Pat Hune, Broker, 1st Southwest Realty, June 2019
Recently one of my clients, Wilma Flintstone, decided to sell her rental property in Glendale. Wilma put a lot of money into the property including full interior paint, granite counters in the kitchen and baths, new carpet and many other repairs to get it ready to sell. Overall the house looked great, had a nice pool and was in the perfect starter home price range of $260,000. The location was excellent. A large hospital, elementary school, park and colleges were nearby. The house backed to a vacant lot. Several buyers looked at the house with overall positive feedback but no offers were received.
A realtor called to tell me the next-door neighbor knocked on the door while he was showing the house to potential buyers. The neighbor wanted the buyers to know a high-rise apartment building was going to be built on the vacant lot behind the house. The realtor was calling to confirm. The buyers’ realtor could not understand why the neighbor felt she had to tell the buyers about the development. In his opinion the neighbor was trying to discourage them from buying the house.
Per the City of Glendale single-family homes will be built behind Wilma’s house not a high rise apartment building. To provide a buffer between the existing and new homes the fence will be two feet higher than Wilma’s fence. There will be no additional traffic, as all the new home traffic will exit onto Greenway or 59th Avenue. I recommended the buyers contact the City of Glendale to confirm. Ultimately the buyers decided to purchase a different home.
The question is did the neighbor’s visit discourage the buyers? Did the neighbor’s behavior make the buyers think she would be a difficult neighbor who may cause problems for them in the future? Did the neighbor do this because she did not like the “look” of the buyers? What can Wilma do? The short answer is not much. Wilma could tell the neighbor to stay off the property. Since the house is vacant this would be very hard to enforce. If the neighbor gets mad at Wilma then she could potentially damage the house or do other things to discourage potential buyers. I added in the MLS listing the latest development plan information and recommended buyers talk to the City of Glendale to confirm.
The bottom-line is a bad neighbor can make it hard for you to sell a property.