The person who sold their home to us keeps dropping by, checking the mail and talking to neighbors about us. How do we get them to stop?

Imagine Tonya and Dan, a young couple with an eight year old who were thrilled to buy a four-bedroom home in Loveland, Ohio, commuting distance to their Cincinnati jobs — complete with a white picket fence and a tire rope swing in the back.

The seller, Margaret, a 75-year-old widow, raised three children there. Tonya and Dan could tell it was well-loved from the moment they laid eyes on it.

But seven months after she sold the home, Margaret hasn’t moved on. Tonya and Dan continue to get her mail, even though they asked her to forward it. She drives by regularly and stops across the street, talking to neighbors while gazing at their house.

Tonya and Dan installed home security cameras. One day while they were at work and their son was in school, they caught Margaret on video looking through their mail, peering through the front windows and walking around the back to get a view of their new kitchen. They were shocked.

Tonya and Dan want the behavior to stop. Moneywise reached out to real estate and legal experts to find out what homeowners in their situation can do.

How to establish boundaries with former homeowners

Tory Keith is a real estate agent with Board and Park in Natick, Massachusetts. She’s seen home sellers with extreme attachment to their former homes.

“It’s hard to leave a home if you think about it,” she told Moneywise. “If you’ve raised a family there and you may be downsizing, the emotional attachment is huge.”

As Deacon Hoover Real Estate advisors note, there’s usually no criminal intent involved when sellers visit their old homes. They may be grieving after living decades there. It may be an opportunity for buyers to talk to them about the home’s history.

But sometimes such deep attachments can prompt disturbing behavior. Keith told Moneywise about a buyer she represented who moved into a home and was upset to see the seller in the front yard, unannounced.

“The seller showed up and dug up a blueberry bush,” Keith recalled.

She’s also represented sellers who want to give advice to buyers about the home — whether or not that advice is desired. She does her best to prevent such situations by ensuring sellers:

• Write a letter and any advice they have for buyers and pass it along via the listing agent and only initiate face-to-face meetings with buyers if buyers give consent.
• Identify everything they want to take with them and make sure they take it before closing, not after.
• Set up mail forwarding and revise their delivery address for Amazon and other merchants so as not to disturb the homebuyers with unwanted mail.

The stakes get higher when sellers — or their families — want to come inside their old home. For security reasons, Keith advises against that, adding that people should definitely change their locks immediately upon possession.

Instead, she suggests buyers respond with something like, “Hey, we have a lot going on with our family, but we’d be happy to send over a couple of photos.”

But what if people like Margaret keep coming back over the course of months?

When visiting a former home becomes trespassing

Real estate lawyer Rosalie Wannes, founder of Wannes Law Professional Corporation, told Moneywise the situation comes up more often than people might think.

“A seller who raised a family in a house can find it genuinely hard to let go, and their children may feel the same,” she wrote.

Brandon Henderson, a trial attorney and managing partner at Cleveland, Ohio-based HMW Law, told Moneywise that such behavior warrants a legal response.

“Once a sale closes, the seller has exactly the same right to be on that property as a stranger does: none,” he wrote in an email.

Wannes suggests that in this situation, Tonya and Dan could start by expressing their wishes to Margaret in a friendly but firm manner, saying something like: “We understand this house means a lot to you, but we’d ask you to contact us first rather than come onto the property.”