Just hoping someone wise might have some useful advice, please.
We own a flat which is part of a Victorian house, converted into 3 flats and extended, probably in the 1980s as far as we know. We've owned for approx 10 years.
The 3 flat owners are jointly owners of the shared freehold of the house, with a long lease issued from which we all benefit. We jointly split the building insurance policy.
Ours is the ground floor flat. The bedroom of our flat is in the extended part at the back of the house. The bedroom has a flat roof which forms a roof terrace for the flat above.
The flat above, the middle flat, is being sold. Contracts have been exchanged and they are expecting to complete in 6 weeks time (scheduling around buyer's work commitments, apparently).
The problem is that we have suddenly had a significant leak into the bedroom from the flat roof above. It is ongoing, the wall constantly slick with water. We need to fix this leak ASAP before more damage is done.
The owner of the upstairs flat (who is a solicitor, though not a property lawyer) has said we will just have to sit tight and take it up with the new owners once the transaction completes: "it's not her problem to deal with now that contracts have been exchanged."
She has been a good neighbour and I appreciate that it's an annoying situation, but I don't feel like I can wait to deal with this.
What would you do in my shoes? We need access to her roof terrace to do the repair works, so I do need her permission to do anything useful. But surely I can get the works covered by insurance that we've already paid for, instead of having water flooding into my bedroom for another 6 weeks?!
Grateful for any thoughts!