I am required to disclose flaws in the house, not in the neighborhood. I would never say a word about the neighbors. What if I am asked? Well, I might drop a clue but no more. Fortunately, my current next door neighbors are great. But we had one guy, a shrink, who needed to have his head examined.
Ding. This is why meeting some immediate neighbors is a great idea BEFORE you buy.
If I’m the seller, hell no, I’m not saying anything. You’re required to disclose bad info about the house (e.g., leaky roof), but not about your neighbors or neighborhood.
When do you even meet the buyers? We’ve bought twice and sold once and we’ve visited probably 20 houses during the buying process and we only once ever met a seller (and never a buyer). The seller we did meet met us at the door in his boxers. :dubious:
In the unlikely event the distressed new owners scour the Web for ‘Rex Goliath’ they’re going to have to work their way down a long line of giant cocks before they arrive here.
The key thing here, if you’re not going to disclose, is don’t tell your real estate agent, because they might figure that they’re required to disclose, independent of your wishes.
Just provide whatever is required on the disclosure statement, under the strictest interpretation of the question, and nothing more. That is, if you want to sell your house. If you don’t actually have any intention of selling it, be as forthcoming with information as your conscience guides demands.
That and how do you know taht the guy you sell it to won’t end up becoming your annoying neighbor’s REALLY fucking annoying neighbor.
Absolutely not.
It’s your job to be completely honest about the house – not the people in the other houses in the neighborhood. It’s the buyer’s job to investigate.
When I was buying my house this past fall, I looked up the owners of the houses surrounding the houses we wanted and Facebook stalked 'em, Googled their names, checked out any other properties they owned – everything I could do to get info about them.
There was one house that we loved that we ended up not buying specifically because of the neighbors next door – their front porch was junked up (otherwise they had a big, beautiful house). Not nasty, but cluttered – I even drove to the house a couple of times after we viewed the house to see if the people next door had cleaned it up, but they hadn’t.
Sue for what? I don’t think you can sue someone because your new neighbors are jerks. From time to time (like earlier in this thread) we hear about a UK law that says neighbor disputes have to be disclosed when selling a house, but I know of no US law that says you have to tell a potential buyer about annoying neighbors (the tunnel thing might be a different story though).
Also, lets not forget, we’ve only heard one side. Maybe the neighbor is sitting in his house going 'Gawd, that jackass next door is mowing his lawn at 11:30 at night for the 5th time this week"
I mean, the people behind me throw garbage in my yard all the time and play their radio way to loud…why would I take it up with anyone but them? I can’t imagine trying to sue the people I bought the house from for not telling me about it.
I remember reading something that said when you buy a house, drive by it at night and see how loud the neighborhood is. If I had done that, I may have heard the booming car radio parked in the backyard behind me that runs all day and night with the doors opened up. We call it Cinco De Mayo every day.
I’ve lived in the UK all my (relatively short) life and I have never heard of this requirement to disclose that you have noisy neighbours. Then again, IANAL and I have never sold a property, so my opinion is worth exactly zero. But the burden of proof here is on those making that claim.
If I had problems like that with my neighbours, my first call would probably be to the local council, who have the power to issue noise abatement orders or some such. Every few months there will be a court case where one of these has been breached and the culprits fined, or even evicted if they were living in council-owned accommodation. Once things get this far, I guess the information becomes public and therefore anyone looking to move to the area could discover it, which may be where this idea about forced disclosure comes from. But as mentioned upthread, I can’t see how such a law could possibly be worded.
I’m pretty sure there are nuisance laws that would protect a home owner from that level of absurdity in the first place.
So this would be a non issue for me. Asshat would have been gone by year two.