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.

Feel for you OP.
We lived next door to prolific weed smoker.
The old owners smoked cigarettes as well and I don't think the weed ramped up until after the father died. It used to be weekends and progressed to daily.
We had to move our baby out of the room sharing the wall as the neighbour might as well have been smoking in the room with her.
We tried air purifiers, and odour eaters etc but our house smelt like dirty tramp. The garden patio was unusable in summer.

Weed is such and antisocial smell, it's cloying, visceral, sour.

Zombie thread alert!

They're operating under such a radically different moral code to me that I don't even know what to think of this
you are trying to police what they do in their own home and you are surprised that they take offense?

@LoudestCat14 no the op came back to update but has name changes so isn't in blue

@LoudestCat14

Zombie thread alert!

The OP resurrected it under a new name

@Egeegogxmv

They're operating under such a radically different moral code to me that I don't even know what to think of this you are trying to police what they do in their own home and you are surprised that they take offense?

People don't have the right to behave A) illegally B) anti socially Just because it their own home. We live in a society- society only works of people respect the law and basic human decency.

@SaveMeTheWaltz

Wow, thanks everyone - these are all helpful responses.

We've looked into the possibility of suing the seller. She was a single professional woman who only lived here for two years - the house looked barely lived in when we viewed it, and I'm assuming that she wasn't home much, so might not have even realised there was a problem until lockdown, at which point she sold it quickfast. No record of complaint, so we have a very weak case, and it's probably not worth pursuing this line of redress.

I've not though of webuyanyhomes type thing. I wonder what sort of financial hit we would need to take? It wasn't a cheap property (we're in London), so worried that a loss could potentially run into tens or even hundreds of pounds.

The Ombudsman is a great idea, thanks SillyOldMummy. I think this will have to be my next step if the council don't respond after the Christmas break.

I'd like to go back to the police Cherrypies, but DP is less keen - the neighbours get quite loud and aggressive after a police visit, and he's not sure what the point is if it doesn't have any effect.

And NewHouseMe - thanks. I've already been in touch with the local councillor (have had a holding response but no actual reply). If I get no joy from him I may well need to get the local MP involved too.

It's such difficult situation. The neighbours have been here 30 years, and clearly think this gives them the right to behave how they like. (They've actually told us that we can't talk to the police if we expect to 'fit in' around here, which is nuts). It's a very mixed area, think council houses next to identical properties close to the million pound bracket, which is usually a good thing and everyone gets along great, but has really come round to bite us on the butt in this instance.

Any updates on the current situation op ?

@Hawkins001 she's updated under the name @MsMitford

The Property Information form asks 2 questions:

Have there been any disputes or complaints regarding this property or a property nearby?

Is the seller aware of anything which might lead to a dispute about the property or a property nearby?

So it isn't just as simple as saying "well I'm not bothered so I don't have to declare it".

@MsMitford

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.)

All the best op

The smell would drive me mad too.

Yes, I am the OP! Sorry, must have name changed since December and forgotten that I'd done it.

I’m in the same situation as you OP, we sold our previous house mainly because of the smell of weed, which got significantly worse during lockdown only to find our new neighbours had the same habit. We decided we weren’t going to move again because in our price bracket we’re always going to be near rented properties so it could just happen again, so we informed the police, I believe the police went around to have a chat with them about it and I’ve only smelled it a couple of times since, and they’ve been friendly when I’ve seen them in the street so I suspect they’re just smoking it indoor with the window shut. But it does mean if we want to move we’ll have to declare that we reported them.

Sell at auction with reserve price.

Cannabis is legal for medical use and will soon be legal for recreational use, one might say it already is de facto legal. It's just a plant, the police have actual crimes to deal with you know!!

and will soon be legal for recreational use
Really?

A) illegally
B) anti socially
A)It'll soon be legal
B) it's a smell

@Egeegogxmv

A) illegally B) anti socially A)It'll soon be legal B) it's a smell

Can you expand on the soon be legal thing?

I was once in a very similar position to you OP. Council were slow responding and actually denied there was a problem. I took advice from a firm called Sanctum Consultants who advised me on the precise wording and actions to use with the council and the problem tenants were moved on within a few months. They were replaced with a lovely couple and we were able to sell the house with good conscience and in all honesty a short time after (we had had enough of the area by then and moved to a different area where we could afford a detached house, just to ensure that something like that could not happen again). Sanctum were inexpensive and highly effective. They are former environmental health officers who had worked at councils and knew all the relevant law. It seemed to me that they cost a fraction of what a solicitor would have cost.

Can you expand on the soon be legal thing?
yes! I cant wait🤩🤩🤩

@Egeegogxmv

Can you expand on the soon be legal thing? yes! I cant wait🤩🤩🤩

Ffs. Are you being deliberately dumb?

(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.)

Nope, you're wrong there. Ours was a damp-ridden shithole council building with bare floorboards and walls like fag papers. Neighbour smoked skunk all hours (he also used smack and peddled drugs, too). It didn't bother us. He was a quiet neighbour. We've had some dire neighbours whose loud, speed filled parties (complete with one gem who had an actual band play in his living room above us) made life truly miserable so skunk smokers are minor to us.

If all else fails, maybe you could sell your property to a drug dealer as they wouldn't care about similar neighbours. Don't know how you'd go about advertising for that though!!! I am sorry that you are going through this and that councils don't seem to care about law abiding citizens.

The morals in this country are in steep decline now and have been since it's been easier to claim benefits, in my opinion. As a child of the 50s who lived in council property when there were no benefits to be had or very few, all the neighbours were nice and hard working and never caused any trouble and I think the councils were more likely to act fast to get rid of trouble makers.

I don't think you can sue the seller unless there is a record with the police or council that they have made a formal complaint. They could claim they didn't even notice a problem.

@Staffy1

I don't think you can sue the seller unless there is a record with the police or council that they have made a formal complaint. They could claim they didn't even notice a problem.

Yes because to them, it may not have been a problem.