Demolition next door is going to affect my property - what can I do?

[Savanna100]

When I was a council planner, I asked the developer to pay the full cost of a new fence if it was a biggish development (more than a dual occ). Normally you are liable for 50% of a STANDARD fence and they pay the portion above that in full.

I used to also ask the developer for a dilapidation report to be done at their expense. These were done by engineers.
Both those matters were dealt with by putting conditions on the development consent and were fully enforceable. Talk to your neighbour's Certifier about this as it sounds like this development was not required to go through Council.

Good luck with it.

 

[Jonathon]

do the neighbours have council approval for their development?
If they are knocking the house down, you should have been informed of the plans by council..

I don't know if they're required by either local council rules (Banyule) or Vic state law to inform neighbours? Either way I certianly haven't been informed of anything.

 

[Jonathon]

This is my thought too.......Long story short, if your neighbour's garage is a functioning "fence" and they remove it, I don't believe you have to pay anything. It is up to them to reinstate what they remove. (This is Qld situation, possibly not the same everywhere, but you should be able to find this out very easily via Google.)

Thanks Wylie, excellent post. I photographed every inch of the existing fence and garage wall and it's all in very good condition, so I look forward to hearing from my neighbour what they're going to do!

 

[MrsChatz]

I recently experienced this from the other side

We've recently completed a knockdown/rebuild in Monash, and had to remove a garage that formed part of the boundary. The rest of the fence was in reasonable shape, and while I didn't check the legalities, it didn't seem right to ask the neighbour to pay for half the replacement section. Especially as we then built our garage further up the block and on the boundary outside some of their windows. This neighbour was quite accommodating, the power line to his property dropped low over ours and had to be moved to one of those tall brackets on his roof. We arranged and paid for that, but the phone line was simply moved underground without any communication to him from the phone crowd.

Our permit required screens on portions of the fence on the opposite boundary, and we sought an OK from those neighbours to attach narrow woven wood panels the full length of the fence (otherwise it would look odd). Strangely enough, the occupancy permit was issued without the screens. I thought that was a bonus and we could just ignore the matter, but my husband went in to tell the neighbours we had the permit and apparently didn't need the screens. The neighbours made it clear that they expected the screens, so that was an expense we couldn't escape after all!

Part of the back fence had fallen down, and we approached the owners about sharing the cost of replacement. There was no response, so we went through the "Notice to Fence" process and it worked well.

 

[HomePage]

They removed an existing undamaged wall. My understanding it would be 100% their responsibility to replace the fence.
Same as if it falls own due to them undermining it or backing a vehicle into it.

50% is for new fences or fences that have to be replaced due to age.

Exactly. My neighbour in my last house demolished a perfectly good fence, put up a new one and proceeded to ask me for 1/2 the cost. I asked him to put the old one back up instead and we'll call it even. That was the last I heard from him on the matter.