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Neighbours' renovations damaging our house - right to compensation?

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  1. #1

    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Posts
    272

    Neighbours' renovations damaging our house - right to compensation?

    Our new neighbour is renovating the house attached to ours. The renovations included gutting their bathrooms, which involved heavy machinery to smash down all the marble. The force of the impacts at the time was felt very strongly on our side - it was impossible to be in the house for about two weeks because of the noise and the vibrations. Quite large cracks started to appear in the walls adjoining to their house (their bathrooms are right against the adjoining wall) and as the work commenced, they started to spread around the outer walls as well. To repair we will probably need to replaster and repaint.

    Does anybody know if we have any rights to have them compensate us for repairing the walls, or is it just tough luck?

    dear giant likes this.

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    14,414

    I hope you've taken photos from when you've first noticed the damage.

    Talk to them and tell them what's going on and take it from there.

    Football16 likes this.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Posts
    272

    We have tried talking to them. They didn't forewarn us that it was going to happen, so we got in touch when it started to find out how long the disturbance would last for. They came over (with a bottle of wine to apologise for not warning us) and told us that it would only last for two weeks. It was very amicable. One month later it was still going on (it has now been going on for 3 months), and we had seen the cracks happen, so we called them again to ask to discuss, but they basically said they are not doing anything illegal and they do not seem to want to discuss it any further.

    We can take photos of the damage, but we don't have any "before" photos...

    dear giant likes this.

  4. #4

    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Sai Kung / Clearwater Bay
    Posts
    1,529

    i think you do have some rights since the building work was responsible..

    perhaps start out by getting a quote to fix the damage - then asking them nicely to pay..

    if they refuse to consider this then I wonder if the small claims court forms can help. sometimes just showing the forms at the right moment can push people to do the right thing...

    actually the upstairs flat from me did something similiar recently - they flooded the place during renovations and it came thru my ceiling and made my wallpaper peel..

    they offered to pay tho... ( altho we havent got around to that yet )