How to stop someone buying the house next door

[Anonandonandonandon]

Entirely tongue in cheek, I intend to be neighbourly and lovely but...

Our neighbours are selling their house. It’s on a really quiet road, tucked away so that you’d never come down it if you weren’t a resident or visiting a resident. It’s a big reason we bought here.

On Tuesday I heard an almighty roaring noise that even my colleagues on zoom suggested I should investigate. I looked out of the window to see a very expensive car turning outside our house and driving off. Turns out the driver had been looking around next door.

Today I came home to find said very expensive car parked partially across my driveway, which was a bit annoying in itself. Must be a second viewing. Now I have visions of being woken up by an ostentatiously loud car every morning or late at night and living next door to someone who feels the need for such an expensive and ostentatiously loud car

Any (also tongue in cheek) suggestions as to how I put them off?

I'll bet everything I have that the owner of the Obnoxious Mobile is also the owner of a penis. People who own both penises and large loud badly parked cars, are repelled by one thing and one thing only: feminists. The old fashioned kind, not the "porn is empowering" kind. Grow your armpit hair until it trails on the floor, hang a woman's suffrage banner outside your house, and when he next comes over start furiously burning your bras in the driveway* whilst explaining to him why his car is a symbol of his patriarchy drenched toxic masculinity. Finish by giving him a copy of something by Germaine Greer and saying you look forward to hearing his thoughts on it after he moves in. That should do it.

• you might want to buy some cheap bras for this.

Build a giant aviary in your garden. I know somebody whose new neighbours did this.

Paint your front path blue.... Oh, hold on a minute, I think someone on MN has done that already.

Do you know anyone in the police, you could string up lengths of CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape around half the street, add a few bunches of garage flowers, some balloons, cross eyed teddies and tea lights in jars.

pop out and say hello. Ask if The Good Lord will be joining them in their endeavours, the weekly prayer group will be so excited to hear of new members. Blessed day.

My mum delights in telling the tale of how, many moons ago in London, just post war when trains had individual compartments along a corridor, two of her adult sisters, their children and her (she was an auntie at 4) would pile in on their bi-annual day trip to Margate. The children were then instructed to line up against the windows, pull faces, stick tongues out, scream, poke each other, howl and generally behave like horrors as the train sat in the station. Worked a treat, apparently.

Once moving, they were told very sternly to sit down and behave 😂

St George’s flag in each window. Empty fag packets littered on the driveway. Very loud music during viewings.

Blast this out

Borrow a really good sound system:

Learn (?) the bagpipes

Get a recorder/make drum kit if pans let loose family marching band on front garden.. for practice

failing that old /mattress/chair

Better still, a Trump, Keep America Great flag.

Two streets away (North West town). Full size thing on a flagpole (alongside the sign saying Trespassers will be shot, then shot again to make sure). I’ve heard the residents speaking to each other, they are most definitely not American.
That would make me head for the hills, however palatial the house I was viewing.

🤯

Hahaha this post made my day. Great ideas here. I would do the same things everyone is suggesting. Make it look unapealing, messy, grubby. Leave scunched up cans of beer around the front. Maybe a bin bag or two. Play horrible music with open windows. Scream often in your roughest possible voice . Boil LOTS of cabbage with the window open so it reeks lol. I'm having too much fun with all these ideas.

@CaraDuneRedux

Borrow a friend's 9 year old who has either (a) just started playing the violin or (b) has got to about grade 2 on the drums and is therefore just competent enough to make a LOT of noise.

Or, ideally, both of the above simultaneously.

I shouldn't admit this but I sort of did this once. The house next door was for sale and a younger, early-mid 20s couple came to view it. I decided (on no evidence whatsoever) that they were likely to be having parties/bbqs etc all the time and disturbing our sleep, so I bribed the DC (then 8 and 6) to go outside and run around our back yard screaming their heads off like little mad people and not to stop until the couple drove off. When a nice single professional woman came by to view it I kept them inside - and she bought it! (Karma got me when she eventually acquired the world's most annoying dog.)

On the next slightly warm day put on a too small string vest and sit in a fold up chair drinking a few tinnies.

Wait in the bushes then dhoot them with paintballs when they get in the car.

Bloody hell...had forgotten just how stimulating Rammstein can be!
My poor neighbours!

Gets the blood pumping.

@Crystalknobs

I’ll ask if my neighbour will lend you her dd who is proficient in asking ‘what you doing?’ every 3 seconds, whilst jumping on her trampoline and peering over the fence.

Ooh, my 3 year old could do this and the mad ferret act. Finally a use for her incessant nosiness.

@gillybombilly

Be daring - walk around in the nuddy in the back garden when they’re viewing and wave enthusiastically asking if they’d like to join your twice-weekly naked yoga group when they move in

Dangerous tactics there, what if that were what they want?

Put an england flag up

Tin Bucket , fire lighter and a few wet leaves should scare them off.

Stinky bonfire

Take up LARPING and noisily re enact war scenes outside.

Invite them to your weekly karaoke night?

The house next door to us was empty throughout lockdown. It was lovely! It was nice to be able to sunbathe without feeling overlooked, in m a bikini top and shorts... I'd never normally have the confidence.

The new neighbours do seem lovely... but I'd love to be able to move somewhere where we would have no neighbours at all.

Get a really loud recording of some really barks dogs, play incessantly at the next viewing. Add menacing beware of dogs sign at your front!

Do you have a bbq? Put either kippers or the most fattiest meat you can find and turn the heat up with the lid open.

@Twickerhun

Park, badly, a rust bucket, dented car on your drive (Borrow mine if you want). They won’t want their ostentatious expensive car to be in the same post code area as a crashed Up mess

Add to that Hyacinth Bucket's family (including Onslow in his string best) and his wimminfolk all outside drinking beer in the front garden. 🌹