So I have a little dilemma here and I'm looking for some advice on it.
I live in a Townhose / Rowhouse that is next door to a property that is owned by a landlord. Every time we inform that something is being caused by his property he ignores it so eventually we have to take care of it.
However this time it's gotten to the point where I've gotten my insurance company involved and likely small claims court. The problem is that he has an issue with his roof and water is leaving into his property and into mine via the firewall / party wall. We eliminated our roof as a factor as we had it re-surfaced last year and already had two different parties come out to professionally check on the root, both who have which stated there are no issues with our roof. So the damage we have is in our 3rd bedroom which is my Son's. In the side closest to the firewall is visible water damage, minimal sagging and it's weak to the touch. Just pushing on it you can feel it not being as strong as the sheet wall should be, compared to the rest of the room. And now after that heavy rain the other night there is a huge and visible water stain on the ceiling.
Mind you we've lived in this house for 9 years now and we've never had this issue until the past few months. We only got the roof re-surfaced when we had our gutters cleaned and the company that did it said we should get it done soon. We also didn't go with that company for various reasons.
I contacted my insurance company and they cut me a check however since my deductible was so high for this sort of incident, the check was barely enough to take my family to dinner. My fear is serveral;
1. The damage to the ceiling and who knows where else.
2. Cost of getting this fixed.
3. Even when I do get it fixed, if the landlord doesn't fix their issue with the roof then this cycle will repeat.
I'm also looking at going to small claims court since my track record with the owner has been crap. He hasn't take care of anything and on this issue I suspect it's the same. Hell I even had to pay to get his gutters cleaned cause of the water that was flying off their roof when it rained, it didn't drop through the gutters... it literately flew off the roof, which I have video of.
Video -
Here
I'm not even going to go into the issue of my basement getting water cause of all the rain from his roof onto my property that doesn't routed to the yard like it should. I even went and purchased some gutter tubing to help and put it on their side.
Any advice here? I still think small claims is the way to go.