none declaration of property next door

[BooldawgsMrs]

We bought a property in Dec06 and since moving in we have discovered that the property attached to us is used by the council for temp accomodation.

The current neighbours who we have are nice but they are being moved to perm housing, My other neighbours advise me that all the previous people that have been put in this property by the council have been nosey, rude and basically not very nice people.

Should we have been informed of this when we bought the property and can we sue the previous owners or lawyers for not informing us of this.

T

[JJ1969]

Hi
The people who sold you your house were not obliged to specifically tell you who was living next door to them.

However, If they had any 'problems' with the neighbours, such as... complaining about music/noise/anti-social behaviour, then yes, they had a legal duty to disclose such problems on the Sellers Property Information Form (SPIF). This form is part of the conveyance procedure, and is a legally binding document.

Technically you can sue the previous owners, if you have proof that they lied or misrepresented the situation with the neighbouring house. BUT... this is a very costly avenue to go down.

I am not too sure on the solicitors responsibility. I would have thought that it may have shown up on the land search???

I am sure some of the legal bods on here will be along soon to answer this.

JJ

[BooldawgsMrs]

Thanks JJ.

My main issue is that if we knew that the house was a temporary/emergency house then we would not have bought it.

I know about the legal responsibilities with current nuicance neighbours, I just wish they had told us that there had problems with previous neighbours with regards to the type of house its being used for.

I hope I'm making sense.

T

[bednobs]

i think you are overreacting a bit (mind you, i can think that cause i dont live there) The only reason you could "sue" them for non disclosure is if it materially affected the value of your house, not just because you dont want to live next door to housing association tennants!

i think you are making a lot of assumptions here
1) that the previous owners of the house ever had a problem with any of the neighbours (maybe they didn't and it's just your snobby other neighbours? Maybe the previously in your house people never even knew there were complaints? if there were any)
2) there has been some officail complaints about previous tennants
and
3) BIGGEST ASSUMPTION OF ALL that housing association tennants are bad peopleand will cause you trouble in the future. When mr booldawgs posted this this morning, he said that the neighbours you have now are nice, and have been there for some time. Who's to say the next ones wont be totally delightful? We are all at the vagaries of who decides to move in next door to us arent we? And look at it this way, if they are horrible, it's on;y temporary - you wont have to put up with them for 25 years at least!

[BooldawgsMrs]

I maybe over re acting slightly, and I seriously hope that my neighbours are not over reacting. One thing I can be sure of is that my neighbours are certainly not snobby, thats for sure, they are about as down to earth as we are.

We use to be housing association tenents and 60% of our road is housing association, so I have nothing against housing ass tenents.

My main concern is that we will end up with tenents from hell. I hope that we do end up with half decent families. That dont have unruley kids and play loud music till god knows what time of night.

From the rumours I've heard from all the neighbours so far is that they have had people that leave rubbish lying round. play noisey music till late at night and etc.

I just have a fear that we will end up with people like this.

T

[johnny37]

This is getting a bit emotive. Regardless of the integrity of the neighbours, generally when you buy a house you would like to know if the next door property is used for social housing. Most council tenants are very respectable but some are not. You have only got to look at some council estates. My son was looking at flats and asked about the other owners in the block. The estate agent said 'Oh, they are all privately owned', not mentioning that they werre privately owned by buy-to-let landlords who sub-let to the council. I think that was a bit underhand and what we have come to expect fro them. Unless a complaint has been made they are not obliged to say anything and it is up to you to find out.

I'm wondering whether this information should have been spotted by your solicitor, though Im not sure he is required to enquire about the neighbours.