Help! My new neighbour is a nightmare. How would you handle the situation?

[rosebudding]

Help! My new neighbour is a nightmare. How would you handle the situation?

My new neighbour moved in a few months ago. He’s a young (around 30) single man. He has a huge amount of friends who are often high or drunk and always round. He frequently has loud parties in the garden with loud music and constant week smoking and bbqs from the afternoon until past 3am. his garden is meters away from my daughter’s bedroom window so she can’t sleep and can’t leave the window open otherwise her room will stink of weed. We can’t use the garden when he's having a party and can’t plan parties of our own as we’d be driven inside due to the noise and smoke.

They also use the narrow passage between our homes all the time, even in the middle of the night to access his flat. They shout and slam the door constantly. They park in my drive. His dog also barks solidly until the early hours when he’s left outside by himself. The passage is always full of his furniture and rubbish.

What should I do? I haven’t said anything so far as I feel a bit intimidated. Moving isn not an option. I have lived in this house all my life and my elderly father, who I take care of fulltime, cannot move. It is his beloved home and he is familiar with it and the area.

OP, would you be able to make an alliance with the other neighbors who must also be suffering from his extremely inconsiderate and upsetting behaviour?

This is a situation where you need video footage and one of those machines where their monitor the noise levels. There will be no quick fix. If it’s a ground flat what do the upstairs residents think?

You need to put a bit of Napalm Death on the morning after one of their parties

I think I would feel reluctant to speak to him about it.
Even if you do it in the most friendly and non-confrontational way possible, mentioning it to him means that he will realize it was you who complained, if you do make a complaint.
It's all very tricky and absolutely infuriating that one badly behaved person can hold everyone to ransom like this. 🤬🤬🤬

So you think she should put on napalm death to punish him for his parties, thereby giving him an incentive to punish her for the naparm death.
Who do you think will win this arms race?
Who has the most to lose here?
Who will be able to tolerate the most noise?

I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to be woken up with napalm death but is this tactic likely to lead to a good outcome?

I’m in a similar position, OP. I spent years seething with rage and wishing he would sell up, all pointless.

What solved it? We befriended him, turned on the charm, chatted over the fence. Since then he has cleaned up his act and been more considerate towards us. It’s not perfect, the weed smoking is intense and he still has dodgy characters turning up at his door, I don’t like him as a person at all.

But yesterday we were trying to tackle the thick overgrown ivy coming from his side that was growing into our guttering and he popped his head over and said “let me help you out”. He got stuck in and removed it all for us, that would never have happened before.

He’s a bit of an oddball, but my husband is happy to chat over the fence just to get what we want from him. And it’s working.

Kill him with kindness - tell him all about your elderly Dad and your child, get him to care about you. Some people are clueless and they don’t understand the impact of their actions on other people until you tell them.

Nice work! @dayswithaY
🥰
👏🏻

Thanks, but we had to tread carefully, he’s got form for kicking in the doors of neighbours who have upset him. If we’d got into a feud with him, we would come off worse because he has nothing to lose.

Plus, the Council and police aren’t interested in this sort of thing - generally, you’re on your own.

I don't think formal channels work with this sort of thing. I don't know whether it works differently in different councils but I found when looking into it that first you have to try to deal with it yourself - ok if you thought it would work, you would, so you 'are basically "giving it a go" to tick their box and you are exposing yourself as the "enemy" by, however nicely and politely, saying you have a problem.
Then you have to keep a record of everything that happens and make the complaint, and the complaint is attached to you so will affect your flexibility to ultimately get out of the house at a good price.
Plus, basically they won't do anything. There is no teeth in any of these mechanisms.

So given you have to deal with yourself anyway, my advice would be to forget the council and the police and work out:
what can you do by just trying asking him to be a bit more considerate (I know I know)
how much can you stand if / when that doesn't work

What you really really do NOT want is some form of open enmity with someone like this. There are many reasons why this is the worst possible outcome and that is what all official routes will inflame, without solving.

Sympathy. I hate how this can just happen to people. One day you are just living your life; the next, you suddenly live under the reign of an arsehole

This is how alpha male types with no shame and no fear end up dominating whole communities.

I don’t understand why it’s illegal to get cars towed that are parked on your property without your permission. Especially if they are impeding your ability to get in our out with your own car.

Yeah, I know. It's potty! Only my cousin has a car though in our family and he visits maybe once a fortnight so I suppose he thinks they can just park there because it's empty most of the time. Tradesmen need to park there sometimes though.

What do the other flat owners say? Must be annoying for them too.

@rosebudding perhaps he doesn’t actually know it’s ‘your’ space - definitely worth trying softly softly first

You need to speak to your environmental health officer at your council. There are regulations regarding noise, particularly between 11pm and 7am.

Having endured seven miserable years after asserting my rights with a bully neighbour, I second this advice.

Much as it galls me to say, I wish I had killed him with kindness.

Take over a cake, praise him for being a homeowner, etc., to get on his good side. Then little by little ask for consideration re the weed etc.

(Mine finally moved but by then my mental health was adversely affected...)

It kills me to agree with the suggestions of going in with kindness, but it's also worth keeping in mind that if you report him to the council and go down a forma route, should you come to sell your property, you have to disclose it to potential buyers.

I have a similar problem, to yours.I just commented on another noisy neighbour thread.
My daughter also has trouble with the noise, my neighbours stay up late and smoke in the garden, the smoke sometimes wafts into her room.Last year they were trampolining until 12 midnight as well sometimes.

My daughter uses meditation sounds white noise to block out the noise.
We have already spoken to them about it last year.We will have to involve the authorities if it doesn't stop as it affects our sleep.

The meditation music helps.Yes hopefully it seems to be a miserable summer,coming up.
Awful to wish for,but I'll get some sleep.

Hope you get this sorted out , I do sympathize.
All the best Op.

You have my sympathy, in the past I've had awful neighbours similar to what you describe. Unfortunately even if you report him it will a long line of diaries and he may even get worse. Theres not much support and it's even harder when they've bought their home. You can either fight fire with fire, or move and I would see if you can move
Noisy neighbours can wreck your mental health I had to move in the end as I just couldn't bare it anymore.
Are you renting or council? See if you can be moved if so especially as your father is poorly good luck op.

Wow. I was just trying to help. How bloody rude. I was feeling sorry for your situation but after that comment, not so much.

Who owns the passage way between the 2 buildings? If it's yours put a gate on it front and back and lock it.

Definitely report loud noise after midnight to environment health and/or your local authority noise abatement team. I’ve had to do it for a house around the corner from me (yes it was that loud) the first time it was just noted by the local authority, the second time they came out during the night and shut the party down. It hasn’t happened again since (fingers crossed)

Report it to the council. In the meantime, make a note of every date and time and what the nuisance was.

Councils do take this sort of thing seriously.

Black magic / mild evil eye methods to make him stop his behaviour or move out

Prey tell…..!😶😅