Have we rendered our home un-sellable?

[SaveMeTheWaltz]

I'll try to keep this brief. In October we purchased and moved into our new house (one street over from our old flat - we've lived in the area for years and it is generally considered a 'nice' area, so what has happened has taken us by surprise). It very quickly became clear that the tenants living in the council-owned property next door had a major marijuana habit - think acrid skunk, smoked from around 11am until bed time most days. We initially tried to address it with them politely in person, which resulted in the female tenant threatening me; after a quick call to the council we decided route go down the route of police and council involvement.

Fast forward a few months. The police have visited the property several times, and the tenants have admitted marijuana use on camera. The police have issued a community protection order against the tenants, who don't seem bothered at all and are still carrying on as they were before. The council is now refusing to acknowledge the problem, and will not respond to my emails.

This was supposed to be the home that we'd bring our children up in and live in until we got old, but the whole situation is so horrible that we'd like to cut our losses, sell up and move on. However, there's now a record of anti-social behaviour at the property next door, which we'd have to declare. Has anyone managed to sell a house under these conditions? Has anyone managed to get their local council to take drug smoking tenants seriously? Can anyone give me advice? I'm feeling increasingly desperate and trapped and would very much appreciate an outside perspective on this. Thanks for reading this.

Is there a landlord register you can look up?

@TheInfected

You can't do that. It may well have not been an issue to them

Doesn't matter if it wasn't an issue for them. That's the sort of thing you have to declare whether you're affected by it or not.

I don’t think it is. If you don’t see it as an issue and there isn’t a direct question about neighbours smoking weed (there isn’t), it would never occur to you to mention it.

AIUI Sellers are not required to disclose that the neighbours are a PITA,they only have to disclose any unresolved disputes between the sellers and the PITAs. For instance, formal complaints made about misbehaviour, noise, vandalism ,running a business without permits etc.

  IOW, an owner occupier  planning to sell,  could decide to  just ignore  bad behaviour next door, so that there is no history of complaints and  no dispute to declare. 

In the OP's situation they have complained to police and council about the neighbours, with no resolution as yet. Right now the council will struggle to evict during covid , which may explain their current silence , and could change next year. As you can't deny a dispute exists there's nothing to lose by keep logging new complaints and reporting them to the council in writing, providing the council LL with grounds for eviction later. When a dispute is resolved (departure of neighbours)it no longer needs to be declared.

I'd recommend contacting your MP, get them up to speed on the problem  and  copy all complaints to them. 

Are there any grounds to suspect they are dealing/supplying  drugs?

I work for a local council ( not in housing) but I do know how quickly (we) council officers jump when an MP gets involved. Direction comes from the top of the council.
Whilst following procedure make sure your MP is involved.

It wouldn't bother me. It’s probably on par with drinking alcohol in my mind. Be honest. Police and council contacted 2020 due to tenants smoking cannabis.

@muddledmidget

What impact was the marijuana having on your life and why did you decide to report it? I think I would only report it if they were dealing and the users were causing a nuisance coming and going, but unfortunately the route you've gone down is likely to take a long time for the council to evict them, and is probably going to have to get nastier before they will start proceedings. Taking a financial hit and selling at auction or part exchanging the house for a new build might be your easiest ways out

Living next to weed smokers is disgusting - the stench permeates everything and you can't escape it. Unfortunately they either seem to all go 'nose blind' and don't realise how strong it is and how far it travels, or they just don't give a shit. It's very unpleasant

If the police have made a community protection order asking them to stop and they haven't you need to contact the police again and say are are persisting.

I'd also recommend CCTV. It's so cheap to install these days but make sure its good enough quality.

Keep nagging at the council, a councillor, MP and the police. Make it easier for people to do something than ignore you, be at them every day.

I had this, council tenants and after 6 months of complaints they were evicted. St the moment the council cannot evict so you will need to wait until the eviction ban ends

I don't know why you think you can sue the previous tenant

It's not necessary to report any annoying neighbour behaviour, only if there's been a dispute raised in an official capacity.

Previous owner sorry. She may not have noticed or minded, but either way if she never reported it she'd have no obligation to declare it.

This would be a huge faff, but perhaps you could rent it out for 6 months to 1 year and you rent elsewhere locally. In the meantime, you keep up your campaign going with the police and Council to achieve an eviction. Rent yours as a shared house to students.

I think you have made your house unsellable for now, but if your conscious will let you (I’m not sure mine would) you could email the council and say thanks for sorting this, problem’s all gone then wait 6 months and try to sell and in the meantime grit your teeth and live with the situation and ignore it as best you can..

I think you should move as quickly as possible. This will ruin your mental health. Unfortunately anti social people get away with it. Your house will sell but maybe at a loss. You do need to declare these issues because they are official and ongoing.

When I worked as a Housing Officer no judge ever allowed an eviction through for smoking drugs, the council will get an eviction on breach of the CPO... well maybe. Everyone has the right to defend themselves in court so this may take a very long time to resolve don't give up keep your diary sheets and evidence ready for when the courts start allowing council evictions again.

I used to be a local councillor. Evictions for antisocial behaviour are notoriously difficult unless there is clear evidence of serious illegality - selling drugs rather than just using them. You would need to get the police and the council housing department on your side and the latter would want to be able to show that the tenants had made themselves intentionally homeless through their behaviour. Otherwise they would have to be rehoused by the council somewhere else and the problem would not be solved, it would just be inflicted on a new set of neighbours. Expecting a problem like this to be solved in a couple of months is unrealistic. You need to get your local councillors, MP and any local residents' groups involved. Also your immediate neighbours who might also be directly affected? You need to convince all of these people that the problem is serious and get them to badger the council. It will be a lot of work and very frustrating and time consuming and I'd say the chances of success are no better than 50 50. You'd be looking at a year at least I'd say, and there's bound to be a huge backlog of eviction cases when the courts start considering them again.

Updating this thread, partly to get it all off my chest, and partly because it might be useful for anyone going through a similar experience.

The police issued a Community Protection Notice (CPN) in March, after at least three written warnings. It helped that on both occasions when the police visited the house the whole place reeked of weed, so the problem was very clearly evidence-able.

The CPN made not a jot of different, tenants carried as before. I kept a detailed diary of marijuana use, which I submitted to the police on a weekly basis. After a few month a nice police man came and took a sworn statement from me, which was used to 'invite' the tenant to an interview under caution. We're still waiting to see what the outcome of that interview is.

Council have been rather slow and reluctant to do anything, have indicated that they might be willing to serve a letter before action. So I'm also waiting to see what happens there.

Tenants clearly think that smoking bucketloads of skunk all day is completely normal, and can't see why we've got a problem with it - this has led them to conclude that we're maliciously using it as a way of harassing them. They have retaliated with a range of behaviours designed to bully / harass us. We've had name calling, verbal aggression, borderline physical aggression, banging on the party wall, deliberate noise nuisance, and most recently, the removal of all the trellising (and my lovely plants) from the top of our shared fence. (We've managed to evidence quite a lot of this and report it to council and police). So this is turning out to be a bit of a nightmare really.

Recently noticed that our lovely home has had four different owners in ten years - really unusual in an area where family sized homes are in short supply and people tend to hang on to them for several decades. Suspect subsequent owners decided to sell up rather than confront the problem as we have done. Rather wishing that I'd taken this tactic too now.

(PS: I suspect that anyone wondering why I've got a problem with a bit of weed probably hasn't lived in a Victorian terrace next to people hotboxing their house with skunk all day.)

@SaveMeTheWaltz do you have children or do you plan to have children? It's not clear. If you only plan to have children I'd give it a proper go and try to resolve it which as PPs suggested cannot be done in 2months.

@TheInfected

Can you go down the legal route and sue who sold to you as they obviously didn't disclose the issue?

They only have to disclose official disputes, not just something they didn't like/approve of.

Thanks @SecretOfChange, yes, we have two primary school aged kids.

We kind of HAVE to confront this now - it's not just the smell / physical effects but also the dodgy stream of characters in and out of the property. It's not something that I can live with (or want my kids living with), and we wouldn't be able to sell with such a well documented anti-social behaviour problem next door. (Or at least not without a massive loss, which we can't afford unless we want to still be paying our mortgage well into our 70s!)

I hope it's resolved quickly, op. It sounds horrendous
The council really need to get their arses in gear.

We had this last year all through lockdown. It was hell on earth so I have every sympathy for you. In our case it was a private tenant and we literally kept on and on at the landlord. In the end we sold up and as luck would have it for us the tenant had just been served with an eviction notice (the landlord acted when she stopped paying rent!) so we were factual on our forms that there had been an issue but the tenant had been issued eviction notice. We moved out early this year and 4 weeks later the tenant was evicted by bailiffs so it wasn't a problem for long for our buyers.

Keep on and on at everyone you can. Push it under anti social behaviour every time. Call environmental health if music etc.... call the police for harassment. Get in touch with councillors and mp.

However, there's now a record of anti-social behaviour at the property next door, which we'd have to declare.

I reported the neighbours to the council in our old place. We didn't declare it and nothing happened.

You need to press this with the council. They don't get to ignore the problem. Is it housing association? Most have a behaviour or code of conduct charter that tenants need to abide by, especially antisocial behaviour. Get yourself in touch with your neighbourhood police officer and report every breach. Write to your local mp and get them to pressure the agencies. Don't give up.

I reported the neighbours to the council in our old place. We didn't declare it and nothing happened.
The point is that the new owners could have taken action against you. It's good that nothing happened, but it could have.

Honestly in your situation I’d find a new build who will take your house as part payment. I have lived next door to awful neighbours before it will get you down and mental health comes before money!