed to produce any proof of funds at that point, and for some reason was able to make an offer, without producing any of the paperwork specifically required of me.

When I called to book my original viewing of the house I intended to buy, I had already thoroughly checked everything out, sorted everything with the cash company, and checked before I went on everything I needed to make an offer, and the estate agent informed me of everything I would need BEFORE any offer could be made. I also asked repeatedly and throughout if there were any other offers or interest on the property, as it was 8 hours travel away from where I am now living, and obviously I did not want to go to all the effort and expense of getting involved with anything if we were not going to get anywhere with it, and was told repeatedly that there were no other existing offers of interest throughout. So everything was moving forward, the survey on my house had been done etc, and we were just meant to be waiting for the owner of the house I was buying's daughter to return from abroad, as the owner was apparently elderly and in a care home, so could not deal with the paperwork herself.

So despite me being the person who was meant to be buying the house, as far as we were being told, and who had produced all the necessary paperwork etc, the estate agent suddenly announced literally out of nowhere, that a previously unmentioned interested party had supposedly viewed the property conveniently just before me, and had made an offer, without the necessary proof of funds, and had then returned weeks later, with this proof, and they had then decided to sell the house to them instead, because according to the estate agent, the owner felt a 'moral obligation' to sell the property to them, because they viewed it first.

So I have spent money on solicitors, a survey etc, and am now back to square one, and now also back to being stuck in my original property with nightmare neighbours blocking my drains etc, where previously up until a couple of weeks ago, I did actually think I would be moving before Christmas, at last.

I have obviously formally complained to the estate agent, and they have been utterly awful about it, and that is putting it mildly. I am going through their 'Internal Complaints Procedure', such as it is, just as a matter of course, and intend reporting them to the Ombudsman, but obviously that does little to help me. So really I'm just trying to survive to be perfectly honest, in the utter chaos they have left me in.



At the moment there is just nowhere for me to buy with the extremely limited funds I have. I do not want to just buy anywhere, and potentially end up with similar problems somewhere else, so obviously want to do my research and find a better alternative if at possible, and not leave myself worse off. Plus I am waiting to see what can be done about the situation with the house I was trying to buy, having invested money in it already, in the hope that that situation may potentially be recoverable, although I know it is unlikely.

This situation is obviously !!!!!, but 'Better the devil you know' as the saying goes, for as long as I'm stuck here, and I am stuck here, whatever.

Parkrunner that was 2009, prices have gone up a bit since then, thankfully.

Smartpicture that is what I'd like to do, the direct drain ultimately, but not sure of the cost. I just didn't know if that were even a real possibility tbh, but it sounds like it is. The locked manhole in the neighbour's garden also sounds like a good idea. I'm not sure if they have some right to access it though. I don't know why they would need access, I only need access to my manhole because they keep blocking it, and would never need to access mine otherwise. The water company are now also responsible for that drain, and have been for a while now, so it's not like the neighbours would need to access it to allow a plumber in it or anything. But the one in their garden is in the middle of their garden, quite far away from their actual property, and actually now under the floor of an outbuilding they've now built, so no one can see them accessing it. Whereas mine is right at the back of my house, right behind my bathroom. I can't really see why they would need access to a manhole that isn't technically connected directly to the pipes coming out of their property. Again, so I can't why a plumber even repairing something within their property would need access to it. I mean their drain does connect to it, but only after some quite some length. I think I may look into writing to the water company and suggesting this as a first step. It's worth a try I guess. It's just a shame they seem more interested in avoiding the issue and responsibility for it than anything else. If they did that it would also highlight the fact that if it were locked, my drain would never get blocked again, after being blocked every other months for decades.

Davesnave in answer to your amateur psychology, that is NOT what you would have done, had you actually been in MY situation, it's what you THINK you would have done, actually clearly having no idea or real understanding of my situation, and I have already fully answered yours and anyone else's assumptions so I repeat the answer here again:

"They are as bad as I say, and I have 'put up with it', not having much choice, because as I say, they have a corrupt police relative who falsified police records and deleted body worn video evidence, and I spent years fighting that. It literally took me years to get the police records changed, and even when I did, they poisoned my pets in retaliation, so obviously it's hard to get anywhere when even when you do, you have nowhere to go to for any real 'justice'.

Also I have been disabled and seriously ill for the past decade, which is one of the reasons they have set upon me, being prejudiced bullies anyway, and taking full advantage of that, so I have obviously had other things to deal with. I have also tried to sell my house a number of times over the years, without success. I tried to sell in 2009, 2017, 2018 and now this year. The time in between I was too ill to even attempt it."

If you think fighting multiple sadistic prejudiced bullies, corrupt police officers and a corrupt police force was easy, particularly when you're seriously ill and disabled, and totally alone, surrounded by those multiple bullies, and getting falsified police reports changed, and continuing to fight these people, and keep coming back at them, in spite of EVERYTHING being against you, good luck with that. If it had been in any way possible for me to move before now, I wouldn't be here, writing this.

The fact that I remain in this situation is due to the tremendous injustice I have had to fight, over and over again, not down to my inability to fight injustice, or because I somehow don't want to fight that injustice, or because I'm somehow 'afraid' of the alternative, of actually having a life. I have spent YEARS, fighting these people and have reduced their nonsense to the petty idiocy I have described, from the great heights of bullying it once was, totally alone, so please don't deem to describe me like I'm some weakling who is 'afraid' of having a life, or somehow choosing to be stuck where I am, denying MYSELF, a life I have desperately fought to try and have, and battled through illness and disability and bullying and prejudice and sexism for literally YEARS to get to.

It's not really on is it, and it's not particularly constructive.

AdrianC

Romano10 wrote: »

I actually was all set to sell to a cash buying company, reluctantly, and at a great loss, but had had enough, up until two weeks ago. When the estate agent for the house I was meant to be buying (I am severely limited with the houses I can buy due to the obviously terrifically low amount cash companies offer)

Might it be worth you trying to "break the chain" and move into rented?

If you're buying right at the bottom of the market, you need to bear in mind that you might be getting straight back into a similar situation to your current one...

So despite me being the person who was meant to be buying the house, as far as we were being told, and who had produced all the necessary paperwork etc, the estate agent suddenly announced literally out of nowhere, that a previously unmentioned interested party had supposedly viewed the property conveniently just before me, and had made an offer, without the necessary proof of funds, and had then returned weeks later, with this proof, and they had then decided to sell the house to them instead, because according to the estate agent, the owner felt a 'moral obligation' to sell the property to them, because they viewed it first.

Unfortunately, all's fair in love, war and house buying. You hadn't exchanged contracts, so either side can just change their mind for whatever reason.

The reason the vendor changed to the other buyer is, to all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Maybe they offered £50k more than you. Maybe they just got on better.

I have obviously formally complained to the estate agent, and they have been utterly awful about it, and that is putting it mildly. I am going through their 'Internal Complaints Procedure', such as it is, just as a matter of course, and intend reporting them to the Omsbudsman, but obviously that does little to help me.

It just wastes your time, effort and blood pressure. The EA didn't decide to change buyers - the vendor did. For all you know, the EA tried to talk them out of it and to stick with you.