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Issues with shared retaining wall.

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lloydie50

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

My neighbors are in the process of selling their home.

We are their next store neighbors. We share a retaining wall with them. We sit below them so the wall retains their property from sliding into ours. There is a big portion of this wall which shows major deterioration. It was built properly with pressure treated wood and posts, but looks like it had a continous water flow hitting it.

We witnessed several plastic barrells sitting on this side of their house that were filled with used water from his aquiriums. We found out, over time, that he was dumping this water into a drain that sits on that side of the home. Well, because of this continous dumping of the tainted water we realized that the drain is cracked and that the water was not being carried away to the curbs in the front of their home but, instead, soaking the ground and rotting the retaining wall. They did not originally know that this action was causing damage to this shared retaining wall because we can only see the wall itself.

Back in November of last year we confronted them about this and they imediatly defended themselves by stating that how do we know that they were the cause of this and not the former owners. We stated that when the former owners owned their home, they never had barrells of water or any other containers on this side of the home. We only noticed the damage of the retaining wall after these owners were there for a couple of years and witnessing what this guy was doing with these barrels of water. We also provided a copy of our original home inspectors report that had a brief statement of this
retaining wall as in good shape and servicable condition. Their former owners were living there back then when this report was completed.

Well, we got a negative reaction from them and nothing was resolved. Well, they moved out and tried several times to rent out this property but they could not find good renters.

They decided to sell the property and listed it with a relative of theirs. We were suprised and alarmed when we saw the for sale sign as nothing was done about the retaining wall problem. When we got ahold of their listing agent and informed her of this ongoing issue and that we wanted to see proof that she discloses this information to any and all buyers. Nothing was done as far as we know about disclosing this fact. We found out only a couple of weeks ago that the home was in escrow and they were going to close in the middle of this month.

We got ahold of the selling agent and asked her did the sellers disclose about the problem with the retaining wall and she said that they did not. The buyers agent said that she was going to place a addendum as a "Request for Repairs" asking for the repairs of this fence.

We feel that both sides are trying to hurry this process along by getting bids on repairs not caring on who does it but who is the cheapest and fastest at repairing this wall, and probably to repair it quickly. We feel rushed and we dont want them to cram down our throats who is going to do the repairs and not taking into account that we have to live with those results. We dont want anyone in our backyard doing these repairs except
our own contractor whom we trust with doing this right the first time and who wont destroy the surrounding area while replacing this wall.

Because they want to rush this and that we arent ready for a quicky solution, we need time to plan this right. Our question is, is it possible for us to file something with our County to stop their sale until there is a mutual agreement between all parties?
 


STEPHAN

Senior Member
If you have an owner that is not handling issues, why would you not want a new owner that potentially handles issues?
 

TigerD

Senior Member
If you want your own contractor, pay for it with your own checking account. Problem sovled.

TD
 

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