I begin to hate my neighbors

I am glad I am moving soon (just looking for the right place now)

Some background.. I live on the corner of a major shortcut between two state/county roads and a smaller road that loops back to the road that is the shortcut. Because of this, I am technicall on two corners. the inside of the main road and the outside of the smaller road that loops back.

Due to this, my place is "backwards" with the back of the house facing the main road and the front towards the smaller road that loops around. My neighbor next door's place is fronted on the main road.. this puts the back of their house even with the front of mine.

They are nice enough people.. but paranoid. They have all sorts of motion activated lights and a few you can just click on. They cannot go outside without it looking like an alien spacecraft landed next door. They also have an american eskimo.

This dog is out constantly and HATES men. I even step outside and she is at the fence with fangs bared, growling and barking and trying to get at me. This is a dog I have tied to befriend, but she wants no parts of it.

On the other side of the street is a VERY small house. I think it is 15feet by 15 feet and was built by a jockey 60 years ago (I live close to the now mostly defunct Atlantic City Race track). The people who own it also own the HUGE house on the other side of the main road, but seem to spend all their time sitting on the front porch of the small house. I swear somebody is there from 7am till 3am.

I rented this place because it had some privacy... now I have none at all. I am not saying I am anti-social... I like people.. just not 24/7.

I just had to rant and I can't want to find the right place to move to

Don't move anyplace with a homeowners association, mine says "doing work on any car makes our neighborhood look cheap." Mind you I live in a starter neighborhood with lots of students and small families where the homes cost ~$100k. Come on.

Like he said, avoid homeowners associations and neighborhood covenants and whatever else they call 'em. They're pure evil.

+1

+1

I'm looking now. In order to work for metro stl, you must live in metro stl.

Good luck.

HOA/POA's ARE THE DEVIL!

Yeah, HOA's are the devil.

Until the guy down the street doesn't give a damn about his overgrown yard with literally FOUR, FOUR BBQ grills in the front yard. Along with his POS cars that have oil stained all 50 ft of curb in front of his property.

Or the people who think a rusting Tempo on flat tires in the driveway, and a house with peeling paint and aluminum foil covered windows is a great accoutrement to the neighborhood.

Or the guy and his son across the street wait until 11pm on a Sunday evening to work on, and subsequently, Rev the crap out of their open piped harley.

Most of our 1/3 mile street looks great. Except for these three houses out of about 40-50 that our directly viewable from our street.

My wife and I are doing the necessary maintenance/upkeep/upgrades on our house, so hopefully next fall we can sell this house and move. We have to wait that long so we don't have to pay back the $8k or we would put it on the market now.

z31maniac wrote: We have to wait that long so we don't have to pay back the $8k or we would put it on the market now.

Your welcome!

lol I have no HOA.

On two occasions that we remember, the neighbor has decided to joyride his straight piped ATV at like 3 AM through his yard and up and down the street at speed. On a weeknight.

Sure we dont get cable, or high speed internet like all those fancy people in the gated community up the road, we also dont have HOA fees or their rules (not allowed to put up ANY fence? really?)

Our neighborhood is nice enough and secluded, big yards and lots of trees, but it sort of sucks that the "entrance" off the main highway consists of a bunch of really run down old houses with junk and crap cars scattered around the yard. I honestly think thats part of the reason things like cable and internet havent been run up our way yet, zippy chance they would be subscribers from the looks of it.

nocones wrote:

z31maniac wrote: We have to wait that long so we don't have to pay back the $8k or we would put it on the market now.

Your welcome!

Thank you! I didn't agree with the subsidy, but it was there so we took advantage of it.

Let's not flounder this into a political thread.

z31maniac wrote: Yeah, HOA's are the devil. Until the guy down the street doesn't give a damn about his overgrown yard with literally FOUR, FOUR BBQ grills in the front yard. Along with his POS cars that have oil stained all 50 ft of curb in front of his property. Or the people who think a rusting Tempo on flat tires in the driveway, and a house with peeling paint and aluminum foil covered windows is a great accoutrement to the neighborhood. Or the guy and his son across the street wait until 11pm on a Sunday evening to work on, and subsequently, Rev the crap out of their open piped harley. Most of our 1/3 mile street looks great. Except for these three houses out of about 40-50 that our directly viewable from our street. My wife and I are doing the necessary maintenance/upkeep/upgrades on our house, so hopefully next fall we can sell this house and move. We have to wait that long so we don't have to pay back the $8k or we would put it on the market now.

Its called talking to your neighbors (not being agressive, but asking about the crap and asking if they need any help, try to schedule a time to lend a hand with them) You never know, maybe they didn't want to be that person, but circumstances have forced them into it. Maybe they got sick and aren't able to perform the work, but can't afford to pay someone to do it, etc. Doesn't always work as some people are just really, really shiny.... in that case, there are usually laws provided by the state/county/town/city you live in to force them to clean up their crap or GTFO. :)

^Shiny happy people. The BBQ lawn guy is a freeloader with no full-time job who sucks up the food/AC from his Fixed income parents.

The Harley guys house is well kept, but he's a shiny happy person.

Can honestly say not positive on the Tempo lovers.

^Time to investigate what might be available from the local city/county for ordinance and enforcement....

I rented a house in a subdivision that had a HOA in the mid 90s. My room mates and I were never furnished a copy of the covenant. One day, one of my room mates had gone to the community pool, came home and threw their towel over the front railing while they made a sandwich. They grabbed the towel 15 minutes later and went back. We got a phone call about an hour later advising us that the next such infraction would cost the home owners $100.

Things went downhill from there. I could write a book about it. I probably should. My room mates and I wound up winning, and one of my neighbors, who was OCD and hated us because we were Yankees, wound up moving away. We never had a problem with our new neighbor. I used to take care of his plants when he was out of town.

The bottom line? Don't be a jerk to me and I won't be a jerk to you.

Honestly, I have never lived in any place that has an HOA.. and where I live now.. is backed up against an old trailer park... and honestly, aside from ONE trailer.. none of the places are a nightmare... and even he has been cleaning up the debris from construction.

Where I live there is a HOA and I think it has more to do with the poeple that live around you than anything else.

My Alfa was parked in my driveway for like 4 years and no one said anything.

We have a voluntary HOA. Not required to join, but we ask you to join and pay $25/yr. Its used to keep the entrance looking nice and the street lights on. Also to support good neighborhoodship. There are covenents that are attached to the deed that are pretty explicit about what you can and can't do. Funny thing is there isnt anybody to enforce them. I had my son's Prelude in the driveway on jack stands for over a year once and a dead Spitfire has been there now for two years. Neighborhood looks decent, but stuff sells really slow. Some folks just don't spend much time working on the yard.

My daughter lives in a subdivision that does have a formal HOA. We haven't had any problems with them, but they sound a bit NAZIsh. They sent out letter basically saying don't bother them with complaints about noisy neighbors. To do almost anything with your property, you have to ask them permission. Put on a new roof, change siding colors, etc. No real rules though. The company that founded this subdivision went belly up, but it has been taken over by another and they are actually building houses. So the neighborhood looks pretty good and we feel good about her living there.

I thought I lived in a nice quiet neighborhood. I'm the youngest homeowner there. My place is a bit of a mess, I need to clean it up. Luckily no HOA, and most of the neighbors are nice.

However, at least two of the neighbors kids are heroin addicts that have stolen stuff from almost everyone in the neighborhood, one former occupant up the road was a child molester, and approached one of the teens up the road, the ex-cop up the hill was just hauled off, along with his truck for a hit and run, his kid used to ride a 2-stroke dirtbike through my yard 20ft from my bedroom at 2:30 am, 2 cases of arson nearby....

So much for a quiet country house. Hell, I put stock exhaust on my car because I though it was too noisy to be coasting down the road to my house at 1am on my way home from work. I don't ride the pocket bike, and I rarely take the racecar out.

I am the quiet one too.. I guess someday when I snap and kill somebody they will say "he was such a nice quiet man..."

Hmm, I'm on a rural dead-end road. There are 3 other residences on our 3/4 mile road.

The first neighbor on the road parks his big rig car hauler on the road. I can just squeeze my neon by. At one point a few years ago he tried to pull a land grab on us. Finally, his new wife lets her dogs run looses all the time and I'm tempted to just hit the damn thing next time it doesn't want to get out of my way.

On the other side of our property is a "weekender" family from Staten Island. They are not too bad. Nothing worse than ocasional loudness, car alarm, and rapid fire back yard pistol plinking.

Up at the end of the road is another "weekender" family from NYC. All I see of them is people tearing up and down the road on ATVs. Other wise I can't say I have ever dealt with them.

mad_machine wrote: I am the quiet one too.. I guess someday when I snap and kill somebody they will say "he was such a nice quiet man..."

... it's always the quiet ones...

well.. I discovered why my sleep has been so disrupted recently. I realise that the family across the street keeps me up as I am a light sleeper.. but I usually do not go to bed myself till almost 2am unless I am working.

Today I went to work at 5:30am... as I was getting ready, the neighbor on the otherside light up their yard like the aliens had landed and let our their man hating dog to do what she has to to.

He goes to work at 5am.. so as one family is finally going to bed.. the other one is getting up.