WTF Neighbor

[Ophbalance]

Bit of a background:

I had a thread a good ways back about sucky Realtor that complained that my yard was not groomed well enough for them. Sucky Realtor found a sucky neighbor, it seems. This is their story... bum bum.

I live in a cul de sac. Sucky neighbor purchased sucktastic property to my right, if you were facing out my house and looking at the street. The fireworks began as there was some property marking issues with OK neighbor to the immediate right of sucky new neighbor (otherwise known as SN).

Turns out, the family that owns the lots (or did, rather) royally balled up building the lots to the actual property boundaries. The OK neighbor, upon seeing the survey done for SN prior to the sale of the home has permanent fixtures that cross the property boundary. Like, a slab of concrete amongst other things. OK neighbor (OKN henceforce) contacts the lot owner, and the lot owner wants her to sign off on an easement agreement so the sale of the property can go through. OKN tells the lot owner she'll have to think on that, as she wants to see what it will do to her property values.

Well, turns out, our lot owner isn't willing to wait. The sale of the property goes through and SN moves in. But then the fun begins! SN brings along ducks and chickens... a HUGE no no that's specifically forbidden in our covenants, what few we actually have. Thou shalt have no farm animals. Thus begins the war of the SN and OKN. The problems really surround the rooster and it's proclivity to call at all hours of the day and night, which is keeping for OKN up. There's promises made that the rooster will be made to go buh bye, and as an act of kindness, we give them a copy of the covenants they claim to never have been given. Rooster is still there four months later.

And then the fight with US began. They decided to put up an 8 foot privacy fence. That, I have no problem with. My problem is that I'm 90% certain it's mostly on MY property. I saw the dude digging the line of posts and went out to tell him I could be wrong, but my understanding was the berm separating our properties was soley on my property. And he was placing the fence smack center of said berm. Queue the she beast to come out swinging "WHAT DID HE SAY TO YOU?!" comes out of her mouth like a pound of crushed glass mixed with kerosene. And then "WELL SOMEONE MOVED OUR FLAGS, BUT IT'S ON OUR SIDE OF THE PROPERTY!". I let it go, as it was my spawn that moved the flags... and I didn't want to spring for the $300 to get it surveyed. I'm still pretty sure that dumb fence is on my property, but I'll take sweet pleasure in having them move it the day it's proven .

At any rate, there's been other dust ups with them. The boyfriend is... well, not overly friendly. At one point all the other kids in the neighborhood were banned from his property for one kid running a bike into his garage door. But that seems to have been relaxed for now.

But then... today. I'm in the kitchen cleaning up when my dogs go batshit nuts. I've had enough of them today and start to scream at them when I realize one of my neighbors from up the street asks, quite panicked, if we're OK and why is there a firetruck outside?? See, we live in the country. Everyone burns. The neighbor to my left burns. The guy across the street burns. OKN burned down half her bloody lot to clear it. But today, we burnt some boxes. And it seems that some ash got on the roof of SN's home, and dear god, that is just not acceptable! Call the fire department!

So I learned something new today. I cannot burn boxes, or trash, or anything else except something that originally grew out of the ground (which, being pedantic, cardboard kinda is). It also has to be less than 6 inches in diameter. And even though the fire was OUT when they got here they still wanted to play with their hoses and spray down the ashes.

I don't get it. It's like they're going out of their ways to start fights with us. And if I wanted to be a real dick, I'd call them out on the farm animals thing. But last time I checked, we had all graduated high school. Why in the fuck, if it was bothering them, would they not think to maybe grow a pair and come over and actually say something? My kids want to go out and swim in our pool, but knowing that neighbor is outside at present has got me staying inside so I don't say something I may just regret.

[AccountingDrone]

Time to leave the cul-de-suck and find some place with neighbors a bit further away.

Unless I move into one of a couple specific properties, or a highrise condo, I am not living on anything less than 2 acres. I do not want to have someone within 50 to 75 feet of my house. 100 feet or greater is better.

[bloo]

Oh man, I feel for you. Some neighbors can be truly putrid and we moved 5 years ago primarily to get away from an SN. We honestly thought, at one point, he was going to shoot us when we walked out of our house.

It all started with property lines, too, and devolved into a good deal of ugliness and cops being called. Sprinkled with Cut Directs and demands to only communicate through certified mail. If I was to run into him I'd have a hard time *not* spitting.

I'd find a way to spring for the survey. It depends on locality, but at some point the laws in some areas will *give* the property to whomever is maintaining it.

The property we lived on was owned by my Stepfather-in-Law (SFIL) and my mother-in-law (MIL). SFIL is a doctor and his practice had an apartment above it that they'd lived in for years. They offered it to us, free of charge, when we decided to move to the area. Next door was SN who ran his own business on his property as well as living there.

Now we'd built a six-foot privacy fence inside my IL's property line over 20 years ago. They did not do a very good job of maintaining it but it was still up and was only for the back yard. So there was a 4-foot strip of grass from the actual property line to my IL's parking lot for patients. We couldn't help but notice that SN always mowed that strip of grass when he mowed his. DH commented on it to his stepdad and mom and they're attitude was, "Yeah they're being neighborly." Dh thought, 'whatever' and went back to minding his own business.

Except that SFIL and MIL noticed that SN was coming over to complain when patients were parking on that end of the lot, that their cars bumpers were hanging over his (SN's) property. Or the Amish were tying their horses to his electrical pole.

Excuse me...what did he just say? What does he mean by 'his property'?

So when the 'rents were whining about it, DH asked them, "Do you just want to give him the property? Because that's what you essentially did by letting him maintain it for the last five years."

SFIL & MIL: "No we don't want to give it to him."
DH: "Well then you better start establishing boundaries right now."

It was getting close to winter so the parents decided to put up a snow fence just inside the property line. Know how that went? A display of rage by SN so great that DH called the cops on him. He started cursing, spitting and yanking out posts for the fence and throwing them. Afterwards we both sent him certified letters that he was not to speak to us or walk on the property. Any communication would need to be done through certified mail.

Anytime we walked outside, he make fun of any of us and he also had one of his employees make a false accusation of abuse against my DH (towards our daughter) at our place of worship. A truly ugly individual.

We let his parents know that we had seen what appeared to be SN and his employees digging up the property line marker on that side of the property. A felony in our area. DH almost immediately walked out there with a metal detector and the marker was no longer there. He went to the other side of the property (bordering on our own OKN) and it was still intact. SN was watching DH the whole time.

So MIL said, 'screw it' and ordered a property survey. When the surveyors came out my MIL had a local policeman sit on our property and asked me to stand outside and videotape the whole thing with my camcorder. SN was wiggling his little arms and pumping his furious little fists in all his tiny little frustration. He knew better than to approach any of us but sat out in the open, glaring at us and looking like at any moment he would shift into apoplexy. The surveyors put the new marker in, in the exact spot we saw them dig it out.

His wife, on the other hand, tried to calmly approach my MIL, and she was upset. And she asked MIL, "but you let us mow that strip for years..."

So there you go. Some people do things to be nice. Others do it because they plan on taking your property from you.

MIL reproached me for walking away from SN's wife while MIL was talking to her. I chastised her right back. "I wrote a letter to the woman that they were not to talk to us. That we were only to communicate through certified letter. Allowing myself to be in conversation would negate that. You should have just walked away from her, yourself."

Afterwards was a bit of Hatfield/McCoys. They would complain and send out a zoning guy everytime they could hear a hammer being hit on our property. So the in-laws made a formal complaint with zoning that their house needed painting. They came back with a complaint that the in-laws boat didn't have current tags. The in-laws made a formal complaint that SN was dumping garbage, including old tires, so far in the back of his property that he was technically dumping it on a local councilman's property. SN ratted out the in-laws illegal brush pile. And so on and so forth.

It was a huge relief to move out of there five years ago!

It's a lousy situation to be in if the neighbor is cray-cray. If it's not worth the hassle, cede it to him (in your mind anyway). Otherwise do the survey but try to make friendly (if not friends) in such a way that relations aren't strained but you let them know they will not be able to cross your boundaries.

When you reach a point where you don't even want to enjoy going outside on your own property, it's a bad place to be, my friend.

[Sapphire Silk]

Time to leave the cul-de-suck and find some place with neighbors a bit further away.

Unless I move into one of a couple specific properties, or a highrise condo, I am not living on anything less than 2 acres. I do not want to have someone within 50 to 75 feet of my house. 100 feet or greater is better.

That's not always as easy as it sounds. If you own, you have to sell your house. In this market that may or may not be an easy thing to do.

There's a SN up the street from where EE used to live. He's been banned from the neighborhood pool for trying to take it over (had all kinds of friends and family who didn't live in the neighborhood taking up all the space, pushing people in the water) and making threats. He rides his ATV up and down our streets like a bat out of hell, and has threatened an OKN who yelled at him to slow down because of all the kids in our neighborhood. SN threatened to kill OKN more than once, even when it was someone else who called the cops on him.

The cops won't get involved; claim it's a "civil matter."

It's so bad OKN is trying to move. But there are a lot of foreclosures in the neighborhood and selling is hard right now, especially because it's in the "new" part of the neighborhood that isn't very well built compared to the "old" part of the neighborhood (that I live in).

I may be moving myself in six months or so (so I can go back to school) . . . but even though I have a nicer house in a better part of the neighborhood, I'm not so sure I can get a good price, so I will probably have to rent it when I leave.

I did finally solve the dog problems with my idiot neighbor. Animal control got so many complaints that IN wised up, and doesn't just leave the dog outside 24/7 anymore. His wife lets the dog out when she gets tired of it, but it's not the irritant it used to be . . . and this dog is a nicer dog than the pits he had when I first moved in.

Sometimes I miss having Copper over. He'd mark the fence every time, which set the boundaries for this other dog and made my life easier.

[Crossbow]

I understand completely. Our rear neighbor (back yards butt up to each other) when we moved in started out really nice. Sweet little old white haired lady. But pretty quickly, she turned nasty. Apparently she decided that since we wouldn't do everything she asked immediately, we were the spawn of Satan or some such.

We have some small-ish (10-15 foot tall) trees growing along the back fence and a number of branches were hanging over into her yard. A couple were even hitting the roof of her detached garage. Ok, it happens. She can trim them if she wants, or I'll even be happy to do it if she isn't able to. All she has to do is ask.

So does she ask? Hell, no. She demands, and I mean DEMANDS that we cut all of the trees down. Now. Um... no. I don't think so. This started her frothing at the mouth. She's going to call the electric company and get them to cut the trees down (They won't come out unless a tree is actively pressing on a line). She's going to call the police and get them to force us to cut them down (good luck with that). Rant, rant rant.

She then complains that our maple tree is dumping all its leaves in her yard and she doesn't have the strength to clean them up. Ok, I take a look. there's a few maple leaves in her back yard. Probably from our 10 foot maple tree. Not a lot, but a few. Fine. The rest of her yard is covered in oak leaves. We don't have an oak tree. He next door neighbor (diagonal from us), however, has an 50 foot oak tree in his back yard. I point this out to her.

It was at that moment that I pesonally met Beelzebub, and he wears a floral-print house dress....

Then she started threatening to cut the trees down herself. Yeah, right. With what? She can't lift a chain saw, and a hand saw would take months with her strength. I admint, I was pissed at that point. I said "Touch any of our trees, and I'll make one phone call, stating that you're a danger to yourself and others, and you'll find yourself in a nursing home so fast your head will spin." Not very nice, I know. But I was really not amused with her at this point. She continued to screech incherently while I went back inside.

Cut to the next spring. I went out back to deal with some trash that had blown into the yard during winter. Guess what I find? Or don't find, rather? Yep. Someone had cut down the maple tree, right at fence level. None of the other trees had been touched. Unfortunately, I had no idea when it had happened, other than sometime in the previous 3 months. Not helpful to the police, I'm afraid. I did call and make a report, just in case something else happened, but nothing came of it, and she didn't mess with any other trees.

And I didn't have to make good on my threat, either. We noticed the house was vacant by that summer. It sat vacant for about a year, until the current owners purchased it, and they're really nice. According to them, she died a few months prior in an assisted living home out of state...

[Sapphire Silk]

Neighbors can't demand you cut down trees in your yard. They can ask you trim branches hanging over their property IF the branches are causing physical damage to their property, or risk of physical injury to a person.

After the bad ice storm last winter, a tree in a neighbor's yard split a large branch that started hanging over into my yard over his fence. Now, his leaves fall into my yard every year. I don't bitch about it; it's just part of having trees on the border of your yard. I just rake them up and don't think twice about it. But the broken branch was a different story; it would have created risks for my lawn guy in the Spring.

So I went to his house, knocked on his door and spoke about it with his wife. I asked nicely that he take care of the branch, that the way it was hanging would be dangerous for my lawn guy come spring. Wife was very nice about it; she didn't know it was a problem; you couldn't see the branch from her house, the angle was all wrong. She said she'd tell her hubs. I said great, and feel free to come into my yard if you need to to get at the branch. About a week later, the neighbor took care of the branch.

I couldn't touch the branch. His tree, his property. And I didn't have the tools; it was a big branch and I didn't own a chain saw at the time.

My neighbor on the other side of the house has several large trees on the border of our properties; they're all on their side. I'm worried about a big pine that leaned dangerously low over my garage during the ice storm. I talked to the neighbor about it and asked he get the tree removed. He hasn't done it yet. I haven't made a big fuss; if the tree falls and hits my house, his homeowners insurance will be on the hook and I will tell my insurance company that I did address the issue with him. He's otherwise a really good neighbor, and he let me trim some branches on his crepe myrtle that were making life hard for my lawn guy.

[EricKei]

SS - Got any pics of the pine tree? Better yet, of it leaning over your garage? Having something like that could go a long way in backing up any potential claim against him if his insurance co tries to dispute it (which, if any damage is done, they almost certainly will).

[Ophbalance]

Yeah, leaving this house would be nigh on impossible at this point. There's presently two foreclosures and one up for sale. One of them, beyond ours having a stick built attic, matches our floor plan exactly. In the 4 months she's had it up for sale? One single buyer showed interest in a walk through. Just the one. And it doesn't help that new houses in the area are starting to go up again.

The other thing holding me back is their only child and my eldest daughter are friends. And their child is kinda sheltered, and needs to keep friends. Looking at the statutes it appears this is part an EPA effort (damn you CAMD... I know where the person behind that agency works ) to control air quality. The other bit of trivia here is it's also subject to a $25k fine. Joy. You cannot burn outside the hours of 8AM - 6PM, which... seems rather odd to me.

[AccountingDrone]

The clean air thing is odd - Rob mentioned that his mother was thrilled that she actually got to use her fireplace last winter a couple of times ... burning anything for heat is forbidden, but you can brun as much stuff as you want if it is for cooking. Made me want to go out and get one of the old style coal fired kitchen stoves.

[She lives in the Tower district of Fresno. What is now even odder, I was checking out a realty site wisting after some place to move to near Fresno when my mom passes and we finally have the money to move, we spotted a very rural house that seems to heat with a wood stove. So if you are out in the ass end of nowhere, burn all you like, just no wildfires!]

[Tama]

I used to live out in the country. It was just great because we had a burn barrel for garbage. :-)

[Fudgethatkay]

[She lives in the Tower district of Fresno. What is now even odder, I was checking out a realty site wisting after some place to move to near Fresno when my mom passes and we finally have the money to move, we spotted a very rural house that seems to heat with a wood stove. So if you are out in the ass end of nowhere, burn all you like, just no wildfires!]

I live there, and seriously, our rules about the wood burning are just...odd. Considering a lot of the houses near tower or south of Shaw street are meant for wood burning it seems.

I grew up with my dad burning it like two times a week, and I live 10 minutes from tower. o.o

[AccountingDrone]

I live there, and seriously, our rules about the wood burning are just...odd. Considering a lot of the houses near tower or south of Shaw street are meant for wood burning it seems.

I grew up with my dad burning it like two times a week, and I live 10 minutes from tower. o.o

Wish I had known, we could have met up for coffee

I grew up with a burn barrel for trash at our summer house, and fireplaces or woodstoves in places I have lived [other than apartments, I never managed to get a cool place with a fireplace in an old victorian turned into flats ]

I absolutely adore heating with a wood stove - lovely even heat and I can cook on top all day [and in my current one, bake bread or make casseroles in the oven part!]

I wouldn't burn trash now, recycling combined with the town tip work just fine, and composting the rottable organics for soil augmentations is the bomb.

The property we are drooling over is 20 acres of scrub oak and chapparal a bit north east in Tollhouse with a crappy falling down house on it appraised for 90k, asking 150k so we would offer 90 as they have already dropped it by 30k already. With the condition it is in, there is no way that any bank would finance for anything over 90 and I really don't think that with the condition it is actually in that it would really pass an inspection. [we want it for the 20 acres]

[Fudgethatkay]

The property we are drooling over is 20 acres of scrub oak and chapparal a bit north east in Tollhouse]with a crappy falling down house on it appraised for 90k, asking 150k so we would offer 90 as they have already dropped it by 30k already. With the condition it is in, there is no way that any bank would finance for anything over 90 and I really don't think that with the condition it is actually in that it would really pass an inspection. [we want it for the 20 acres]

Next time you're here, caffeine for sure~!

Any chance on contacting the owners for negotiations? People love Tollhouse area, but if you're right about the house, that would be asking too much (150k, that is)

[Sapphire Silk]

SS - Got any pics of the pine tree? Better yet, of it leaning over your garage? Having something like that could go a long way in backing up any potential claim against him if his insurance co tries to dispute it (which, if any damage is done, they almost certainly will).

Unfortunately, no. I didn't even realize it was a problem until another tree in the neighbor's yard snapped and crushed in the roof over his porch. When I heard the BOOM! I went outside to see. I noticed the tree, but the weather was already warming up, and the tree was moving back up to its normal position. I didn't think to photograph it (which really made me because I photographed the neighbor's house)

[AccountingDrone]

Next time you're here, caffeine for sure~!

Any chance on contacting the owners for negotiations? People love Tollhouse area, but if you're right about the house, that would be asking too much (150k, that is)

If I had the money right now for it, I would make the standard request to view and visit, and then make the offer for 90k to the realtor on the visit pending inspection [knowing the house will fail] provided the house was at least livable while Rob did the basics so we could get the ball rolling. I would probably stay with his mom while getting the electricity turned on and propane delivered. We would pack up a single Pod to be stored and then dropped - I would have our spare futon sofa-bed, my stickley morris chair and stickley roll top desk, our Pennsic camp [apartment sized propane] stove and propane camp chest freezer [Don't you just LOVE Lehman's for buying stuff that doesn't require electricity for setting up a house?!] my minor kitchen kit [I once kept kosher for a BF and hence have 2 full kitchens of dishes, utensils, pots n pans and such ...] and suitable clothing. I would also take the time to find a good sized rescue dog of the shepherd type as an audible alarm and companion. A grocery shopping day later, and a quick unpacking and I would be good to go alone until Rob and Phlip finished packing out the farm in Connecticut and then I would bribe one of the neice/nephews to come babysit the dog and house while I would head back to help drive the poultry and rescue cats back to the left coast. That is not a drive I am looking forward to!