Neighbor's house recently boarded up! Messing up my flip!
I closed on (bought) a flip a little over a month ago. At about the same exact time, the house right next door had every one of their windows and doors boarded up with plywood. As it turns out, the neighbor vacated the house over 6 years ago. I called him and asked him about the situation and he was surprisingly welcome to the conversation. He told me the city told him he had to do it or they would've done it and charged him for it. So he drove in one weekend and did it himself - and in so doing, singlehandedly brought down the value of the neighborhood by a good 20%, if not more. I asked him if he was just going to leave it like that and he said no, that he had a contractor that owes him money that was going to do it. I thought, "yeah right." So I made him an offer to purchase. He declined. Sure enough, 1 month later and nothing has moved. Still boards on windows. Meanwhile, my rehab project is almost done on my flip and I called a realtor to come look at the house. She had very bad news for me, basically saying that the house is unsellable until the neighbor does something with his house. The ARV on the house would normally be around $150k, but she said I'd be lucky to get $95k for it, and $60k-$70k would be more realistic if I were to just unload it. Those were dire numbers even in my most pessimistic days. Obviously I'm not going to do that and will probably just rent it indefinitely until this guy gets his act together. So, this is FAR from ideal... I'd rather take my flip profit and go home.
So my question is, do I have any recourse here? There is no HOA. I've called the city and complained and they said (to the best of my recollection) that the boards are not illegal, but I can complain about grass growing too high, debris, etc. So I did that (because the grass was about a foot high at the time). I've spoken to a few of the neighbors and there seems to be a petition underway. Hopefully that might start things up... but I don't know what the petition is about, and if it will actually do any good... So does anyone have any other creative ideas for this? Do I have any other recourse I could try? I called him back about 2 weeks ago to make him another purchase offer... left VM message and no reply yet... All I really need to do is put new windows/doors on so it's not so painfully obvious that the house has been abandoned... it's just a complete eyesore as-is. It can't just STAY like this... can it?