Co-owners of freehold selling their flat

ThisIsWeird

arciere said:

I feel like I've been doing more researches myself than our solicitors during the sale. It was (still is) our first house and we didn't have much experience then, we just went with the solicitors that the estate agency recommended (surprise surprise, they're no longer recommending them).

This is the relationship we have had with the other freeholder:

- Tried to get planning permissions to rebuild a garden room that was collapsing (this was also our only entrance to our upstairs flat). They tried to block it in every possible way, writing to us that, among other things, they don't want 'builders around because they might get robbed' (no kidding)
- We've had a leak upstairs from our boiler pipes. We turned off the heating as soon as we found that out. Damage downstairs: almost nothing, a few drops of water behind an hidden cupboard. We said we were going to fix it when we could find a suitable quote, the lady stormed out of her house and started to punch and kick our door, left blood stains on it and then started to cut (even more) plants in the front garden
- Buildings insurance: I always had to manage this myself, and recently almost begged to get their 50%. At one point they said "we will do our own", to which I replied "nope, you're required to insure the entire building".

TL;DR: our relationship is bad and we've given up trying to be friendly.

Nightmare stuff, indeed. But the time to sort that has now gone.
Forget 'compensation' - that's a hiding to nowhere.
All their bizarre, destructive, and antisocial behaviour should have been challenged at the time - was it? 
ALL that matters now is that they go, and you start afresh with your new neighbour. Don't 'diss' the old neighb too much to the new ones, at least not unless you get to know them well, and it may be good for anecdotes later on :-) Just explain there were 'difficulties', and the messy garden is one of the results. You now look forward to a fresh start. 
It would be churlish, at best, to be reluctant to sign the required docs, and also counter-productive. Just do it. But, if you are uncertain about anything, then ask their conveyancing solicitor for clarification first. Yes, they'll be 'working' for your neighb, but they still need to be factual to you, and it's in their interests to keep it moving.
Or, if you have LegProt in your policy, call them up to talk about any confusing issues.

arciere

I mean, you're right, you all are. I know that that ship has sailed, there isn't much we can do about what's already been done.

Did we challenge past incidents? Of course we did, but we also tried to not 'overreact'. I won't list every single thing that happened, because I don't want to sound like a broken record (I know I probably am by now!). But, just to name a few:

- Issues with the garden: we have repeatedly told them that we will need to be compensated for the damages. They keep on saying that 'we are more affected than you because we live downstairs', as if they didn't know they had a shared front garden when they bought the property. What else should we have done? Is it worth starting a legal battle over some plants? No, according to everyone we asked (here included), and I agreed.

- Violent behaviour / damage to door: we called the police after the incident, sent them CCTV footage and we were told to get back in touch if things got worse as there wasn't much they could do at that point. Should we have sued her? We didn't, because we didn't want to escalate it even more. Oh, to add salt to the wound: she called the police to tell them that we haven't repaired our boiler, which forced the local police to call us, even though all they could say was "try to resolve this, but this is certainly not a police matter, I don't know why they called".

- She occasionally knocks on her ceiling (our floor) in the middle of the night if she hears the smallest vibration (from our portable dehumidifier, from a desktop computer, from anything). That's scary if you're sleeping. What do we do? You can tell the council, but what would happen? Pretty much nothing, other than exacerbate the situation. So we stopped using anything that could even remotely produce a vibration at night.

So, again, as much as I agree with you all, and as much as I'm convinced that we will just sign whatever we need to sign to get rid of them, because we've had enough, there's still a part of me that says 'this is your opportunity to show them that actions have consequences'.

If I could, I would tell their solicitor: we will happily sign if she rings our door and apologises in person.

ThisIsWeird

arciere said:

I mean, you're right, you all are. I know that that ship has sailed, there isn't much we can do about what's already been done.
Did we challenge past incidents? Of course we did, but we also tried to not 'overreact'. I won't list every single thing that happened, because I don't want to sound like a broken record (I know I probably am by now!). But, just to name a few:
- Issues with the garden: we have repeatedly told them that we will need to be compensated for the damages. They keep on saying that 'we are more affected than you because we live downstairs', as if they didn't know they had a shared front garden when they bought the property. What else should we have done? Is it worth starting a legal battle over some plants? No, according to everyone we asked (here included), and I agreed.
- Violent behaviour / damage to door: we called the police after the incident, sent them CCTV footage and we were told to get back in touch if things got worse as there wasn't much they could do at that point. Should we have sued her? We didn't, because we didn't want to escalate it even more. Oh, to add salt to the wound: she called the police to tell them that we haven't repaired our boiler, which forced the local police to call us, even though all they could say was "try to resolve this, but this is certainly not a police matter, I don't know why they called".
- She occasionally knocks on her ceiling (our floor) in the middle of the night if she hears the smallest vibration (from our portable dehumidifier, from a desktop computer, from anything). That's scary if you're sleeping. What do we do? You can tell the council, but what would happen? Pretty much nothing, other than exacerbate the situation. So we stopped using anything that could even remotely produce a vibration at night.
So, again, as much as I agree with you all, and as much as I'm convinced that we will just sign whatever we need to sign to get rid of them, because we've had enough, there's still a part of me that says 'this is your opportunity to show them that actions have consequences'.
If I could, I would tell their solicitor: we will happily sign if she rings our door and apologises in person.

It wouldn't be a sincere apology :-)

Good luck. I hope it goes smoothly - please do your best to make it so - and the 'mare departs :-D

BLISS!

arciere

ThisIsWeird said:

It wouldn't be a sincere apology :-)

I know it wouldn't, but I also know that it would be the last thing she would ever do. Like, ever. On the couple of occasions that she did decide to talk in person, the husband had to push her back inside the house because she was started to get 'heated'.

So if that does happen, it would be the sweetest revenge, more than any monetary compensation!

NameUnavailable

OP a few things........

What does the lease say about the gardens? From what you say the front garden is shared/common to both flats? What about the back garden, is that the same or is it demised to the other flat?

If you don't sign the paperwork you will hold up the sale and cause the neighbour a lot of hassle. You may want to do that out of revenge which is understandable. You can as already suggested raise the disputes with their solicitors (who will in turn be obliged to pass the information onto the other party). That could backfire if the buyers pull out and your horrible neighbour stays put!

You could also make the neighbour aware that you are not obliged to sign and 'have you told your buyers about our disputes' ? - that might open a more amicable conversation about putting matters right!

Another thing with a view to the future is that I understand solicitors can draw up an agreement between shared freeholders that basically agrees both will co-operate when one wants to sell etc. so it might be worth looking at having that set up now to avoid you having issues in the future.

arciere

NameUnavailable said:

OP a few things........

What does the lease say about the gardens? From what you say the front garden is shared/common to both flats? What about the back garden, is that the same or is it demised to the other flat?

The front garden is not in the leases (it's in the freehold). The back garden was split by the previous owners, so we effectively have our private garden each. Which also comes with some (minor?) annoyances: one of their windows faces our garden (it's one of those windows where only the top portion slightly opens) and they've always tried to prevent us from putting plants (in our garden) next to their window, but we managed to pretty much ignore them.

NameUnavailable said:

You could also make the neighbour aware that you are not obliged to sign and 'have you told your buyers about our disputes' ? - that might open a more amicable conversation about putting matters right!

They have already been warned about that. They've been trying to sell their flat (well, that's what they claim, we certainly haven't seen that many views) for at least 5 years now (well before the pandemic), so I did tell them that we would not agree to the transfer of the freehold unless the garden issues got resolved first. But last time I mentioned it must have been at least a couple of years ago, when I saw them pouring insecticide powder in the garden, where we also have (had) fruit plants. Obviously, no attempts on their side to reconcile.

NameUnavailable

arciere said:

NameUnavailable said:

OP a few things........

What does the lease say about the gardens? From what you say the front garden is shared/common to both flats? What about the back garden, is that the same or is it demised to the other flat?

The front garden is not in the leases (it's in the freehold). The back garden was split by the previous owners, so we effectively have our private garden each. Which also comes with some (minor?) annoyances: one of their windows faces our garden (it's one of those windows where only the top portion slightly opens) and they've always tried to prevent us from putting plants (in our garden) next to their window, but we managed to pretty much ignore them.

NameUnavailable said:

You could also make the neighbour aware that you are not obliged to sign and 'have you told your buyers about our disputes' ? - that might open a more amicable conversation about putting matters right!

They have already been warned about that. They've been trying to sell their flat (well, that's what they claim, we certainly haven't seen that many views) for at least 5 years now (well before the pandemic), so I did tell them that we would not agree to the transfer of the freehold unless the garden issues got resolved first. But last time I mentioned it must have been at least a couple of years ago, when I saw them pouring insecticide powder in the garden, where we also have (had) fruit plants. Obviously, no attempts on their side to reconcile.

arciere said:

NameUnavailable said:

OP a few things........

What does the lease say about the gardens? From what you say the front garden is shared/common to both flats? What about the back garden, is that the same or is it demised to the other flat?

The front garden is not in the leases (it's in the freehold). The back garden was split by the previous owners, so we effectively have our private garden each. Which also comes with some (minor?) annoyances: one of their windows faces our garden (it's one of those windows where only the top portion slightly opens) and they've always tried to prevent us from putting plants (in our garden) next to their window, but we managed to pretty much ignore them.

NameUnavailable said:

You could also make the neighbour aware that you are not obliged to sign and 'have you told your buyers about our disputes' ? - that might open a more amicable conversation about putting matters right!

They have already been warned about that. They've been trying to sell their flat (well, that's what they claim, we certainly haven't seen that many views) for at least 5 years now (well before the pandemic), so I did tell them that we would not agree to the transfer of the freehold unless the garden issues got resolved first. But last time I mentioned it must have been at least a couple of years ago, when I saw them pouring insecticide powder in the garden, where we also have (had) fruit plants. Obviously, no attempts on their side to reconcile.

The garden will be owned by the freehold/ers, but the lease should state who has use of it.

From your original post you seemed surprised that you were approached by their solicitors about the sale and transfer of freehold but now you say you have already discussed it previously with them? I'm confused as to your original query now!

arciere

NameUnavailable said:

The garden will be owned by the freehold/ers, but the lease should state who has use of it.

From your original post you seemed surprised that you were approached by their solicitors about the sale and transfer of freehold but now you say you have already discussed it previously with them? I'm confused as to your original query now!

As I wrote in one of my previous replies, we have a "generic" lease that the solicitors looking after our sale applied to the properties before the sale. The previous owners bought the freehold house and split it, without worrying about setting up a lease. So no, there is nothing in the lease that mentions the front garden as far as I can see, so my understanding is that, technically, only the freeholders would be able to use that space.

We (both) purchased the flats around 6 years ago. After less than two years later, they started to mention the fact that they were selling, mainly to delay whatever works we had to do ("wait until the new owners arrive"). So, even though it was already in the air and had been mentioned a number of times over the years, it did surprise me when I got the email, because it was the first time that the we saw something 'official', other than their words. Regardless, we were never informed that they were about to give our personal details to someone.

NameUnavailable

arciere said:

NameUnavailable said:

The garden will be owned by the freehold/ers, but the lease should state who has use of it.

From your original post you seemed surprised that you were approached by their solicitors about the sale and transfer of freehold but now you say you have already discussed it previously with them? I'm confused as to your original query now!

As I wrote in one of my previous replies, we have a "generic" lease that the solicitors looking after our sale applied to the properties before the sale. The previous owners bought the freehold house and split it, without worrying about setting up a lease. So no, there is nothing in the lease that mentions the front garden as far as I can see, so my understanding is that, technically, only the freeholders would be able to use that space.

We (both) purchased the flats around 6 years ago. After less than two years later, they started to mention the fact that they were selling, mainly to delay whatever works we had to do ("wait until the new owners arrive"). So, even though it was already in the air and had been mentioned a number of times over the years, it did surprise me when I got the email, because it was the first time that the we saw something 'official', other than their words. Regardless, we were never informed that they were about to give our personal details to someone.

The freeholders being yourself and the other party? Are you sure that their lease doesn't give them sole use of the front garden? If the leases don't say anything about the garden then it's something else you should seek to rectify now whilst you have the opportunity as again, it may only lead to further probelms down the line.

The other freeholder party didn't give personal details to 'someone', they gave the necessary information about the ownership of the freehold to the solicitors. They have to do that, just as you would if you were selling.

user1977

arciere said:

NameUnavailable said:

The garden will be owned by the freehold/ers, but the lease should state who has use of it.

From your original post you seemed surprised that you were approached by their solicitors about the sale and transfer of freehold but now you say you have already discussed it previously with them? I'm confused as to your original query now!

Regardless, we were never informed that they were about to give our personal details to someone.

You're looking at that point rather oddly. Your neighbours are perfectly entitled to pass on your details to their solicitor in order to progress the sale of their property. What's the problem? As above, if you were selling then you'd do the same thing.