Tag Archives: neighbour

Are you an annoying neighbour?

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I am sure we have all been there, you move in to your new home start settling in and after a few months you realise what a huge mistake you have made, you have moved in next door to the neighbours from hell.

Now we all know about noisy neighbours, those people who feel it is well within their rights to play the loudest, most obnoxious, often out of date music as loud as they possibly can until 3 am. We have all been there and many of us have lodged complaints against such people only to have it happen again the following weekend.

But what of that sneaky neighbour who appears to be ideal put quickly becomes more of a pain than any noisy neighbour could be. I am of course referring to the “complain about every little thing” neighbour. These are people who pull out their ‘rules of conduct’ manual that the homeowners association abides by at every infraction.

I had one such neighbour a number of years ago, he was an older gentleman who spent the day at home and found every opportunity to lodge a complaint. We had complaints ranging from leaving for work too early in the morning and making a noise all the way through to talking too loudly in our living room. Utterly ridiculous complaints.

The same neighbour complained regularly about a man across the road who owned a Harley Davidson who was supposedly disturbing the peace just by leaving for work. As I was often at home to observe the Harley leaving I realised that while it was pretty noisy it was noisy for all of 7 seconds as it pulled out and drove away. It was not as though the gentleman was revving the engine for hours on end, he was merely using the vehicle.

Needless to say many of the things my neighbour complained about were not in the ‘rules of conduct’ or against the law and he eventually made life so uncomfortable for us that looked forward to the day we moved. What I am unsure of even to this day is what we could have done to protect our rights of enjoyment of our property.

Should we have laid a complaint of harassment with the police? Eventually it did feel as though we were all being harassed by one guy who had nothing better to do than make irrational complaints about things that happen in everyday life that he was apparently incapable of dealing with.

In conclusion, make sure you want to live in the neighbourhood you are looking at buying in. Are there alot of young people in the area that are likely to play loud music, are there alot of home mechanics making a noise early on a Saturday morning or would you really prefer to live in a house with a long driveway where your house is a kilometre away from the street noise?

Often it is easier to make your choice more carefully than to try and change the majority of your neighbours.

What do you think? Should we complain at every opportunity?

Common complaints about neighbours.

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We buy a home with a vision of how wonderful it is going to be living there. However sometimes we end up getting a nasty surprise that for the most part we can do nothing about, bad neighbours.

The problems our neighbours can create for us are endless, ranging from annoying through to downright destructive behaviour. People take it very personally when others affect their ability to enjoy their home and privacy and this is compounded when the problem lives next door 24/7.

The most common complaints people have of their neighbours are the following:

Rubbish all over the place
Barking dogs
Noisy children
Parties all the time
Spousal fighting
Spying on you                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Parking disputes

All of these issues, if left unchecked, may put a great deal of stress on your relationship with your neighbour. I lived in a rented house a few years back that had a family with two small boys living next door. The children enjoyed throwing their toys over the wall and watching them smash on the paving I had at the back. The tenant before me had merely thrown the pieces back over the wall, I didn’t want to do this for fear of injuring one of the children as they were rather large toys.

I know children will be children but their parents never scolded them for dirtying my yard and it was only after they started throwing drill bits at people that I was forced to increase the urgency of my complaints. I had children myself that may have been injured.

Whenever dealing with their parents I was always polite but firm because they would try and excuse the behaviour by saying that it only happened a few times a week and we should just throw everything back over the wall which I refused to do. The parents needed to realise how inconvenient it was for me to keep dealing with their mess by making them come and fetch the things that were thrown over.

Eventually, after many months of complaining every time it happened, they finally stopped throwing their things over the wall.

The best way to deal with something that is basically just annoying is to be persistent but polite. Eventually your “annoying ” persistence should show results.

However in the case of more serious transgressions one should always deal with the authorities, such as vandalism of your property by a neighbour or threats of violence.

Remember that when dealing with a neighbour you are more than likely still going to be living next door to them for years to come and that it is very unpleasant having a bad relationship with your neighbours. Try and keep your dealings with them as amicable as possible.