Has anyone ever had Japanese Knotweed?

[concertplayer]

Did you manage to get rid of it? (possibly using a company?)
Was it difficult to mortgage/insure/sell?
Any experiences would be great.
This is my friends potential dream home so gutted

[shovetheholly]

I haven't had it personally, but I live a few hundred yards up a hill from a river where there is a serious infestation. It does respond to the repeat treatment of injection to the stems with high-strength weedkiller, and the council are very definitely winning against it. It is by no means impervious to the suggested treatments.

I think if you take immediate, decisive action and you follow up straight away if you see it reappear, this is not the fearsome and evil triffid that people fear. In fact, a lot of the problem seems to be the panic induced by it amongst buyers and mortgage lenders, and not the plant itself. The exception might be where you have a house that backs onto wasteland that isn't being managed and is absolutely infested. In those conditions, it might be very difficult indeed to stop the plant repeatedly moving in. However, it could still be controlled in the garden itself with annual treatments. For a dream home, it might be worth budgeting that in.

Do make sure that it definitely is knotweed! Just as there are a lot of people panicking that perfectly ordinary spiders are false widows, there is a lot of misidentification of knotweed.