My elderly parents purchased an investment property approximately ten years ago. The property is thirty years old and is part of a relatively well-to-do estate. They had a building surveyor survey the property prier to purchase and placed most of their live savings into the property save for a small mortgage to pay for the remainder.
They leased the property to a professional couple who have lived there for ten years without much problem, however last year they called my parents to say there was movement in the floor tiles i.e. crack tiles in the kitchen. My folks replaced the tiles and everyone was happy. A couple of weeks later the tenants noticed a large crack running up the gable wall. We had an engineer come out and look at it and he said it was some form of subsidence but made no further comment.
To cut a long story short the property has drastically deteriorated and without exaggeration cracks are appearing everywhere. One crack is so large you could insert your hand through it. The insurance company are giving them the run around and have sent umpteen of their representatives out to investigate the cause and keep bulling my folks into having every test imaginable on the property. All diagnostics are so far fruitless and have cost almost 15k. The insurance company have told them they will not see a cent of this money back as it is merely a scoping study.
We have been told pyrite is not an issue due to the property age. The neighbors are getting peeved and the tenants have said they cannot stay much longer.
Legally where can they go from here?
They leased the property to a professional couple who have lived there for ten years without much problem, however last year they called my parents to say there was movement in the floor tiles i.e. crack tiles in the kitchen. My folks replaced the tiles and everyone was happy. A couple of weeks later the tenants noticed a large crack running up the gable wall. We had an engineer come out and look at it and he said it was some form of subsidence but made no further comment.
To cut a long story short the property has drastically deteriorated and without exaggeration cracks are appearing everywhere. One crack is so large you could insert your hand through it. The insurance company are giving them the run around and have sent umpteen of their representatives out to investigate the cause and keep bulling my folks into having every test imaginable on the property. All diagnostics are so far fruitless and have cost almost 15k. The insurance company have told them they will not see a cent of this money back as it is merely a scoping study.
We have been told pyrite is not an issue due to the property age. The neighbors are getting peeved and the tenants have said they cannot stay much longer.
Legally where can they go from here?