Garden at lower level than neighbours

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We are interested in a house and went for a second viewing yesterday. The house (and garden) lies at a lower level to one of its side neighbours (it's detached) and at a lower level to its rear neighbour. There are no retaining walls and the surface water collects in the lawn of the house we're interested in.

How easy (and how much does it cost) is it to build retaining walls that will stop surface water from neighbours' gardens draining onto the land?

It is of course exceptionally wet at the moment but given adverse weather is a fairly common feature, it may be something that occurs regularly. The lawn was like a sponge and in one place it was a little lake.

Does anyone have any advice and/or experience?

It is the responsibility of the person owning the higher garden level to have a retaining wall to hold their garden back. I would wonder why this hasn't been done.

I lived on a hill in a previous house, we were all detached in a row and the hill went (as you looked at the houses) right to left.) My house was lower than one neighbour and then higher than the other. Due to the height difference there was no privacy for myself from the higher up neighbour and no privacy from me from the lower down neighbour.

Height wise, my fence was 6.6ft and on the higher neighbour's side it was 4.6ft meaning anyone in the garden could easily see over the fence. The only solution was to apply to planning to increase the fence height but I didn't want it to feel like I had a prison yard for a back garden. Have you considered the neighbours or future neighbours might like looking over the fence at you (been there, had that)

Have a look on GardenLaw forum for fences etc, but you will find that people think nothing of having a table and chairs right next to a low fence where they can be seen from your garden and while away their day looking directly into your garden and house.

Drainage wise, where would you drain it to?

I have a small retaining wall in the middle of my own garden and there is a perforated pipe behind it and this is actually piped to a drain on my land, but this was done by a builder when I had my sloped garden levelled out.

Personally having been overlooked not only from houses and then gardens, we moved area to avoid the hilly aspect of where we previously lived because we hate it.

Maybe it depends more on which party has responsibility for that boundary?

Even with a wall drainage will be a problem. Or expensive. Having seen something similar owned by friends I'd quite honestly avoid.

We built a sump in our old house. It wasn't terribly effective. I'd avoid buying this house.

My previous house was like ContentedSidewinder's. We had several soakaways put in the garden which helped though didn't totally resolve the issue, not helped by heavy clay soil. We also put in a very tall fence (at least it was tall on our side) down one side of the garden so that our neighbours couldn't see into the garden, giving us more privacy. On the whole we were able to enjoy the garden for most of the year but there were certain "wet" spots in which plants struggled to survive.

Our neighbours' garden is about 3ft higher than ours, something I completely failed to realised when we looked around. The previous owners had massive shrubs to separate the properties but they were hideous and overgrown so we dug them up & got a fence built. Whilst the fence is normal height on our side, it is obviously quite low on their side so they can still see into our garden. But then our garden backs onto a row of houses so we always knew we'd be overlooked so it doesn't bother me that much. The most annoying aspect for me is when they put their DD's trampoline by that fence as, even when just standing on it, she can see into our garden and start pestering to be invited over for a playdate. If she could only see in and pester us when airborne, it may not happen so often.

The water just sitting there is what would worry me most about the property you've viewed. Yes, its been exceptionally wet in the past couple of weeks but most of the first part of December was dry. Is your garden higher than any of the surrounding gardens?

Are you sure that it's surface water from the neighbouring properties? It could be that because you are lower, the water table is higher.

I don't think there is an easy way to stop water from higher neighbouring properties - they'd have to sort out their own drainage.

Oooh. Thank you all very much for your help. Lots to think about.

I don't know the standing water is from the higher level gardens but it seems reasonable to assume that this is contributing to the problem of water-logging.

I think Olivia has a good point. I live on a hill with a retaining wall (about 3 feet high) between us and neighbour plus a whole load of shrubs for privacy. That part of the garden is fine at the moment and generally is quite dry as a rule.

However the bit of garden we have behind us is at a lower level than that bit and currently collecting water for the first time in 11 years. There's some weird stuff round here with underground springs though so I think it's something to do with that and the exceptional rainfall levels at the moment.