Thanks for your input, lisping duck. Yes, certainly my first option is to approach the son with an offer to pay for tree removal before even considering the drastic step of buying the place. I'm wary about waiting for a new owner because it could well be someone as tree crazy as the previous owner. Too late then to get anything done about it.
The Council will have nothing to do with trees on private land. I've previously tried to have it dealt with via mediation and application to ACAT. Owner simply refused to participate in the process.
I don't usually have that much cash lying around but the timing coincides with the maturing of a term deposit which will ultimately be going into the share market. Could just use it on a temporary basis to do the property transaction.
