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It seems there is always one neighbor that just blows, and the vast majority of the time, they are renters. I say this after having lived in three houses I own.
1) The ghetto renters who's son did drugs in the alley behind my house, littered it with trash so thick you could barely see the ground. Loud music, stolen cars from their "friends" left in the alley.
2) So I moved...into a neighborhood of 300K houses. Only to find that half of them are renters, and one especially, is a section 8 renter that is absolutely disgusting, loud and obnoxious. There are some 10 people living in the house and the city and the feds do nothing, even though I've complained. Well, actually, they did finally come down on the landlord but it wasn't the many complaints so much as my offering to write an article for the media about the slums our tax dollars are creating. Why do section 8 people get to live in a 300K house? So they can have a house to live in that they can be proud of?? What is there to be proud of, without tax payer funded assistance, you wouldn't be living in that house, it is not yours and you can't really afford to rent it.
Where I live now there are neighbors who don't follow the rules of the HOA at all, loud music, cars parked on lawns, etc., and the HOA does nothing.
So I'm considering down sizing back into #2 above. It is closer to work, entertainment, transit, no HOA and I was having luck with the city getting the section 8 house cleaned up a bit, and not on a busy street like #1, which has neighbor issues on top as pointed out.
The only saving grace it seems, is that people eventually move on. #1 house above I've owned for 5 years and neighbors on 3 out of 4 sides of me have changed in that time, and are about to change again on one side.
# 2 house had a rental across the street, that is now owner occupied, and the neighbor two houses down who played loud music all the time sold recently. The hoarders on the left of that house got foreclosed on and moved out, and now there is a renter there, though they seem far better than the people who lived there previously.
So basically, it seems that bad neighbors are everywhere, at least one. Furthermore, even if you get a bad neighbor, they will likely move on in a few years, especially if a renter. Heck, even in #3 above, one of the crappy neighbors has already moved on and converted the house into a rental. Funny thing is, the renters don't make a peep, are clean and orderly. Even my other neighbors used to come out and get annoyed and stare at the neighbor that moved out, he was so loud and obnoxious.
I feel your pain. Have you tried really tall hedges. Out of sight, out of mind. If all else fails, a couple of acres out of town sounds nice.
Tall hedges don't do much about noise or their sketchy friends hanging around. I have tall hedges at house #1 and it was better than nothing but not much. Luckily the homeowner who bought the house next door (both of the houses on either side of house #1 got foreclosed on not long after I moved in) put up a tall wooden fence. A step in the right direction :-)
But her and her boyfriend are older and are quiet, drive a Benz, etc. They are more classy people.
I was about to say.. we have really nice neighbors, one stands outside every once and awhile and chats while i water the yard. On the other side they mostly keep to themselves. No loud music everyone keeps their yard looking nice. no HOA... I think the most important thing you can do before buying a house is look at the neighborhood before you buy. Cars in the yard and generally unkempt yards are a red flag.
Bad neighbors are extremely rare in my experience. My bad neighbors are on the other spectrum - too pristine and finicky - a dog barks in the afternoon, they call and complaint. If the garbage cans aren't retrieved timely, they bark.
$300k houses are all relative. Here, a $300k house is a fixer-upper in the ghetto.
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Mostly for us, no. We had neighbors at our last home we didn't like but no real bad problems. Then they went broke, sold and are running from their creditors.
Our new place is wonderful. People are nice and look out for each other.
My neighbors have more cars than occupants plus the big work Truck that he brings home every night. He has a problem with alcohol and I've found beer bottles in my hedges when I've cut the deer grass down for the season. His 4 daughters are he'll on wheels trying to get their daddy's attention. The moms always at work. On the other side of me, the parents let their younglings roam the neighborhood. I've seen the kids jumping over people's fences that they don't even know. I resolved th getting security cameras. Haven't had a problem since. I did put star jasmine vines on a 20 ft trellis that I built between our postage stamp size lots (beer side). Even though we're in an HOA they couldn't complain because they were so far in arrears on their fines because they didn't take care of their property. The law changed in NV and now if you don't pay your fines, the HOA and come after your property.
Some people complain about HOA'S having to much power but I see an extra layer of protection from equity sucking homeowners. Thanks for listening.
I had some issues with neighbors while living in a townhome...it's rough when everyone's on top of one another.
We bought a home in a small town a little over 2 years ago. We live on a cul de sac and the neighbors on either side of us are great. One is quiet & never around, the other talks to my husband all of the time & lets him borrow ladders, tools, whatever we need. Unfortunately, we do have one jerk neighbor, and he doesn't even technically live on our street. There is no house across from ours, his house is actually on the next street over, and his yard backs into our street. He has a big fence up so you can't see his yard. His kid & his friends play in our cul de sac, which would be fine, but...they are loud & abnoxious, and when we first moved in they seemed to think our back yard was their playground. At the time we had a dog who wasn't friendly to strangers, and they ignored our requests to keep out of the back yard. It helped to put up a big fence but now they ring the bell when their toys end up going over the fence. They also hit our house & cars with their balls all of the time.
The father is terrible. He owns some kind of trailer for his 4 wheeler, and parks it in our cul de sac 24/7. Right behind my driveway. I don't have trouble backing out for the most part, however last winter he never bothered to move it when it snowed & it made it almost impossible. I have held back calling the police (we can't leave our cars on the street when it snows) since he is a firefighter in town but...I decided this winter to call the police if he doesn't move it.
Overall it's not a terrible situation, more of an annoyance. I guess every town has 'the bad ones.' Tall privacy fences are great!
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