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Have any of you guys ever watched a program on Discovery ID called "Fear Thy Neighbor?" It is enlightening. It's not reality tv; it's true crime drama. Check it out before you call your potential neighbors crazy. Maybe you ain't seen crazy yet. LOL.
My neighbors are all pretty universally horrible, which has led me to the conclusion that I'm clearly the odd-man out so I should just let them have this neighborhood for themselves or others like them. However, I have compiled a list of rules for future house hunting that I think can at least improve my initial odds of not having a ton of awful neighbors... I'm open to suggestions for improving or disproving the list...
Other than the NEW #1, which is clearly that crazy dudes with camcorders are to be avoided, these are in no particular order.
The primary rules assume whatever condition you see today in the neighborhood is the NORMAL condition:
*Music loud enough you can hear it from your neighbor's property: There will always be loud music, 24 hours a day (neighbor across the street has outdoor speakers turned to the classic rock station continuously for 8 years now... Now he turns it off when his kid PRACTICES HIS NEW DRUM SET... sometimes he forgets to turn it back on for a day or two, which is nice)
*Lawn a bit unkempt? That's because they're lazy turds that don't mow it. It's not that this is the month that grandpa and grandpa both died and they lost their job too. (Immediate next door neighbor mows her grass 3 times a year. I bought in early winter so this was news to me... first year I was here she mowed it TWICE... She's a little better these days)
*Vehicle that is in the same place when you drive by at radically different times is disabled or owner doesn't have a job (again, see immediate next door neighbor, neighbor behind me, and 2-3 more on the street over the years)
*Dogs/cats running around everywhere? ALWAYS dogs and cats running around everywhere (3 neighbors total are harboring about 30 feral cats, including OTHER immediate next door neighbor... Other-other immediate neighbor's dog would charge me on a daily basis for about 6 years until I think he finally died. Never saw a leash or a chain in his life)
*Kids running around everywhere with no adults to be seen in any direction will later on be vandalizing your property around junior high age (multiple neighbors over the years. I can count them off like clockwork when they move in and move out with events starting and stopping... never anything super major, but annoying)
*ANYONE with an obnoxious hobby will partake in it any time they please. Golf carts with kids and boom boxes blasting rap music, go karts, drag pipes on motorcycles, full-on racing dirt bike blasts at 80mph down the street (4 different neighbors guilty of these offenses over the years... I see a hobby vehicle that isn't a BRAND NEW, expensive as hell, motorcycle, RV, or car, and I'm out... in the case of an RV and I'd actually sneak up and check the vin to verify age)
*Smell smoke? That's not a just tonight's camp fire or a grill. (A good 6-8 of my neighbors have burn pits for god knows what... in the fall it smells like a forest fire for weeks on end. I see a burn pit, I'm out).
*Fireworks not on 1/1 or 7/4? NOPE... I'm out. (3-4 of my neighbors are straight pyromaniacs and will explode or otherwise blow things up from about May to right about now-ish... Then a couple of weeks around New Year's again)
I'm sure I could keep going if I kept thinking about it, but those are immediate red flags that come to mind that I've developed as strong "NOPE!" decisions for the future (to the point that I'm likely to circumvent my own list and just buy a house on 20 acres or more next time and just not really have neighbors at all). Keep in mind that any one of those things depends entirely on the person doing it, so it's not like I just innately hate fun, but you won't know the person until it's too late so you just have to take the evidence you can see and run with it.
It's also true that it only takes one bad neighbor to ruin everything, but trust me, it's WAY worse when they're ALL bad neighbors. All hope is lost when you realize that 30 or more families would all have to die to move on the same day before it would REALLY make a difference.
I'll also add that I should have seen some of this coming but was too wide eyed and excited about buying a house that I just didn't look past my own property... Oh God I should have...
My neighbors are all pretty universally horrible, which has led me to the conclusion that I'm clearly the odd-man out so I should just let them have this neighborhood for themselves or others like them. However, I have compiled a list of rules for future house hunting that I think can at least improve my initial odds of not having a ton of awful neighbors... I'm open to suggestions for improving or disproving the list...
Other than the NEW #1, which is clearly that crazy dudes with camcorders are to be avoided, these are in no particular order.
The primary rules assume whatever condition you see today in the neighborhood is the NORMAL condition:
*Music loud enough you can hear it from your neighbor's property: There will always be loud music, 24 hours a day (neighbor across the street has outdoor speakers turned to the classic rock station continuously for 8 years now... Now he turns it off when his kid PRACTICES HIS NEW DRUM SET... sometimes he forgets to turn it back on for a day or two, which is nice)
*Lawn a bit unkempt? That's because they're lazy turds that don't mow it. It's not that this is the month that grandpa and grandpa both died and they lost their job too. (Immediate next door neighbor mows her grass 3 times a year. I bought in early winter so this was news to me... first year I was here she mowed it TWICE... She's a little better these days)
*Vehicle that is in the same place when you drive by at radically different times is disabled or owner doesn't have a job (again, see immediate next door neighbor, neighbor behind me, and 2-3 more on the street over the years)
*Dogs/cats running around everywhere? ALWAYS dogs and cats running around everywhere (3 neighbors total are harboring about 30 feral cats, including OTHER immediate next door neighbor... Other-other immediate neighbor's dog would charge me on a daily basis for about 6 years until I think he finally died. Never saw a leash or a chain in his life)
*Kids running around everywhere with no adults to be seen in any direction will later on be vandalizing your property around junior high age (multiple neighbors over the years. I can count them off like clockwork when they move in and move out with events starting and stopping... never anything super major, but annoying)
*ANYONE with an obnoxious hobby will partake in it any time they please. Golf carts with kids and boom boxes blasting rap music, go karts, drag pipes on motorcycles, full-on racing dirt bike blasts at 80mph down the street (4 different neighbors guilty of these offenses over the years... I see a hobby vehicle that isn't a BRAND NEW, expensive as hell, motorcycle, RV, or car, and I'm out... in the case of an RV and I'd actually sneak up and check the vin to verify age)
*Smell smoke? That's not a just tonight's camp fire or a grill. (A good 6-8 of my neighbors have burn pits for god knows what... in the fall it smells like a forest fire for weeks on end. I see a burn pit, I'm out).
*Fireworks not on 1/1 or 7/4? NOPE... I'm out. (3-4 of my neighbors are straight pyromaniacs and will explode or otherwise blow things up from about May to right about now-ish... Then a couple of weeks around New Year's again)
I'm sure I could keep going if I kept thinking about it, but those are immediate red flags that come to mind that I've developed as strong "NOPE!" decisions for the future (to the point that I'm likely to circumvent my own list and just buy a house on 20 acres or more next time and just not really have neighbors at all). Keep in mind that any one of those things depends entirely on the person doing it, so it's not like I just innately hate fun, but you won't know the person until it's too late so you just have to take the evidence you can see and run with it.
It's also true that it only takes one bad neighbor to ruin everything, but trust me, it's WAY worse when they're ALL bad neighbors. All hope is lost when you realize that 30 or more families would all have to die to move on the same day before it would REALLY make a difference.
I'll also add that I should have seen some of this coming but was too wide eyed and excited about buying a house that I just didn't look past my own property... Oh God I should have...
Wow! Not even a barbecue or having children? Barbecues stink if you're not the one cooking. Children are loud and obnoxious if they are not yours. Good luck finding a place on planet Earth to live.
there are probably crazy people in every neighborhood. I guess it depends on whether you find out before you buy or after you move in. And the level of crazy - just nosy and loud, or truly mentally-disturbed.
Really? You're saying that mental illness of your neighbors needs to be disclosed? I'm just a layman but my understanding is that mental illness is protected under federal discrimination laws. Perhaps you didn't mean it as it appears but we should be very careful here as this is a serious area and people should not be misled. As Mike points out, that AZ case was over 10 years old and sounds very legally complex.
Also, professionals, particularly those who are entrusted to deal with a host of anti-discrimination laws should not be referring to mentally ill people as "crazy" on public forums. It looks very unprofessional when you are representing yourself in your professional capacity and representing your whole industry and it could give a perception of prejudice. Things like this can come back and bite you some day should you ever be so unlucky as to be accused of something. These kinds of quotes could be like gold to the plaintiff in a discrimination case or to a licensing board reviewing a case. Remember Detective Furhman. It's not about being PC, it's about being professional, representing your industry properly, and not putting yourself at unnecessary risk with loose and sloppy talk.
I'd rather live next to this guy than the neighbors with the barking dogs or worse, neighbors who are outside in their backyards partying all the time. Basically anyone who is loud, and feels the need to subject their neighbors to their loud lifestyle as if to say "look at me, I'm so popular."
Playing outdoor speakers is a quick way to get me to call the cops on you. Use headphones. I'm organizing an effort around here to toughen barking laws to deal with the small minority of people who leave their dogs outside all day to bark, bark bark. Generally people are good about not doing fireworks off season around here, and I like the smell of fireplaces and wood burning, and don't mind if kids are playing, either.
Wow! Not even a barbecue or having children? Barbecues stink if you're not the one cooking. Children are loud and obnoxious if they are not yours. Good luck finding a place on planet Earth to live.
As I said...
Quote:
Keep in mind that any one of those things depends entirely on the person doing it, so it's not like I just innately hate fun, but you won't know the person until it's too late so you just have to take the evidence you can see and run with it.
You clearly didn't read what I wrote elsewhere either. It's not that children are loud and obnoxious, it's that large packs of roaming children with NO adult supervision, ever, are not being raised well (because no one is there raising them at all) and I can mark on my calendar with shocking accuracy when the PROPERTY DAMAGE to my home will begin, and when it will end, based on their ages. That's not an assumption based on my part, I can actually walk you back through a nearly decade long history of exactly that happening. It's also easy to tell when the problems stop when the kids of "that house" move away.
It's also not that having a barbecue is a problem, but burning your yard waste, or God knows what else, at any given time in unsecured and unsupervised fires, certainly is. I routinely smell burning plastic from my neighbors "barbecues" as you call them, which also routinely reach 20 or more feet into the sky, and regularly burn with vigor until dawn.
The entire point of my "rules" is that they're about inferences you can draw from the things you can see about the things you can't. When you go to look at a house, and even through the inspections and closing, you might be there for a total of 8 hours. It's up to you to decide how important the things you see in that time are for you. I'll also, once again, point out that my neighbors really are genuinely horrible people and the vast majority of buyers will never have the bad luck I did, so it's hard to really understand where I'm coming from until it happens to you. Again, there were plenty of warning signs and I just didn't look for them.
I'd rather live next to this guy than the neighbors with the barking dogs or worse, neighbors who are outside in their backyards partying all the time. Basically anyone who is loud, and feels the need to subject their neighbors to their loud lifestyle as if to say "look at me, I'm so popular."
Playing outdoor speakers is a quick way to get me to call the cops on you. Use headphones. I'm organizing an effort around here to toughen barking laws to deal with the small minority of people who leave their dogs outside all day to bark, bark bark. Generally people are good about not doing fireworks off season around here, and I like the smell of fireplaces and wood burning, and don't mind if kids are playing, either.
I've tried those things... It just made the music louder and the barking dogs (forgot that rule... guy behind me's dog barked through the entire inspection and the entire time I was looking this house... it didn't stop for 6 years until he moved, in a foreclosure... the new guy is a peach too) stay outside without whatever their problem was being addressed all that much longer.
I've learned that once you start down that road, you're engaging with straight up psychopaths. They know their music is loud and obnoxious and they know their barking dog is annoying (never mind neglected), they just straight up don't care. In my case, they seem to actually enjoy annoying other people.
Calling the cops doesn't work... One of my neighbors would blast her music and watch out the window the entire time for a patrol car to come down the street and then turn it off. The cops wouldn't hear it, so they wouldn't stop, and then it was right back to it! The one time the cops actually caught her resulted in A YEAR of that sort of crap almost non-stop. In regard to dogs, look into just how long it takes animal control to even look into the case of abuse for ONE dog, never mind a noise complaint. It just doesn't happen. There are blogs and videos on YouTube of people trying to get their neighbor's noisy dogs to shut up for YEARS. Most of those stories end up with one or the other of them moving.
You guys aren't really getting what I'm saying about the kids and the fires... But even with that said, the rules still stand IMO. If you're cool with whatever you see, fine, but you should always assume that what you see when you go to look at a house will be what you ALWAYS see. A fire burning means a fire 24/7 (which for me, starting in a couple of weeks, it will be for the next 6 weeks at least). Kids walking up and down the street not doing much of anything at 4pm WILL come back out at 4am.
Anyhow... if the beef is over the kids and the fires, then I guess everything else isn't too far off.
Maybe that's his strategy for keeping anyone from buying the neighbor house.
I'd be very suspicious that it was an act to keep people from buying next to him. Maybe he has an aversion to kids? I wouldn't let such a jerk sour you on the whole neighborhood. You might make some inquiries of real estate people who have houses listed nearby. They may know something about him. Also, if you can learn his name, you might check the local courts to see if he really has charges being made against him.
My last location, had such neighbor issues that I now live on 3 acres.
QUOTE=MyGoldenLife;49549397]This is sooo true. The thing to look for is a neighborhood where the homes are not that close to one another. That will be my priority when finding my next home. At least 30 - 5q0 feet away from the next house on either side of me.[/quote]
crazy is everywhere. I say hello and 'nice weather" to the neigbors and keep movin. the less I know, the better
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