I had a similar experience at our old house with our neighbor who seemed to only be annoyed with me (not my husband). One day after I cut the grass and was blowing the clipping off the border of our properties ONTO OUR property she stood on her porch and yelled that I run that blower everyday and it’s so annoying - I can assure you I only run it after cutting the grass and also “YOU’RE WELCOME” for cleaning your driveway!
She also gave me the dirtiest look when I returned her little ball of fur pup who had escaped her yard and was in no fence territory in our yard, not far from the street. Not a sign of “thank you”.
I did find out that a couple of years later she was having some memory or possibly dementia issues - I don’t know if that was the issue but her behavior really seemed directly to only me!
She made no secret of the fact she was disappointed we were moving into the house (I inherited it) instead of selling it “to a young family who could benefit from the neighborhood”. She also asked me how much it cost to have our popcorn ceilings removed, which I couldn’t tell her as it wasn’t a line item on an invoice. Our last home had more room between houses and I really miss that!
My neighbors are actually pretty OK, but one has a very ahem “interesting” front yard.
We have 200 feet of yard in front of our homes, and most have lawns, with maybe an island of trees or some flowers, normal stuff. When we moved here, that neighbor’s entire yard was white rocks. Odd, right? Then, apparently there was an altercation with their across the street neighbors, and so they put fast growing trees around the entire perimeter of their front yard.
At some point they wound up taking down most of the trees in the front, and they wound up having some grassy areas. Then they learned how to build rock “stations” or something, and now they have lots of little “areas” surrounded by rocks, with things in them. There’s an old bicycle in one, a table and chairs in another, one of those gazebo little arches someone might get married under, etc. All of these rock areas are held together with something that was a greyish white color. This summer the neighbor started painting whatever held them together black. There are LOTS of rocks to paint. The neighbor is 80+, and when he’s not in his yard, I sometimes worry about him.
Plus, this neighbor is the only one on the block that has a fence in the front yard.
The closest immediate neighbors have a house with a roof covered in moss. Not a complaint. I never hear them talking and they never seem to go outside, except for one child who I guess is about 12. Then he bounces his basketball and it sounds very lonely. I feel sorry for the kids, as there is another child, whom I have never seen. It feels like a not very happy house. Also not a complaint.
The complaint is the very bright security light shining into my side yard. It’s on 24/7. NO ONE would ever come to the back of their home, as it’s overgrown and pretty inaccessible. Can’t they please just turn out that stupid light? I keep hoping the bulb will go and that they won’t notice. I feel like getting a BB gun.
Edit: About a month after I moved in, and of course didn’t know anybody, the mailman put their mail in our box. I didn’t recognize the name and I couldn’t find anything on Google either. So I posted on a local Facebook page. Someone knew them and said they would let them know, and she sent a message via messenger. It was the next door neighbor. I said “why don’t I just bring your mail up and introduce myself?” No response, which was awkward. The next day I messaged again and said I would just put the mail in her mailbox. She replied thanks. That was it. Couldn’t even tell you what she looks like, but it’s odd.
Do you think they’re hiring people who just show up at their house and say things like “we were in the neighborhood working at the Smith’s house and we can give you a great deal on xxxx if you hire us now and pay cash”? It sounds very sketchy and if more workers than usual they may be marked for such scams.
This thread reminded me of my elderly widowed great aunt, a true New Jersey native, who shared a driveway with an equally contentious elderly woman. They argued and complained about each other to each other constantly. And most of her conversations with others were filled with all the things the neighbor had done, what she said, etc. I actually think it kept her from being lonely. And I also always suspected if either one truly needed the other they would be there.
I have great neighbors. Several of them have lived here as long as we have-38 years. My husband observed that we have lived with our neighbors much longer than we lived with our siblings.
Very well then. Here is “Complain About Your Neighbors - Contractor Edition”.
We have a house about half way up a hill, off a dirt road. Everyone on our side of the road has two-three acres with lots of woods. My neighbor just uphill from me - lets call him Pete - is great. Just uphill from Pete was a five acre lot that supposedly could not be subdivided because of road frontage issues. A developer - let’s call him CB - while building a house on the empty lot graded the property to direct all the storm water through Pete’s yard, terminating in my garage. Because of CB’s grading plan, during heavy rains my garage was flooded with around two inches of water and silt not once, not twice, but three times. I spoke with the CB project manager after the first flood event and they responded by placing around 10 sandbags with some silt fencing in the path of the runoff, which lasted around 15 minutes during the next heavy rain. After the second flood I contacted the township building department and they sent a field superintendent to walk the site with me. The building department then ordered CB to design a revised grading plan, during which time we were flooded a third time.
To add insult to injury, I lost a tree that was in the path of the runoff. The lost tree was appraised at $5,000 by an arborist and when I tried to get restitution from CB they told me it was the new home owner’s problem. I contacted our real estate lawyer who advised me that CB would drag out the legal process and wear me down, and if I did win a judgement it would pale in comparison to my legal fees. My attorney was very familiar with CB and said they engaged in a sketchy practices like hiring unlicensed subcontractors so they could not file mechanic’s liens when CB stiffed them.
Our main home is on a cul-de-sac with another separated by a row of trees. There’s a spot in front of where we park our truck that is used (mostly) by delivery trucks to pass between the two. Neighbors are okay, but for the feral children two doors down who ride/double ride on those battery-operated cars. They deliberately scratched up another neighbor’s truck to the tune of $1K damage. They’ve thankfully stopped riding up the path to our front door.
The house in back of us went up for rent, but before that happened they had someone go over and cut their side of our laurel hedge back to the trunks so we can see clear through. We have a pro come in every year to trim it properly.
our second home has its share of characters. The neighbors to one side live out of state, but when they come up here they make things interesting. It’s medium-low bank waterfront with vegetation on the bank, mostly blackberries. They hep keep the bank in place and our other neighbors pick them for jam. Win-win. Well, not for them. Out with Round Up of all things spraying the heck out of the berry plants. Did I mention we’re on the water? With oysters etc. on the beach. Definitely not allowed. The gardeners they had come in this spring cut back trees between our lots, removing the privacy we enjoyed. They don’t even walk on that side of their house.
As the neighbors have gotten older, the parties are a lot less wild, and this year there weren’t even any fireworks. Yay!
For my job I need a security clearance. For that clearance, the investigators go and talk to your neighbors about you. I always tell my neighbors when it’s time for a reinvestigation so that they aren’t surprised. Several years ago as the process was winding down the investigator said to me “look, I’m not supposed to talk with you about anything I find, but I feel like I have to, so you can stay safe. When I knocked on your neighbor’s door I identified myself and showed my identification. They asked me to hold a minute. When they came back they had an entire arsenal of guns arrayed behind them. I have no idea what they were trying to convey, but it felt intimidating and threatening to me. I made a comment about how fast that was and they said they were quick and easy to access. Just… don’t let your boys go to that house without supervision ok? It really didn’t feel like they were storing those guns safely.”
And the neighbors wondered why I always said “no, that’s ok” when they offered to have my then-young boys over to swim or play without me there…
Nothing particularly wrong with our neighbors; husband does yard work so he sees them occasionally but me seldom. I have been aggravated for over a year, though.
A nice couple with two kids bought the house almost across the street late in 2024. They knocked down the old house and built a big new one. They’ve moved in but are still not done. The frustrations are (1) noise, especially the bobcat back up beeps and cement drills (2) dirt; they’ve had a dirt dumpster in front of their house for months so the dust when filling it drifts over and (3) street parking; I keep one car in front of our house since we have no driveway and our garage only fits one. Between the dumpster and their two cars and all the workers coming and going, we have to “save” our spot on weekdays. Their driveway is almost done so that might help. In normal times it never was an issue.
In the meantime, our next door neighbors have been building an ADU in their back yard, again for over a year, luckily for their daughter to live in and not for rentals. That has also been going for over a year. They seem to be almost done except for the yard. Hopefully when it’s over, they will join with husband to replace our joint rotting fence which provides lovely privacy.
There’s a newish barking dog behind us, and some family with screaming kids nearby. But that’s expected and beats the day care center that used to be kiddie corner behind us. And I now own noise cancelling ear muffs for the worst days, which (knock on wood) seem to be over.
Any Palo Alto residents? I would hate to have that family for a neighbor! We have our share of billionaires here but they don’t seem to create that much nuisance.
My current neighbors are really great people and our HOA is strict so nothing to complain about except for the older man at the end of the street whose son sells drugs out of his house. People drive by and the son runs out the back door and makes the transaction. Police won’t do anything.
When we lived in Boise, we had neighbors a few houses down who had sex parties every few weeks. It was a very nice, not sketchy neighborhood and a good proportion were LDS. The police were called as they used the backyard during the parties, but nothing was done except that the neighbors constructed temp fence height extensions for the parties. The shenanigans were originally discovered by an adjacent neighbor’s kid who was curious and looked through a gap in the fence. The partiers had young children who we hoped were out of the home during the parties.
Re: having work done…we only let the neighbors know if the workers will be starting before 9 am.
We had one summer when we had our driveway done, our slope landscaped and mulched, some deck and roof work done, and solar panels installed. I hope our neighbors viewed this as a plus as we were taking care of and improving our home and lot.
To me, having workers do work is a plus, not a minus.
I can’t think of anything to complain about right now…about our neighbors.
No, the neighbor for sure hires them. He will sometimes come out when they are done or whatever and chat with them a bit. And they definitely pull in the driveway and start working.
I think either through his church or business (I don’t want to say what his business is and it’s legit and it is apparently successful but also it might give him the occasion to deal with less than known businesses or workers or some organization where they need to find some “down and out” some work.)
It’s just constant the things he has people come and work on - and their house literally was gutted after the fire and rebuilt inside from head to toe.
But another annoying this is his GIANT OAK TREE in the back really needs a good trim - and it is hanging and dropping all kinds of crap in our yard and pool! We may approach him about splitting the costs on this but also with everything else he’s having done to his yard/trees/bushes WHY do we not attend to the giant tree!?
No complaints here thankfully. The main problem in our neighborhood is free range chickens kicking up mulch in people’s gardens. We have a big dog so chickens don’t visit us.
The stuff that’s in the middle of them, not the rocks themselves. BUT, as I was out walking son’s dog I was wondering if they actually painted to rocks too! I’ll have to do more recon
