Should I sue my neighbour?

[RedBricksandMortar]

I'm due to move in a semi detached house next month. There was structural work needed on the party wall which was flagged up during the survey. I approached the neighbours and had their permission to carry out the repairs. They also signed the Party Wall Act. They offered to pay half of of the costs but haven't paid me a penny. I've chased them three times but they refuse to respond to calls and emails. I'm thinking of suing them in the small claim court for £1,130 which is what they promised to pay. I'm considering suing out of frustration and not wanting them to get away with it.

Would I be crazy to sue my neighbour before I've even moved in?

OP it sounds like you’ve done everything you should have done, and the neighbours are in the wrong. I’d be really pissed off if I were you.

However.

Having good relationships with neighbours is very important. Especially if you share a wall. When you get along with neighbours, your life is much easier - from taking packages in for each other, getting help when self isolating, taking children to play, sharing tools and gardening equipment. Do you know if your new house has good soundproofing? Noisy neighbours can make your life hell if you don’t get along.

What about if you decide to extend your house, will they cause trouble?

Much as you have every right to be angry, think about the long term consequences.

Go see them once you’ve moved in, and try and resolve this face to face.

Have your builders said anything about how the neighbours were with them? I’m wondering if relations broke down a bit there and so they are thinking “sod it, they’ve caused us a lot of hassle and upset, why should we pay half for what needed doing anyway”.
I’m not saying that’s reasonable and I wouldn’t go back on a written (emailed ) agreement but are they satisfied with the work completed? Do they think their half is a reasonable cost?

Anything our neighbour’s contractors have done on shared areas was agreed and quoted for separately with us. Paid separately and directly to the contractor too.

For small claims you'll need to do a letter before action anyway. Google the process and go from there.

I'm seriously hoping you're not my new neighbour. Nobody's touched the wall though so I hope I'm ok.

That’s really unfair. The neighbour agreed, in writing, to pay half of a repair which is of mutual benefit. We agreed to pay a neighbour roughly what the OP has asked for regarding our border the other day. We transferred the cash when we got home and saw that it had been done, because we’d agreed to it and it was of mutual benefit and crucially, we are people of our word.

The neighbour sounds like a wanker. You don’t agree then ignore the person who’s paid the full amount. That’s wanker behaviour.

Okay, your new neighbours-to-be are prize bell ends. But...

You say that you aren't worried about resale because you intend to live there for the next 20 years. Think of that thousand quid as a pound a week over that next 20 years.

Is it really worth having neighbours who hate you, who will refuse to cooperate over any and every piece of maintenance that might need done requiring their consent, who will take every opportunity to fuck you over, for a quid a week?

Also they could have claimed on their buildings insurance

I very much doubt that. It probably comes under the category of maintenance.

[quote RedBricksandMortar]@NameChange2PostThis
Thank you for sharing your experience. Can you explain in more detail why you decided to cough up thr whole cost of the works and not pursue your neighbours? Have your relations been soured anyway and have you ever regretted your de?[/quote]
@RedBricksandMortar
The work needed doing, we had builders on site already, we thought insurance probably wouldn’t cover it if we failed to fix it. It was a similar cost to yours but we figured we didn’t have a legal case as they didn’t have to agree to it. Our neighbours rent out the property so we don’t have to deal with them day to day but still not keen to sue as we’d have to declare in future sales plus just seems petty to sue the neighbours. Never regretted our decision. An email is not a contract. Also we’ve done small claims before (with a dodgy builder). We won the case, paid for bailiffs, still ended up with nothing - legal action is not a panacea.

If I was the neighbour, i wouldn't have agreed to pay half in any event. I would have left it to the seller to sort, otherwise there would have been no sale. The onus was on them to sort it.

Sounds like they are seeing what they can get away with. There are risks to tackling it as pp have mentioned but also risks to bring seen as unable to assert yourself too.
I'd be tempted to try to get the measure of them from the neighbour and find out if they are likely to be vindictive etc. If not they are being cf's and tight with money and a solicitor letter might just make them crack the wallet open.

I wouldn’t have agreed to pay in the first place.

While saying in an email they would go halves and then not giving you the money seems a bit off on the face of it, they didn’t actually have to agree to do anything at all and could just as easily have said no to the work meaning you wouldn’t have been able to buy.

Given you were prepared to do the work regardless of whether they agreed to pay I think you’re a bit of a chancer both expecting them to pay and now threatening to take them to court over what is probably not even 0.5% of the property value. You presumably didn’t offer asking price for it anyway so might possibly have expected to pay more for the house anyway.

Seriously getting this worked up over a grand when you’re already hundreds of thousands in debt to the mortgage company is petty.

To make it Contractual, I believe the next door neighbours would have had to sign a payment schedule or indeed show commitment by making one payment, even by sending you just one penny. At the moment what they have emailed is worthless.

You could sue, but when push comes to shove and you need help in an emergency and no-one else is around or the phonelines are down & no-one else in contactable, which situation would you rather be in?

Money and principals are all well and good in certain situations but not all. Having lived next to shitty neighbours and having to up sticks and now living to fantastic people, I know what my choice would be....& that’s priceless.

Good luck in your new home, OP.

@AlternativePerspective OPs a chancer, really?! Apply your username to this again lol

If anyone's a chancer, its surely the neighbours, not only chancers but entitled as well to think (if the case) that they can agree to pay their share of remedial works and then renege on that!

OP, I would keep trying to get them face to face before you move ahead with legal action just to give them the biggest benefit of doubt and show you're the reasonable party in all of this.

@callmeadoctor

If I was the neighbour, i wouldn't have agreed to pay half in any event. I would have left it to the seller to sort, otherwise there would have been no sale. The onus was on them to sort it.

Onus in the sense that you think your neighbour's desperation to sell will put them between a rock and a hard place if you refuse to accept your responsibility as an equal owner of the wall?

You realise the sellar (or the OP could have gone for a Party Wall Award that would oblige the neighbour to pay? And that she might have if the neighbour had not agreed to the less-expensive=for-all-of-them agreement to just pay half.

This thread is making it clear that if you buy a house with a party wall, as well as getting information on neighbour disputes, sellers should be obliged to provide details of all maintenance to shared property and who paid for it so you can see if the lack of disputes is just because your seller rolls over despite the neighbour still being a cunt. Especially since so many people seem to be happy to endorse cuntish behaviour.

OP: You might like to post your question on Garden Law forum to see what opinions you get from there. It's a great site to go to for anything to do with property and law.

I don't think you need to do anything right now. It might be worth asking a solicitor what the statute of limitations might be for the debt - an initial quick Google suggests it may be 6 years but this may be something you want to check.

I would not be inclined to chase the money at this point, assuming you have plenty of time to pursue an action, and plenty of evidence that the money is owed to you. Move in. See what's going on with them - maybe there's some kind of serious problem at their end.

And if it turns out that they are just CFs then you can still take them to court. I just wouldn't rush to do it until you've moved in and established yourselves to other neighbours as reasonable people.

@Cloud21 To make it Contractual, I believe the next door neighbours would have had to sign a payment schedule or indeed show commitment by making one payment, even by sending you just one penny. At the moment what they have emailed is worthless.

Is that your legal opinion?

@Yellownotblue Yes, I think it’s called a
promisary note or similar?

Appears to be an offer (made by the OP) met by acceptance (the email) so there appears to be consensus ad idem and therefore a contract. It doesn't involve the alienation of land so isn't required to be in writing so no need for promissary notes (!), etc.

I'd do a Letter before Action and then a small claim. Better to start out firmly with new neighbours as letting this go at an early stage is only going to cause resentment to build up. Some posters are remarkably timid!

They also signed the Party Wall Act.

What precisely do you mean when you say this? Did you serve a party structure notice in accordance with the Act?

Was the work done to a shared structure? If you hadn't done it, would they have had to do it themselves at some point?

I think this matters, because if you did work to your own property, which happens to be on the party wall but is all on your side, then while they offered to contribute they didn't actually have to, so pursuing them would be less reasonable (neighbour dispute creation aside)

But if the work was to shared property, or to both side of the party wall - theirs and yours - then there was a moral, if not legal (?) obligation for them to pay.

It does sound like you are going to pursue them regardless, but I would again urge extreme caution. Read up about some neighbour disputes, and this about whether you want to potentially live through that?

*think

@raddledoldmisanthropist

Perhaps they are busy. Perhaps they are broke. Perhaps they are having a hard time (mental health, bereavement, anything).

Assuming you can't avoid buying the place, wait until you move in then go and speak to them like normal people do and bring it up gently- ideally after the first time you meet.

Do this before the solicitors letter or the law suit or anything else. Since they offered to pay I'd want to do everything I could before suing a neighbour, let alone one which shares a wall.

This

I actuallly feel stressed on behalf of the neighbours now. Youre immediately assuming that theyre trying to rip you off rather than just not being able to afford it. They may have found it hard to say no to your persistant requests before.

They could have at least replied if they are struggling to pay, the op has already said she has offered them the option of paying in instalments, I think the op has been quite accommodating.
Those saying that you don’t want to sour relationships with your neighbours, surely they are already soured, I would find it hard to have any relationship with them after this.
That said, I’m not sure the small claims court is the way to go at the moment. I would try and catch them in and speak to them face to face, using the I’ve sent emails but I don’t think you’re getting them etc. I know that you have tried already and have not caught them in so I think I would just wait until I have actually moved in with more chance of seeing them. At least this way you can gauge their reaction and decided where to go from here. Obviously if they say we’re not paying - small claims court, whereas if they say oh sorry we keep meaning to sort this - set up an arrangement with them.
If this isn’t resolved there would certainly be no give on future discrepancies, if they want my permission for something they’ll have to pay up first etc.

@RedBricksandMortar.
I can see that they have bad form. BUT you contracted the work to happen. Not them. You're liable for the bill and any offers they made are purely that, offers. They're not obligated to pay. There was no contract.

By all means sour the relationship even further. But don't expect that they won't also take issue with your conduct.

20 years living next to the most awkward neighbours from hell is a long 20.years, for a bill you had to budget for regardless.... Their contributions were a bonus....