When I bought my house recently, I specifically asked the vendor if she had experienced any disputes with the neighbours. She assured me that she hadn't. I was quite happy with the price being asked, but felt obliged to enter into the spirit of negotiation. As an opening bid I offered 10% less than the asking price. To my surprise she accepted 
. I couldn't help but feel that she was hiding something
I'm pretty sure that I have now worked out what she was hiding. It turns out that the neighbours (a couple of years ago), had a new roof installed. Unfortunately, their new gutter wasn't properly connected to our (original victorian wooden) gutter, even though their new plastic extends about 2'6" onto our property.
As we have some ornate brickwork corbelling that obscures the guttering, on the first downpour, we discovered that the rainwater runs out of this join, onto the top of the brickwork, percolates down the solid wall, then drips down into the living room (where the bay window meets the main room).
Now since this problem was there before I purchased the house, and is entirely within the boundary of our property, I just accept it as my responsibility to correct the problem.
The total price to remedy this fault was £31 (£16 ladder hire, £12 for some lead, £3 for some lead sealing compound) and took a couple of hours to acheive. I later found, that this leak had been the source of a bitter ongoing dispute with the neighbours. Next year I'll probably replace the gutter in it's entirety, but the repair job is doing fine so far and we have a good raport with the neighbours. They still can't accept that the problem was caused by their builders, but they are more than happy that the issue has now been resolved and the dispute is over.
I suspect that we got a much bigger discount for this minor fault than we deserved. I've already checked the lofts, chimney breasts and under floorboards for dead bodies. So far, so good.
. I couldn't help but feel that she was hiding something I'm pretty sure that I have now worked out what she was hiding. It turns out that the neighbours (a couple of years ago), had a new roof installed. Unfortunately, their new gutter wasn't properly connected to our (original victorian wooden) gutter, even though their new plastic extends about 2'6" onto our property.
As we have some ornate brickwork corbelling that obscures the guttering, on the first downpour, we discovered that the rainwater runs out of this join, onto the top of the brickwork, percolates down the solid wall, then drips down into the living room (where the bay window meets the main room).
Now since this problem was there before I purchased the house, and is entirely within the boundary of our property, I just accept it as my responsibility to correct the problem.
The total price to remedy this fault was £31 (£16 ladder hire, £12 for some lead, £3 for some lead sealing compound) and took a couple of hours to acheive. I later found, that this leak had been the source of a bitter ongoing dispute with the neighbours. Next year I'll probably replace the gutter in it's entirety, but the repair job is doing fine so far and we have a good raport with the neighbours. They still can't accept that the problem was caused by their builders, but they are more than happy that the issue has now been resolved and the dispute is over.
I suspect that we got a much bigger discount for this minor fault than we deserved. I've already checked the lofts, chimney breasts and under floorboards for dead bodies. So far, so good.
