Tidy Friday | Tidying the Neighbourhood

We got through a lot this week, even though I had a cold, including a job that has been bugging me for months.

Privet hedge gone mad. This is a very busy stretch of pavement, especially in school time. For months the hedge had been encroaching on the walking area.

The hedge belongs to the neighbouring property, originally a fine arts and crafts style house, built between the two world wars. It had had a huge garden which was sold off in 1973 to build the six modern houses beside it, one of which is mine. The corner house was converted into four flats and, in about 2006 the freehold plus planning permission for two two-bedroom flats (one in the basement and one in the loft) became available for about £70,000.

A man from Darlington bought the freehold with dreams of making his fortune. He appeared at my door one day, asking if he could plug in an extension lead as he had come to start the conversion and it would be six weeks before electricity would be connected. Later, I found him at the back of the house with a hosepipe, looking to see if anyone had an outside tap he could use.

Within a few weeks he had moved two ramshackle caravans, a twenty-four hour generator and four Polish workers on to the forecourt, the caravans covered by a wooden structure to disguise the fact they were there. They worked on the house all through the winter, excavating the light wells for the basement flats and generally creating havoc for the flat-dwellers.

In the summer the forecourt was paved and a fence erected between our properties.

Then came the financial crash in 2008. Everything was packed up and the caravans moved offsite. For several years, the site was left open, the light wells unguarded, the garden full of building debris. Occasionally, work would take place, a hole in the roof was repaired, the rendering on the front of the building removed.

I saw the freeholder when I had work done on my house and I wanted to re-route rainwater from his property back into his downpipes. He had fallen out with every one of the leaseholders. He was ill he told me, had developed diabetes, he didn't know how he was going to finish the building.

No 1 Morland Avenue, Leicester: property development opportunity. Further details.

Last summer, the freehold came on the market at £150,000, although I have also found an entry for £100,000. I met two very sleek potential investors scouting the area, their BMW parked precariously on double yellow lines. They asked me what I thought of it as an investment. I thought they would need plenty of cashflow. My neighbour and I had done some sums. We calculated you would be hard-pressed to breakeven.

Meanwhile, the house is forlorn and the garden abandoned. In the first fine days, one of the leaseholders cleaned the forecourt but the hedges have been left to their own devices. Yesterday, we cut it, as far as we could reach from the ground, anyway. We bagged the evidence and took it to the tip. Then knocked off work early. Well, it was Friday.