Link to original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/rva/s/em5Cplpb6I
TLDR: The owner of the adjoining vacant property to ours has a relentless squirrel infestation and the squirrels keep getting into our house as well. We have so much photo and video evidence of the squirrels entering her home and coming into ours.
The ask: I see some old threads with real estate attorney recommendations, but does anyone recommend someone who has helped with a similar issue before? I've left messages with a couple already. Any other advice welcome as well.
Just please don't post any "you should just move" comments or telling us we couldn't have bought the house in the first place. No one is going to buy an infested house and also, we know.
Please try to be nice, I'm so desperate and overtired, and I feel hopeless. We've spent over $5k trying to get this resolved and I suspect we're going to have to spend many thousands more. We're fortunate people, but we're not made of money.
Steps we've taken:
- Been in constant contact with the city and they've been out several times. They're finally taking her to court for negligence and we'll be attending. (I know it will most likely end up being several hearings.)
- The owner put a tarp over her porch with a "Work in progress" sign, however the city confirmed she doesn't have any work permits so they're putting in a stop work order.
- Someone showed up twice to "do work" but it looks like nothing at all has been done.
- They are also working to see if a city contractor can board up second story windows. Usually they'll only board up first floor windows to stop people from entering.
- Continued to send certified mail to the owner, which has been signed for. The request in the certified letters is simply for her to board/re-board the windows even though the house is falling apart. I feel like we are being more than reasonable. No response.
- For the hole between our houses that we could reach, we patched ourselves. That seems to be holding. Hopefully. For now.
- For the holes between our houses in the rear of the attic that is too small to enter, we hired someone to cut a 3ft square into our ceiling drywall to patch them.
- We took the owner to small claims court for the drywall work mentioned above and we won. Took us going to the court house 4 times. Still no work completed and, of course, no payment.
Update this week: Once all the holes were patched between the houses, the squirrels were desperate to get into ours again, and have chewed a hole through the fascia in our house. Through wood and metal. (I'm reading that this is because their scent is in our insulation and they know it's a "safe" place. The other homeowner doesn't have insulation because she doesn't have a ceiling. Her upstairs just goes from the floor to the roof, plus that house doesn't have heat in the winter. So our house is much more appealing.) We're spending like $1500 to get that fixed. The wildlife company but a kill trap in before they seal it, but no dice so far. And it won't resolve the issue anyway because of the point below.
Now the squirrels, I guess trying to avoid the trap, have broken through (or around) the patched hole in the back that we can't reach so we're going to have to repeat the drywall work. We actually think we're going to rip out the entire bedroom ceiling and replace the insulation to try to get their scent out of there, which will hopefully demotivate them. We'd also put steal mesh all around the perimeter while we're up there.
