Help we've moved but seller has not disclosed neighbour dispute

[wondermum1]

Hi, Feeling sick as I write this, been up for nights and think am going to go towards a breakdown. Finally bought a great house in a good area and refurbished it (£50k worth of refurb), house does genuinely look beautiful. Next door house is in a complete state and since we've been here (6 months) no one has cut or tended to garden, grass now waist high and apparently (according to neighbour otherside) now rats. Despite notes through neighbours door even offering to pay for a gardener getting negative response. Turns out she has been a nuisance neighbour for over 20 years and everyone "hates" her. When we saw the house, previous owner was apparently dealing with garden to make it look more attractive as state of house was preventing sale. When we saw it, the neighbouring house looked "ok" not great but passable and we were told was owned by an old lady who had 2 carers (not true, no old lady just two women). Am at wits end, do I sue previous owner? If I do and I sell my house do I need to disclose as well? How do I deal with the neighbour? I'm so desperate want to put house straight on market but husband says we can't do that. ;((((((( HELP!

Haha, on reflection Russ Conway WOULD be classed as anti-social....

Two of our neighbours fell out with a third because, shock horror, he has a white van for work and parks in ON HIS DRIVE. This, I am led to believe, brings the tone down

I can't help wondering how people who absolutely can't cope with the horrific experience of having an untidy garden next door to their detached house, to the extent that they want to sell up, cope when eg their spouse is diagnosed with a terrible illness, or some other genuinely difficult to deal with situation comes their way. It's likely to eventually.

OP I had a rat infestation in my (previous) garden caused by a neighbour keeping chickens. This was a semi detached house with a small back garden - still shudder when I recall seeing them out of the kitchen window.

I got on well with the neighbour, but I knew from other people's experiences with him that he was highly volatile if criticised in any way. So I called out the pest control guy from the council who put tonnes of poison down and sorted it.

Luckily the neighbour knew me to be a fellow chicken lover, so I was able to talk to him about it without him seeing me as being confrontational. I just said 'where there's chickens, there's rats, sodding things', and 'it's difficult isn't it keeping the feed where they can't get to it'. I didn't dare go as far as to ask him to keep the feed more securely, but luckily there were no more infestations after that, so maybe he did do something about it.

The same neighbour had an eyesore of a house and garden ... to be honest, that didn't bother me, but obviously the rats did.

If you haven't actually seen a rat though I wouldn't worry about it. You'd see traces of them or the diabolical creatures themselves if they were there.

I can still hear his plinkety plonkety piano playing Jodie. I'm holding you responsible, you nuisance

Did you get any sleep last night fudge?

Not much at all Jodie - although that was down to the chronic toothache I've got from (I think) a wisdom tooth. Russ Conway would have seemed a blessed relief had I been able to think straight and not been tanked up with painkillers .

Hi, I have just found myself in similar situation. We have bought a flat for our son at uni, we went twice to look round and all in order. However when we went after completion the lift doors opened and we were met with the overpowering smell of wee coming for the next door flat. He is a council tenant and the council are currently going through the legal process to gain entry. the lady that sold the property to us was fully aware of the problem and had complained along with many others to the onsite caretaker (employee of the council who are freeholders) the seller completed a Property Information Form (3rd edition) TA6, and ques 2.1 and 2.2 refer specifically to the issue of nuisance neighbours. ~I am looking at taking a small claims court action against her to get some financial recompense, will report back if I get anywhere! How much do people think I should claim for?

OP, I have a degree of sympathy for you, we recently backed out of a house purchase largely because of the next door house's condition: overgrown garden, two broken windows that are still not repaired weeks later. The crucial thing for us though, was that the house was semi-detached, and we worried about being attached to a house that wasn't being maintained properly.

If your house is detached I'd say whack the hedge up (only if you're happy to trim the full depth of the top!) and focus on your house being lovely and in the neighbourhood that you like.

Hi wondermum1 - I was just wondering if you got anywhere with this? We have a similar issue related to our neighbours - they bang on our walls throughout the day and night and clearly the sellers knew about it... We asked our solicitor and he said that we would struggle to prove that it hadn't just started when we moved in....