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Selling your house

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sweepo | 19:34 Tue 19th Dec 2006 | Law
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When selling your house, should you be forthcoming with negative information about the neighbourhood or is it up to the buyer to do the necessary investigations for themselves?
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If they ask you - you have to answer honestly. You should not misrepresent anything that may influence a person's decision to buy.

If they ask about schools, for example, and you have no children, it would be fair to say you don't know. Then the buyer will investigate this himself.

You can of course use spin. 'There has been problems with youths hanging around the street corner at night but this is being dealt with by ....'

Problems with the next door neighbour? 'We don't get on with them, but that is because of personal differences and the other neighbours get on really well with them'.

But if there is any way it could be shown that you have intentionally misled, don't do it!

If you are unethical and lie about bad neighbours what are the ramifications though? You often see on this website people complaining that they weren't told about a problem neighbour and there seems to be little that anything can be done about it afterwards!
sometimes what constitutes a bad neighbour is subjective though.

you may be a bit deaf so the noise may not bother you, you may like dogs, so don't mind 6 of them, you may not mind mess...
If there is no record of a dispute with a neighbour eg calls to the council, or the police, or legal action, then you can quite reasonably say you have never had a problem with them. As joko says, anything else is purely subjective. Also a good reason not to fall out with your neighbours....!
I recently sold a flat and my neighbours above were a nightmare but I had never rang the police or landlords etc or had put anything in writing I was advised that I didnt therefore need to say anything however if you have reported incidents then you are obligated by law to tell potential buyers which a friend had to do which obviously puts people off

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