Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The only way I know to nearly guarantee that neighboring undeveloped land, that you do not own, will not become a problem, is to live on property bordering a national park or reservation or, perhaps, a military installation. If you are stuck with a new, undesirable neighbor, then a tall hedge is a wonderful thing. So is a tall chainlink fence, painted dark green, on the neighbor-facing side of the hedge. The hedge will help block out the visual blight and the nighttime light pollution. The fence will keep the neighbor's dogs and children off your property. You can install triple pane windows to block out noise at night and hang curtains with blackout lining to block out the light pollution. If you have plants in your landscape that provide food and shelter for widllife, you will still attract plenty of wild birds and small creatures, once they get used to the new neighbors.
Funny, I moved to a 5 acre lot and have no problems. I built my home 60 feet from the road and restored the land to pineland from pasture since I bought it in 2003. All my neighboring lots were cleared and have only a few trees and grass. I have heard people do that because they are scared of snakes. I prefer a yard full of palmettoes and pines to grass one has to constantly mow.
Your comment:
"But my entire original post was asking what kind of reasoning causes someone to place a house specifically to ruin a neighbor’s privacy..."
My point:
They did not consider you, or your privacy, or your desires, one way or the other, at all, when they made the decision where to place their home on their acreage.
They didnt need to.
You were a none-entity in their decision making process.
They built the house there because thats where they wanted their house to sit.
You don't have a say.
Because you made the decision not to buy the property yourself.
Now you are pissed off because of your own monumental miscalculation.
and trying to place the blame on someone else.
Your best bet is to move to an HOA neighborhood where you can join the board and control what your neighbors do.
...
Visitors to my house now say they have trouble picking which of the 5 driveways lined up in a row is ours--rather like living in a condominium, except for the obscene cost we pay. Hard to believe I paid over half a million dollars for a property that I now wouldn't buy for $50,000--and that one single stupid family has the power to absolutely destroy the best thing about a property that cost me so dearly.
...WHY????
5 acres and you have 5 driveways lined up in a row???
Is it in a "development" community / estate???
If so...
My suggestion will be to move out into the country into a truly rural setting surrounded by farmland where properties cannot be developed = no townhomes / condos / SFH with communities & no malls etc. either.
Your best bet is to move to an HOA neighborhood where you can join the board and control what your neighbors do.
Maybe that OP is in a "HOA" type environment... more than likely or one of those estate developments still with the community fee to maintain the grounds & such & have to drive a short distance to their clubhouse (or even a golf club like the ones in my neighbouring town) unlike the cheaper HOA Townhomes / condos / SFH where the clubhouse / poolhouse & such (if there is one) is within the walking community.
Even in a community with HOA, and even with YOU joining the board... unless YOU are the developer him/her self of that development, YOU the neighbour still don't have a choice but to let that money bringing neighbour build where on the lot he wants UNLESS *you* buy out that lot from your developers.
With the HOA community, yeah.... there will be 5 driveways in a row to similar looking homes that will confuse your visitors... many times even more than 5 driveways.
It always cracks me up how people buy property and don't expect the woods around it to be developed. They don't research the area, buy a postage-stamp lot in the middle of other postage-stamp lots, and wonder what happened. Or they buy some acreage backed up on a national or state park and think that all of those people using that park will actually care that they are trying to live a quiet rural life without snowmobiles, 4-wheelers, or crotch-rockets zooming around across the fenceline.
My house is the biggest house on the last street in town - it has been here for 100 years, the street isn't even on the original (1892) map of the town. While I own an acre on the street - I own 59 acres back behind the house and down the whole length of the town. If DH and I are riding the 4-wheeler to go fix fence or herd cows on our property, that's not my neighbors' business. They could have bought the property. They didn't. Nor do they have to take care of it or pay the taxes on it. If I want to develop it and put 10 houses on it, or let it grow up fallow, put cattle and horses on it, put up giant windmills for electricity, or even lease it out for any of the above, it's still - none of their business. They don't pay my bills.
If you don't own it, you have no right to say what happens on it. Don't like it? Buy more property, buy more rural, or learn how to research an area and find out what the private or public property is zoned for/used for year 'round before you buy. Buyer's remorse is the buyer's problem.
The "wild card" that could completely disrupt your illusion of safety and living well in an urban environment are the vast numbers of your city neighbors who don't prepare for ANYTHING.
Yes, in the case of an all-encompassing disaster, either natural or man-made, those of us in rural areas are much better positioned to survive than those of you who choose to remain in metro areas.
Example.
Remember the power outage we had last summer? I was driving back into San Diego from the East and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There were people lined up at gas stations but couldn't get gas. Lined up at stores but couldn't get food or supplies. All of these people were caught with their pants down. When I made it home everyone was out front of their houses as their homes were dark. It took me 5 minutes to get the genset on and freezer/fridge and lights on. The next day I heard on the radio that people were being robbed AFTER they left stores of food and materials.
If that outage had lasted longer? People can get ugly in a big hurry with no food or water.
Funny... when the power goes out here, you can hear the gennies starting or smell the woodsmoke as the fireplaces or woodstoves are fired up. Because we live 40 miles from the closest grocery, we have at least 2 weeks of supplies (most have more - we grow and can and dehydrate and butcher here). If it goes on too long, we're either calling each other or dropping by to make sure our neighbors are warm and eating. If someone is stranded out at one of the ranches, or goes off the highway or one of the ranch roads, we call each other and pile into our 4WDs or 4-wheelers and go out to help. Some of us have plows on our trucks or 4-wheelers, and we cut paths or dig each other out. Two neighbors are assigned to the county plows, and we call them out too. Flood or washout, snow or ice, fire or windstorm, we always work together - some have this, some have that. If someone's heat goes out, or they are snowed out of their road, or have a fire or a wreck, we go out and pick them and their kids up and bring them in where the rest of us have shelter - for a weekend, a week, or however long.
Everyone open-carries and anyone who tries to 'move in on' someone else or steal from them takes their lives into their hands. Folks won't even hunt on another person's property unless they get permission from the owner. Whatever we have, we share with each other; no one, especially the elderly, does without. We trade work for work, food, whatever - one hardly ever sees a wallet or a checkbook out. I traded 100 lbs of beef (steaks, roasts, burger) from our steer and 50 lbs of pork (roasts, hams, bacon, sausage) for hay for the winter.
Country living is better than fighting with strangers over the last gennie at Home Depot, or worrying about who's going to accost you in the WalMart parking lot for your last dollar or bag of groceries. I feel sorry for those who have to constantly worry about protecting what they have, often from people they don't even know.
We have a 7 day plus blackout in our area (Irene) and the neighbours are all pitching out to help each other anyways they can (like sharing to keep another's food {not to eat them mind you} if that neighbour do not have a generator or if it is down, or providing water, or to lend a cell etc.). Quite a tight great little community I've moved to or just to say I am lucky?
This is something that has happened so many times that it is apparently pervasive, but I cannot for the life of me understand it. Maybe someone can offer insight:
We have owned 4 houses in our lifetime, and now for the 4th time the undeveloped lot next to my home when I bought it has been developed in a way that absolutely destroys the total privacy and wildlife habitat I previously had. These new neighbors built right on our property line as close to the setback as possible, despite having 5 acres to situate their house. It could not have been designed better to minimize the value, utility and privacy of my home.
They cleared every tree and bush, so all my front windows now see virtually nothing but their small and uninteresting house and leech field taking up what used to be woods and a pretty natural environment. They basically laid the house and yard and driveway along our property line, while leaving the other 4.8 acres still natural. We haven't even met them.
Formerly my dogs could run free since the other 3 sides are wooded conservation property, now they bark constantly at the endless very loud noise of this construction zone (14 months so far). They had to dynamite for months, and have been dumping loads of gravel by the hundreds. Incredibly loud and disruptive; hardly what you would expect in a residential neighborhood that is taxed like it was beach waterfront by local insatiable politicians.
They leave multiple strong halogen lights on ALL night long, every night, directly facing my house. Why they need to illuminate their garage and back porch all night when they don't live there yet, I don't get. We're the only people to see their house; it's not even visible from the road. Now I have to invest in heavy drapes to block the light pollution in the bedroom at night; I could read at midnight, the lights are so strong. They actually had to spend a fortune to make this house as intrusive as it is to us, even though the final property won't be worth much since the house has a small footprint and is architectually simple, though it it is tall to make sure it attracts the eye.
The first three houses we bought also only lasted a few months after we bought them before being transformed from private, natural estates to common dime-a-dozen crampt subdivisions that were miserable to live in. I thought that was just because of the housing construction explosion, but this one just happened in 2009. I bought our house because the granite hill was priced at over $200,000 and would cost a fortune to develop. There was not a single other house on the market that had ANY privacy or wildlife. And with 5 acres, even if it was developed, the neighbor's house should never have been seen from our house. They could have put it virtually anywhere without ruining our privacy. Instead, they situated it for maximum effect, and so that nothing I do could prevent us from seeing it. Since it's up the granite hill, not even trees can be placed to block us from staring directly at nothing but this house. A fence would have to be 100' high and ugly, which is illegal anyway.
Can someone tell me why it is a pattern that those who build their own houses on raw land would go to such lengths and such expense to make sure they destroy the privacy of the neighbors? What are they thinking? Or do people just do whatever idiotic thought enters their heads without even realizing that a private home surrounded by woods is a much nicer environment than houses packed one on top of another, annoying each other with noise and light pollution and intrusions on privacy? Why didn't they buy one of the thousand no-privacy houses for half the cost?
Visitors to my house now say they have trouble picking which of the 5 driveways lined up in a row is ours--rather like living in a condominium, except for the obscene cost we pay. Hard to believe I paid over half a million dollars for a property that I now wouldn't buy for $50,000--and that one single stupid family has the power to absolutely destroy the best thing about a property that cost me so dearly.
Yes, I know I should buy a property with enough land to keep others from destroying my privacy, and we would have if we could afford it. But here in NH like elsewhere, you only have the choice of a house like ours (formerly) was, or a 200 acre spread with a non-functional house for $1 million or more. We simply haven't been able to earn that much money, and the fact remains that others are habitually going to extreme lengths and extreme cost to ruin our privacy. I'd really like to know WHY????
Quote:"We have owned 4 houses in our lifetime, and now for the 4th time the undeveloped lot next to my home when I bought it has been developed in a way that absolutely destroys the total privacy and wildlife habitat I previously had."
Let's see...
Fool me once, shame on you.... Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me FOUR times... well, I'd get flagged for replying to that one.
I too have lived in NH... (for a long time)... for $0.5M, you can buy a lot and build a house in which you can't even see your neighbors, nor will you ever be able to. (I should know, I have two). And it will be a mansion. (This is also southern NH, and very good towns).
I am just guessing that the choices made were less than optimal.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
