That’s a hell of a way to bring down the price of a home.
A Queens couple are accused of being the neighbors from hell, scaring away potential buyers of the home next door just so they could snatch it up on the cheap, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
Ozone Park homeowners Charles and Karen Neglia say their neighbors, Guido and Milagros Florentin, are spreading lies to keep rival buyers at bay.
“The people who lived in the house were dirty,” Guido Florentin allegedly told potential buyers, according to the papers filed in Queens Supreme Court. “The house was in disrepair.”
The alleged harassment has been so severe, the Neglias are seeking $1 million in damages.
In April, the Neglias put a for-sale sign in front of the home they purchased in 1985. They had an asking price of $317,000.
Florentin immediately made a lowball offer of less than half that amount, the lawsuit alleges, and when the Neglias refused, the abuse started.
Florentin allegedly staked out the house and pounced on brokers and home browsers with tales of woe.
He called it in “need of repairs” with “structural problems” and even blocked a shared walkway with garbage, the suit says.
The family that lives there is “dirty,” and the place is “falling apart, needs a lot of work, and it’s old,” he allegedly told one potential buyer and broker on May 23.
Florentin also defaced the vinyl siding of the house with tar, the suit claims.
The Neglias had to keep lowering their asking price — still with no success.
The price dropped to $269,990 in April, then three times in May to $240,000 and finally to $235,000 on June 20, according to real-estate tracking firm Redfin.
Still, there are no takers.
Reached at home, Milagros Florentin declined to comment on the suit.
Additional reporting by Ikimulisa Livingston