‘Neighbour’ has put a hole through my wall…

[ListenLinda]

Hi all,

I am going to try keep this concise as there is a bit of a back story but here goes.
We private rent a 3 storey mid victorian terrace.
The house next door to us was sold last year, and the ‘young couple new owners’ bought it and were renovating it and renting it out or so we thought.
Turns out there was an extensive and elaborate cannabis farm next door. The owners have since paid for the house to be cleared and are now ‘sorting it out’. Been hearing a lot of work and banging about for a few weeks now, including today..
I’ve been upstairs to put clothes away to find them have managed to smash through the ajoining wall of the terraced houses. Literally caused damage to the wall on our side of the house.
DH went round and told them the issue and the owner said he would get someone round to have a look. I have reported it to our landlady too and we are all under the impression the owner next door should put it right
but is there a way to ensure this? I honestly don’t trust him, or want cowboys to fix it either.
I am seriously baffled as to how they have managed to smash through plasterboard and stone walls!
Is there anything we need to be aware of ? Anything we need to do?

Neither us or our landlady has ever been in this situation and I don’t know how to proceed!

You need to report it to your landlady and they should deal with it by speaking to the neighbours in order to get it repaired.

Reading better (sorry, doing two things at once), I see you have reported it. Yes they are obligated to repair this. They've damaged private property.

Years ago my mums neighbour was having damp proof course put in, they drilled through into mums lounge and then squirted whatever it was into the room. The insurance company paid up no problem. It was the 80’s so goodness knows what nasties were in the solution 🤢 it’s also amazing how they missed all the China, and no, I’m pretty sure dad didn’t finish what’s in the decanter.

Your landlady should contact her (buildings) insurance company and they will take it up with the home owner, who in turn should contact their insurance company.

Hopefully the (dodgy) builders have insurance too…..

Agree re. insurance. Get your Landlady to contact insurers asap, as they will want to inspect and deal with her claim and then they will deal with next door! If you have one hole, I would hate to think what else has been going on and think I'd want to be sure they know what they are doing!

Your landlady needs to get her insurance co on it asap.

It needs looking at properly, who knows how or why they did this and what structural issues might ensue.

The insurance co will get on to the neighbours insurance and get it properly dealt with.

Landlady is on her way to get the details from the people next door, as we don’t know anything about them. Three different people have told us they are the owners and never given a name etc

Take photographs. Make a note of who you spoke to, date and time, what they said etc. Get the name of the company doing the work. Photograph work vans etc.
Landlady needs to get her insurers onto this immediately and send them the photos.
Do not touch anything or attempt to fix anything yourselves.

There are no work vans or companys doing the work. It appears to be whoever the ‘owner’ actually is and some mates etc. it is only the second time we have spoken to them directly and three different people have told us they are the owners.
How will the insurance deal with this if they don’t provide the correct information or we can get hold of them?
They have all of a sudden disappeared for the day.

Just in the not knowing who the owner is point: If you/ your landlady goes onto the land registry website you can pay £3 (I think it’s still that amount) to get a copy of the title for that property- it will be emailed to you within minutes. It will have the name of the registered owner on there and may also have another contact address for them if they’ve bought it as a second property. At least then you’ll know the name of the actual registered owner and can work out who your landlady needs to deal with.

I think a lot of people presume victorian terrace means thick walls when in fact a lot of them, including mine,are only one brick thick on adjoining walls. Obviously the damp proofing people also expected a cavity between two lines of bricks @Billybagpuss They were working on one attached to mine and all my glass kilner jars were vibrating slowly moving across the open shelves, if I hadn't been in I would have come home to an awful mess of smashed glass as they were channelling out plaster for wiring. It actually felt like they were going to come through the walls, whole house was shaking🙉

I'd be wondering whose electricity or gas supply the farmers tapped in to to heat the cannabis farm for free. Possibly yours, through a hole in the party wall.

Its your landlady's responsibity to arrange and pay for the repair her property needs right away, to keep her tenants safe and secure.

How she negotiates compensation with next door is a matter for her and her insurers to sort out; not your problem.

How will the insurance deal with this if they don’t provide the correct information or we can get hold of them?

That's not your problem. Regardless, your LL is legally obliged to reinstate the damage to your rented home, and claim it from her own insurers. How her insurers recoup their loss is not your problem.

Thanks all, she is on with it and she will get it sorted of that I have no doubt.

We previously lived in a Victorian terrace and our builders were removing some bricks in our double skin adjoining wall only to discover it was single skin and we were now looking into our neighbour’s kitchen. Thankfully we had lovely neighbours and builders who sorted everything very quickly.