I am writing in the context of potentially selliing my home in the next couple of years, so here are my questions 1) Do I have to disclose to a realtor/buyer the issues with my neighbor, as I in good conscience would not be comfortable in minimizing this issue 2) what, if any, financial impact could occur if my home is not selling due to a nuisance neighbor 3) Do I have any legal recourse in the event my home sells for substantially less that recent comparables in the same area due to being next to a nuisance home?
I am not selling right now nor selling strictly because of the nuisance neighbor, but I would like to move to a smaller town when I retire from my job.
In the most recent incident, the police came out and I think ticketed my neighbors, so the neighbor called and texted some nasty messages to my wife.
And before someone decides to say I'm overreacting? Calls I have made to law enforcement have been late at night past both city ordinance and HOA "quiet" hours and the loudness was easily heard in my own home
Realtor question….I have a neighbor who I have had to contact local law enforcement on several times in the last couple of years for noise complaint after quiet hours. So I have questions. The home is in a middle-class gated community with a HOA
byu/PokieState92 inRealEstate
Posted by PokieState92
7 Comments
1) if your HOA has quiet hours, they may also be able to enforce and fine. Typically this is a reason to be in an HOA vs non-HOA, but bad neighbors exist everywhere unfortunately. It isn’t over-reacting to expect peaceful enjoyment of your home late at night.
2) typically in most states, disclosures are about issues with the house, not the neighbors. So there often is not a duty to disclose your personal grievance or relationship status with neighbors.
3) if you do disclose it, then yea, you will likely turn off buyers or get low balled by a flipper who won’t disclose it when they sell it
4) there is no recourse as a result of what neighbors do on their private property, even if what they are doing is illegal.
Answer when asked. You do not have to bring up and divulge issues you have with your neighbor unless the prospective buyers ask.
You might be over thinking this a bit since you are not selling any time soon.
I would suggest you approach the HOA with this. I assume you have the police report and the texts, send a copy to the HOA. That is why people live in HOAs so they deal with those that do not comply with the ruless.
If the neighbor knocks it off due to being ticketed, then some day when you sell it won’t be an issue.
If they keep it up and continue to text you, you can get a restraining order against them. If they violate it, they’ll go to jail, so those are usually pretty effective.
If police are willing to respond, then that’s good, at some point the neighbor will give up. In some big cities you can’t get police to respond to noise complaints and then that is a bigger issue.
In my state, the seller disclosures require the seller to disclose *anything that could potentially be of significance to the buyer. See what your state seller disclosures say
I’ll be following this since we are in the same position. One issue I would ask OP is whether this is still on-going or if the noise has abated some since you complained? (We never complained but suspect other neighbors did and after the first year the number of noise events and the duration have diminished. Still happens, but not nearly as often). If the noise events have dropped down, then I would think there would be no obligation to make that known. After all, nearly everybody at some point has a party on the deck that gets noisy. If it is not a regular (weekly happening) by the same people that would be normal in any neighborhood.
You have no recourse if your home sells for less.. you don’t have to divulge unless asked