Other than saying its a conifer of some sort, its not possible to say more than that - the picture is too far away, taken in bad light and not clear at all. Unless its Leylandii or similar, it won't tolerate being cut right back, so should be completely removed if its that close - conifer roots don't spread to far and are more fibrous than anything, but two feet from a house is too close, mostly because of the topgrowth being too close to windows, walls, etc.

Because the picture quality is poor, its not that easy to decide what the large deciduous shrub is in front of it, but that also appears to be far too close to the wall - if its a tree, that needs taking out too, its more of a risk to foundations than the conifer.

Personally I would not consider buying the property until the existing owner and neighbour had removed both the tree and the shrub.

I agree with Mg. Tell the house owner that, and leave the ball in their court. If they do nothing, it won't be surprising - if they were seriously amenable to its removal, they'd have done it by now. In the meantime, look at other properties and prepare to wave goodbye to this one.

I agree, why has it not been moved already !!!

"Neighbour very amenable to having it reduced or removed."

And who told you, the person that you maybe buying the house from ?

All I will say from personally having trees in a Avenue I once lived in , when we had a drought many moons ago a huge crack appeared in the drive then two weeks later a crack in the house wall , yes we lived on clay but it was the tree sucking all the water out of the soil that caused it (just too close) to the house.

Gg

Oh and as an after thought - who would pay for the cutting down and removal?

The surveyor should pick up the problem with the trees, if he's any good (which they're often not, it has to be said).

You might consider doing this as a contingency purchase from the present owner of the property. Your purchase of the house contingent upon the present owner requesting that the neighbor completely remove the tree with the cost of the removal and damage to the purchase property incurred during the trees removal is placed upon the seller. If you are serious about buying this property, have a contract made up with a "time is of the essence clause" where any good faith monies payed by you to hold the sale to you are returned and the contract becomes breached, null and void if the tree is not removed in one or two months. I known nothing about UK realeastate law so what I say here is based upon what I would do in the USA. If the tree does not come down you may also consider putting the squeeze on the owner to lower the sale price (breached contract but I might still consider purchasing if you...) because of this problem. You might get the sale price so low that someone may catch you hugging that tree:)

Not sure this would work in the UK Loosestrife it is something that Supersal will need to check out...