Boundary issue any advice with purchase?

[Foeveryoung1]

I am purchasing a property that has a left-hand side rear garden boundary retaining wall with the neighbours situated at the higher point on the hill. That would be left-hand side with my back against the back of the house.

The wall in question has been assessed by an independent RICS surveyor and separately by a builder as posing a threat to life. It looks like it is on its way to collapse and would severely damage other structures in the garden as well as potential hurt/kill someone if they are unfortunate enough to be around when it collapses.

We have said to the vendor that we would only proceed if they get written legal commitment from the owner that this will be rectified at a specified date.

We are worried that this will be a long drawn out process and not worth our bother of waiting for this to be resolved not least because the vendor will need to determine conclusively who has liability for the retaining wall. We think it is generally the house whose land is being retained by the wall, which would be the neighbours.

Any advice on what we should be wary of? Any experience of this issue? Should we run away from this? Should the council be informed? We’re talking here of nearly 200ft in length and over 2.5 meters in height.

I don’t know the actual legal position on this but I previously owned a property which had a retaining wall supporting two gardens behind us.

When this came down in storms the cost of rebuilding it was shared amongst us and the two other properties, there was a lot of animosity between everyone as to whose fault it was. Despite the fact our house was the original building and the other properties were built over 100 years after ours, they still tried to blame us for the failing wall which was never originally intended to be a retaining wall.

Luckily the insurance paid out for this, our share was £40,000 - this was 20 years ago.

Personally I would walk away from this house whatever is agreed.

I buy and sell property very regularly, I would walk away from anything that had either a boundary issue or a difficult structure that involved another adjoining property, it's simply buying an unnecessary headache when there are plenty of more straightforward property's out there to purchase
Sorry I'm not being positive on this one

The other thing you could do is get quotes for rebuilding the wall and reduce your offer by the middle quote amount with a view to paying for the work yourselves in order to move things along. Brick or stone built walls are expensive and I would think that the neighbours would be glad to have someone else take it. Obviously this approach doesn't offer clarity over boundaries, but it provides a solution.

The quote was £50-60k. The fact that it is considered life threatening, shouldn’t the council get involved?

I fail to see what it has to do with the council when it's on private land, but it could be queried with the Environmental Health department.

It's not environmental Health, it's building control who deal with dangerous structures.

And I wouldn't be buying it until the work is done.

And I wouldn't be buying it until the work is done nor me.

I'd walk away

First of all according to title deeds whose responsibility is the boundary as the whole left hand side business is a myth.
The sellers of the property cannot give you an assurance on behalf of another party. You need to decide if you want to go ahead with this purchase factoring in the cost of work required.

No I wouldn't walk away because of that, I'd run like the clappers! 200ft in length!

Apologies if I wasn’t clear. It was s a retaining wall as well as a boundary. Generally the land being retained is responsible. However, the vendor would have to ascertain liability. What I would want is for the vendor to get a legal commitment from the neighbour that they would fix the problem.

Also shouldn’t they inform the council given the potential threat to life?

Is a retaining wall.

@DefinitelyPossiblyMaybe your response has me in stitches.

Think we all have consensus here - run away!!

Your solicitor should be advising you on this. Its very unlikely that what you're envision will work. Even if it did, what would happen after the sale? Vendor moves on, neighbour doesn't fix the wall. You have the aggro of taking the neighbour to Court to force them to fix it, all the while living next door to them.

I want to bawl my eyes out. It was to be our forever home! 😭😭

It’s a horrible feeling, but threat to life status means just that. It’s not worth the risk.

Retaining two and a half metres of wet heavy soil for 200m is potentially a lot of soil to collapse into your land if it fails. So you need to treat it seriously.

Is it parts of the wall which require repair, or the whole 200m?

Sorry 200ft!

I wouldn’t touch it either. Sorry.

A 2.5m 200ft retaining wall of not-clear responsibility & suspect condition would be enough for me to walk away from this one tbh! Life's too short to have such worries.

I don’t know if it’s all of the 200ft (in length). I suspect it might be part but I am not entirely sure. We will continue looking but I was hoping there might be some kind of way to make this work for us.

It is very possible that the reason this wall has been undermined is work being done by a house one further along who has dug a basement.

Well that's another to run away then. There will be other houses.

No way. This isn’t your forever house. It’s someone else’s nightmare purchase.

Run, don't walk. Unless the work was done prior to exchange I wouldn't touch this house.

Threat to life. How could you feel safe enough to proceed? No reduced offer, it needs to be rebuilt.