How common is it to have bad neighbours?

[CherryLulu]

I live in a council house with nightmare neighbours. It’ll be years before I make it out of here but I’m wistfully dreaming of the day when I can walk in and out of my house without being stared at and harassed, open the window on a hot night without my house reeking of weed, not having my car and property damaged by kids constantly.

There is, however, regular threads on here from people who own their home complaining about nightmare neighbours. I know there’s always a risk wherever you are, but is it really common to have bad neighbours even if you own your own home or rent in a private area?

I also have the option of ‘homeswapping’ with other council tenants but I’m under the impression that pretty much any council street is highly likely to have several antisocial tenants causing problems for everybody else, would love to know whether this is actually the case as I’m scared of ending up somewhere even worse.

It’s not just social housing.

People of all income brackets and housing tenure can be assholes.

I am on my third house. The first was a starter apartment - about £200k in today’s money, then a small semi which would go for about £350k now. I moved to a bigger home over £500k a couple of years ago.

in each place there have been good neighbours and bad neighbours.

in my new more than cow page neighbourhood the neighbours are further away because the gardens are bigger. But there is an asshole who thinks I should cut down all my trees. His teen sons shout abuse at me and he and his wife shout at me in my garden.

I have never lived anywhere (even my childhood home) and here every single neighbour was ‘good’.

sorry!!!!

I had nightmare neighbours everywhere I lived until moving into a retirement village.

I think it’s quite unlucky to be honest. Most neighbours politely ignore each other, regardless of whether it’s social housing, privately rented, owned.

Only the most unfortunate have anti-social or overly social neighbours.

I live opposite social housing and have never had any issues but my neighbour owns her house (as I do) and is a complete bloody nightmare 🤷🏻‍♀️

I own my home and the semi next door is private rented.
The current neighbour is doing my head in because he thinks IM the noisy one!!
I'm actually so quiet.
I can hear him bitching loudly about me to his boyfriend on his phone when I'm outside: about my hair, clothes, my face (seriously!) etc and it's making me really self conscious about going into the garden.

He complained when I put my hairdryer on at 10am last Sunday ffs!! The problem is there's no soundproofing between our bedroom walls. And so he's realised I can unfortunately hear everything he does.
He actually cracked a smile and said hello recently. I nearly fell over.

The previous couple were very loud. The thuggish man abused his wife and attacked her in the bedroom so I had to bang on the wall and threaten with the police.. he never let me forget it.

The worst neighbour was a married alcoholic who got obsessed with me. I was scared of him. All his used spliffs and empty fag packets ended up in my garden too.

Most of my neighbours rent from the HA, private landlords or have bought. So a mixture. They're all 2 bed houses so a mixture of couples, families and singles. Not too many families that they're a nuisance.
Everyone jostles for parking spaces.
There's people from all over the world in my close. India, Africa, China, Jamaica, Hungary, Poland, etc so it's interesting. Plus all ages. Because of that people don't know everyone's business but like to stay polite. It's generally quite a nice close to live in.

I think it’s quite common. I had nightmare neighbours in my old place and now I’m lucky to live next to an elderly woman who lives alone and is very quiet, but the neighbours on her side seem like a nightmare (loud music, dog barking, occasional fighting) but they are far away enough for it to not really impact on me but I would hate to live next door

We lived in an extremely expensive part of our town and our neighbour was hideous. She clearly resented a happy family living next door to her . She made my children lives a miserable existence. We moved to a village that has more social housing and can honestly say we are so happy. Absolutely lovely neighbours including the whole road . Great high street and a happy feel to the whole community.

It's just the luck of the draw. I've lived in private rents where I hardly saw or heard the neighbours at all and couldn't have told you who lived next door but I've also lived beside neighbours who swayed between either arguing loudly or partying every night.
Surprisingly I moved to what we thought would be a quiet rural area and had never seen so many police call outs in my life due to warring neighbours. There's no way of knowing, even if you moved somewhere and it was fine there's no guarantee people wouldn't move and a nightmare neighbour would move in.

I think all areas have annoying neighbours, in my experience the nicer the area the more pedantic 'that' neighbour. For example, complaining about any house renovations, kids playing outside, what's their land and what's yours. Whereas when I lived on a council estate it was more just inconsiderate noise levels

My previous house was in a nice street - Victorian terrace but split between houses (much nearer £2m than £1.5m for them), houses split into 3 private flats £600- £800K) and houses owned by a housing authority. A great range of incomes and social background as well as nationality.

And it actually worked - some of the neighbours were a bit irritating at times but none were a nightmare.

When the royal wedding party happened the Irish drunks from a few doors down brought their sound system out and played R.n.b and Motown classics, the posh lady over the road (bit of a whiff of Hyacinth Bucket) organised a version of Crufts - we all had a ball

The only nightmare neighbour I have had in a private let area of mo council tennants. Young bloke, noisy midnight shagger.

I grew up on a council estate in the 60's/70's and it was great - all the street was lovely never mind immediate neighbours. Every one looked out for each other.

Today everyone is just out for themselves.
Fortunately (for me) we have lovely neighbours after years of rubbish ones!

I rented for years in city centre private flats, neighbours were always great, some a bit nuts but I always felt safe. I finally bought when married and starting a family, a semi ex council house in an alright area mostly private since right to buy came in in the 90's. Most of the people around here have inherited from their parents and are now middle aged, settled and happy to chew the fat. Our adjoining neighbour owns and has serious mental health issues, known to be violent and has a history of drug dealing. We've had to involve police for harassment. If we'd known this about th
e neighbour we wouldn't have bought the place. We are hoping to move but it's not looking likely any time soon. And how can we inflict him on the next poor buggers? Theres laws about disclosures. Reading this though, is it a case of better the devil you know?

Yup. Mine are surgeons and awful.

I hated living on a council estate. My entire childhood and young adulthood was surrounded by neighbours straight out of Shameless, with a dash of the Krays. I thought buying a house on the outskirts of town would be the solution. It was SILENT here, it was PERFECT.
Until...
New neighbours moved in a year after we did. We're in terraced houses. Those twats are in the middle and have brought the chav life with them. Music blasting. Them singing. Them swearing and screaming at the kids since the day the babies could walk. The kids screaming back. I'm a few doors away and I can hear them shouting when they're inside their house. Their direct next door neighbour can hear them puking through the walls in the early hours after drinking too much. Their kids stand at the front of my house and shout BARK! to send the dog wild. It's bearable but I'm hoping they'll go find a better party house with their jacuzzi and drunk friends. I hate summer because of that one household. Everyone else is brilliant.

I'm hoping to leave this town but I'm sure everywhere will have shitty people. So, hoping more for a Lottery win so I can live in peaceful isolation 😁

DH and I have lived in 6 different homes. All private rents/privately owned with the same surrounding. Great neighbours in 5. Neighbours in the 6th were standoffish but not unkind or annoying. So from that perspective I think it’s a bit unlucky.

I've lived in 11 homes.

1 had fantastic neighbours, friendly but not too friendly. Happy to take a parcel in but not trying to be in my life etc.

3 had truly horrendous neighbours. Noise, violence, police, drugs, etc.

The rest were just pains but not really awful awful. Bit of noise but nothing hugely problematic. Dogs yapping a lot or parking so I couldn't, that kind of stuff.

We had awful neighbours at our old house.
He used to abuse his wife and I would regularly call the police because I could hear him through the adjoining walls either beating her or raping her.
They were eventually evicted but I often wonder if she’s ok.

Our current house the neighbours are lovely, a real mix of young families, retirees and empty nesters. It’s a very quiet cul-de-sac and since the pandemic everyone checked up on each other and now will have a little chat over the bins or take in a parcel but not be too nosy and intrusive.
There is only 1 rental on the street, all the other houses are owner occupied so I don’t know if that’s why everyone is so pleasant.

Council property, most of the folks on the row I live on are ok. One is a weed addict though, so the smell is fucking abysmal.

I didn't think bad neighbours was such a big thing. I'm in my own home on a smallish estate. Not neighbourly at all. Even the ones you see don't even say hello. I had a cat scarer in my front garden. A neighbour who lives opposite instead of knocking on my door to tell me she could hear it has a go at me in the street and hasn't spoken to me since. Surrounded by other selfish neighbours and those that have nothing to do but gossip. With the cost of living increasing, cost of stamp duty, the general bills I can't move just yet. I feel like I'm in my own private prison.

Just for balance, I've never had bad neighbours. Fingers crossed

I think most people know someone with neighbours bad enough that they've moved house, so I guess it's not uncommon. I certainly know a couple of people in the situation. I suppose we did in our last place, but it was more that they were freeholders of the property and litgious rather than anti-social behaviour type stuff. Entertainingly we did sell to someone who went on to do much bigger building work on the place than they work the neighbours unfairly prevented us from doing, so they must have hated that!

If you have the chance to swap I would do it - although if these neighbours are tenants the HA/council should enforce the basics.

I've lived in social housing all of my life, and have never had problem neighbours.

The only problem I've had was, when we lived in a village, youngsters, from the same family, from the next road and who burgled properties.

He was a police officer and they owned their home.

Status of housing doesn't really mean anything. 😗

Far too common. My current neighbour is know as Stompy in our house. At least the weed smoking has stopped.