What the heck is this guy doing next door?

[MissMarplesCat]

We live in a very small village in a row a 4 cottages. The end terrace is joined to us, and had previously housed an old lady for many years, who then went into care. The house stood empty for a few years then put up for sale. It seems that it was in a bad state of repair (very dated), so went on to auction.
A man purchased it last January and when we got chatting he said he hadn't viewed it prior to bidding and was horrified at the amount of work he'd have to do.
We expected contract work to begin, but he only had one guy, this guy is not a professional in any sense of the word, and to date has damaged our roof (dealt with), fitted all of the windows incorrectly, badly plastered some walls, then hacked it all off and put boards up instead (!), and caused plaster work in our hallway to crumble.

We kept things as friendly as possible, but since last January he has been there most weekdays with his helper chap and they have not stopped smashing at the walls in all of that time. Around 5 skips of bricks have been completed so far, although no interior walls have been removed! Since we can hear a pin drop in there now, it seems like they have removed bricks from the party wall.

As of early Feb this year they are coming 7 days per week. I presume the helper is family or a friend and getting some cash for his trouble.

There's no getting your head around this. The man is very shy and non communicative and looks desperate to get it ready for his small family. What concerns us is that a gas boiler has been delivered from a car (not a plumber van) and left in there. DP overheard him discussing fitting it with an older man who warned hm he wanted nothing to do with it. Make of that what you will.

The guy seems to be struggling financially and very desperate, and whilst friendly, he has already told us a few lies.

Since a few weeks back they have been coming every day even sunday, horrific noise from early until after 5pm. Through last year they even did Easter sunday, and all of the bank holidays, which i thought was illegal for building/construction?
He tried to do Xmas even and Xmas day until DP told he would call the police.

Between October and January this guy was hammering at the front bedroom window frame daily to try to refit it, to no avail. DP works from home so it's sheer hell. It is taking him quadruple the time to do anything because he won't hire professionals. It looks like a bomb site.

Anything we can do here? We have been passed on to planning as council told us building regs no longer have a number. God knows what that means. We've been very tolerant since we knew he was struggling, but since he has already damaged our property and had to repair it, we are getting very concerned and fed up. We doubt anything in there is legit, and he told us when he first bought it that he hadn't had it surveyed, etc.
We think the helper is just a cash in hand guy, with little to no knowledge of what he is doing, and we are very tired of the 7 days a week noise at this point. We have tried to talk, and whilst he is polite, he just lies to us about reducing the days and carries on.

Sorry this is long! Any advice welcome.

What's your plan to move this on then OP? Are you chasing dangerous buildings up on it?
It must be very frustrating.

OP, any updates?

Not a lot to report as yet.
Our solicitor is trying to track him down regarding damage to the vestibule wall. We have not heard anything as yet from building regs. Will be calling them tomorrow.

Mr Mallet (as we call him, after his favourite tool) has not been near since last Tuesday, which is unusual. No work has been done in that time. Everything has gone quiet.

Our solicitor is having trouble as he won't answer his phone so letters have gone out.

I ought to add that there used to be another house attached to his, which was removed about 30 years ago, long before we came here. This means the chimney breasts are not on our party wall.
He has still removed bricks from our adjoining walls without permission, but unless someone goes in there, we can't move forward yet.

He purchased the house last late Feb/early March and began work within hours. There was never a gap in time where he even could have applied for planning.
We asked him at the time did he have a surveyor and he shook his head wearily.

We have the impression he bid on the house blind then was horrified to see it's condition. Then he immediately went to work.

What we think is his wife and children appeared a few times, stood outside looking up at the house clapping and cheering. No one in their right minds would have done that. It is all so very strange.

But unless there is an important drip feed coming that it is a listed building, he didn’t need to stop works to apply for planning permission. Knocking down internal walls doesn’t need it, and even if he did need it for something, it needn’t be in place before starting work (if you’re not very risk averse).

Thanks for the update

Update: unfortunately and sadly he was an illegal immigrant. No idea who his 'family' were, nothing made sense.
I honestly don't know what to say after all this time.

Everything has gone quiet, obviously.
He was not the owner of the house and was obviously afraid of being found out.
Makes sense, to us, in retrospect.

Feels odd now looking back over the year, like he was really frightened as if
something was hanging over him. I will update as I can.

Wow! That's quite the plot twist! Do you know who the real owner are?

So he hadn't actually bought the house at an auction! He had just broken in to a house to try and do it up?
Or had someone bought it at auction and he was basically working for someone else ( modern slavery).?

Is your house safe for you to live in, OP?

If he's made the house unsafe The Local Authority should sort it out.

The Land Registry should show who the owner is but hopefully the Local Authority should be on the case with that

Sounds very very odd

So he gained access repeatedly, hired a qualified electrician and worked on the house he didn't own ..

Including bringing his family to cheer him on at one point?

That makes no sense.

It’s not that strange at all - it’s just some chancer (the person who’s bought the property) trying to get it done up on the cheap. Sounds like he was employed under the table to do the work on it, and may have expected a bit of painting and decorating but was instead confronted with a complete renovation.

He’s had to keep plugging away at it despite being inept and totally out of his depth because what else is he going to do? If he’s here illegally he’s unlikely to have any other source of income, may have bullshitted his way into this cash-in-hand job and is terrified of being found out and deported.

The person who owns the place is entirely at fault here.

It's more along these lines, he has been working a debt off to the best of my knowledge and had not previously known the extent of the work. We know very little else at the moment which is frustrating. As for it sounding sensational, it isn't all that rare, I'm afraid. You don't expect it popping up next to you, though.

I live in a similar sounding row of cottages (although ours are considerably older) and your cautionary tale has stopped me eyeing up the chimney breast upstairs with a thoughtful expression and a hammer. It's now clear to me why nobody on this row has done anything hugely structural in years - the effect on the attached houses could be catastrophic.

Will your home insurance cover you for putting right any damage that this chancer has caused? It's the sort of thing that could happen to anyone - and I hope your marriage has settled down a bit too now.

Well we were up all night discussing it. Everything makes sense in light of what we now know, except for some loose threads, such as who the 'family' where and what will happen to him. Nobody is going to tell us much more at this point, so we will likely never know the details. Whether dangerous buildings alerted the police or not, we don't know either. A few officers were outside of the property yesterday afternoon, but were not saying much.

He had started to arrive early in the morning over the past few days, then leave a minute or so later.
Then he would come back, parking at the other end of the lane, and walk down, enter again for a minute, then leave.
We did think he was possibly avoiding being seen, perhaps checking for mail?
Another man arrived for a literal minute yesterday morning, then left. It all seemed really odd. That was the last we saw of him.

Yes, we have cover, there is damage to the party wall in the vestibule but thankfully nothing else concerning our property (since the roof incident). We are lucky he never tried to install the boiler.

Looking at land registry, it only tells us the date the property sold (last March) and that it's tenure is leasehold.

I’ve heard of this before. I used to work on a burns icu and we had a guy in who had got electrocuted trying to illegally connect to the national grid. When the translator came in it turned out he was in the country illegally and had been brought over to work for a criminal to pay the debt of the crossing. If you say no you are dropped off to police and deported (at best.) Living in a HMO, not allowed to leave. It’s modern day slavery and I think it’s horrifyingly more frequent than we can imagine.

What was the end goal here? On the part of the real purchaser of the house, I mean. Cheap labour, I get that, but such incompetent labour that whatever renovation was needed has taken over a year, the house is uninhabitable, and the attention of the authorities has presumably shone a spotlight on the bigger picture. As criminal enterprises go, it seems spectacularly inept.

I really don't know, I have no idea who owns it and why the work is so shoddy.

I recall telling DP that nothing made any sense. We were told very little at the start, but were given the impression he wanted to quickly move in and get it sorted. But if that was so, why remove walls or chimney breasts, costing more money and time?
Barely any extra room has been made from their extraction.

It felt as if someone was 'making time', if that makes sense at all? Almost as if the work itself was irrelevant. Nothing ever got any further forward, although a bathroom was recently installed whilst the rest of the place is still largely rubble.

Whoever he is, he seemed to be the only one with a vehicle. Over the past year a small amount of men arrived at the property but always driven there by him. One looked like an elderly business man, smart suit, no car of his own. He had two men who helped with the work, but had to drive them here also. It did make us wonder why everyone he knew couldn't drive. What are the odds on that?

A tool hire transit van occasionally arrived, dropped off something he'd hired and then came back for it the same day. No idea if that was normal either.

It will likely remain a mystery for us.
Had no idea it was leasehold either, unless land registry is mistaken.

Interesting that the Police are now involved.

Also that its leasehold, the freeholder may well have things to say about whats happened

Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise that he did so much damage you had to get building control in, OP. If he'd been a more competent builder, you might be living next door to a brothel or a crack house now.

How strange. So do I understand correctly that someone else is the owner and this bloke is some random illegal immigrant. Very odd.

No idea at present. The police asked a lot of questions but didn't supply a lot of answers! We were told that they wanted to talk to the man next door (his first name only was used), who was flagged up as or reported to be an illegal/unregistered resident (can't quote exact words) We don't even know if they've located him yet.

God knows who owns it or why it is a freehold, I have no clue how the police found this out or what is going on. I doubt I will be able to supply any more info - I can't see the authorities calling here to give us the details. We can only guess what hell the people concerned might be going through. What a world :(

Are you sure it was even being used as a house? This sounds like classic behaviour of someone tending some sort of cannabis farm. It would be consistent with the rubble too - internal walls being removed for a bigger farm area.

Frankly, the number of police doesn’t sound consistent with 1 illegal immigrant. Police budgets being what they are, a number of officers would only be deployed to some major crime.

Cannabis farm is where my thoughts were going too.