To hate student neighbours?

[LittleMilla]

We moved in to our first home in June 2012 and have painstakingly renovated it. We love it. But there's one small problem: the house next door (not attached to us) houses 8 students.

First year was fine as we hadn't done the garden and the students were relatively quiet and not really much bother (big stoners). This year has been much harder - 8 hard-partying boys.

Weekend saw 4 of them come back at 6.30am with mates and they were then in the garden all day drinking/popping pills. Cue lots of wide-eyed individuals and a dealer coming at about 4pm to provide more drugs.

Weve got two little boys, love to use our garden with friends/family but this is all upsetting me so much. I am contemplating just moving as I cannot handle another shit summer if the next lot are like this. When they're all out there 'on it' it is hard to relax and the garden wall is so close - they may as well be in our garden.

The boys individually are OK and I've been in at various times since last June to chat about bins and few noise whinges. I just don't know what to do. The music is at a reasonable level, so I can't complain about noise.

During my rational moments I tell myself that living in a city with two universities students are an inevitable part of life. And crap neighbours can happen to anyone - at least I know that this lot are going in June.

BUT I HATE HAVING THEM NEXT DOOR TO ME!!!!!!!!!!

AIBU and WWYD - move or adopt more coping strategies?

I'd shy away from ranting etc, and get them onside. Say to them it's cool to do abc, but you've got kids, and ef&g is not acceptable. You don't want to have to report them so keep it down.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9108641/The-30-plants-that-can-help-protect-your-home-against-burglary.html

I'd be plating some beautiful but spikey plants up against your fences. Layer them, so a wall plant (pyracantha) with a shrub infront (Berberis). Little ones will learn to stay away! Or you could put up a temporary picket type fence.

If you are going to complain via the uni be specific. Either to their department and ask for their personal tutors or head of dept. or there'll be a housing officer/SU housing officer.

Personally I'd go to the personal tutor. You have a very specific person to target.

It wouldn't be their course tutors who'd speak to them if you went to the uni, it'd probably be someone in the student services/accommodation and welfare section. Even though we're not in university-owned accommodation, we can still have meetings and be called in for meetings with our accommodation services, presumably for situations like this.

If the university found out about the drug abuse, the meeting would be with someone even higher up, with the capability to punish them severely, which sounds like it might be what they need - involving you and your family and your street in the fact that they're using drugs is unfair of them and they need to be told.

There are 7 tenants though, so almost certainly 7 different personal tutors. That sounds like a lot to try and co-ordinate, especially when it's highly unlikely that it's part of their remit - they're there for the student's academic and possibly pastoral welfare, not for dealing with the neighbours.

Either the accommodation office, or the private sector rentals department (this comes under different names at different universities) will have some sort of community relations officer whose job it is to keep town vs gown strife to a minimum

I'm not sure that I'd bother too much at this stage if I were you. They are coming up to the end of the current term, then will be working for exams in the summer which is likely to quieten them down; there may be a massive post-exam celebration but they'll probably disappear after than and you'll have blissful peace till late September. With any luck next year's lot will be better.

You at me, last year. We moved

If it's the big collegiate prestigious university in town, yes approaching them may well help as they care (a lot) about their reputation. But if it is a newer, less prestigious university in the same town, they won't really care at all.

On the upside, we did well out of selling our renovated house. Chances are houses are in demand, if you're in a university town commanding high rents.

I've already said to DH that I won't tolerate another lot like this. We've had lots of these 'gatherings', problems with their rubbish mounting up in the garden, climbing in to our garden to break in to theirs when they've forgotten keys, noisy comings and goings late at night, loud music late at night. So for those that've said they're OK and normal, I'm afraid to say I've endured a reasonable amount!

If you really think there is a dealer there dealing drugs then phone the police. As for the swearing, again if you phone the police for the drug dealing then ask them to have a word about it too. Noise disturbance and using your property for access repeatedly is not on either.

Its hard to divorce the unacceptable from normal use of their property. They are, as you agree, entitled to use their garden for invited guests of a reasonable number as long as they don't cause lengthy or late disturbance to neighbours.

Any neighbours could be bad with putting out bins, not just students. I used to work in a LA department which dealt with these type of complaints, and its fair to say that quite a few of them were simply neighbours who couldn't cope with the variety of people you get living in a city centre next door to them, and who just wanted to vent steam. We had one memorable complainer who had rented a house in the middle of the university campus (because it was a nice historic area with townhouses) and not unnaturally, the house next door was let to students.

She made their lives a misery. Her letters to the HMO Department detailed how she or her baby would be wakened up by their footsteps coming up the stairs "late at night". The tenants' detailed written response was in the file to the effect that they had part-time jobs involving shift work and they tried to take their shoes off as they came into their own home to be quiet, and that the neighbours weren't exactly quite themselves. That wasn't good enough for the neighbour. She then wrote in to describe how, if she was disturbed at all by them, she would hold down their doorbell at 7.30am in the morning for 10 minutes or more. I think in the end the all female group of student tenants.
reported her to the police for harassment.

I think your problem involving the conduct of 8 hard drinking boys is quite different OP, but it is possible to lose perspective. They will be gone soon. Write to their landlord and complain - they might well be wrecking the house as well and he may rethink 8 boys in future.

And by the way, can anyone explain to me why the concept of paying £320 or £400 or whatever for a rented room in a shared house is such a novel concept on mumsnet? Where do mumsnetters stay on leaving the parental home? It isn't just students that pay that much, its the going rate for renting a room in shared accommodation in almost any biggish town in the UK or even abroad.

Can mumsnetters all afford to rent an entire house to themselves at age 22 or whatever, or do they just not leave home or never support themselves independently or something?

I'd move, I think.

LessMiss, where I am currently living, thats quite a large amount compared to renting a full house.

I moved out of student housing into a rented terraced house with DP. We had all three bedrooms to ourselves and a basement and garden etc etc for the same price (my half anyway) as a tiny bedroom in student accomodation and now we have a mortgage it is less.

Purely guesswork but I imagine the previous posters are equally shocked because they also pay similar amounts to me. Also, guessing you live near London or somewehere equally expensive to not be at least a little surprised by these prices?

Everyone I've told our rent price to was shocked. We're moving from this student house into a 2 bed flat next week because our baby is due in April, and we're going from paying £130 for a small double room with use of the communal bathroom and kitchen, to paying £112 a week for a full 2 bed flat to ourselves.

LessMissAbs times were when you could get a small 2 bedroom house for £600. And in some places, you still can. £400 for a room? That should bloody include bills, then, right? I actually rent a whole flat for just under that!

It shouldn't be the going rate for a room. Choosing to share should actually save you, as a tenant, an appreciable amount of money in the long term. It should be short-term pain for long-term gain.

I randomly picked York on right move, and put 2 bedroom houses in. Look: York 2-beds

Oxford two bedroom houses. Notably more expensive because it's Oxford, so we're approaching or over £1000 pcm. But yet, shouldn't renting a room be less than a third of the rent for a two-bedroom house to yourself?

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E1036&insId=2&maxDaysSinceAdded=7&minBedrooms=2&maxBedrooms=2&displayPropertyType=houses&oldDisplayPropertyType=houses&sortType=1&numberOfPropertiesPerPage=10

I think the difference is that a lot of normal landlords with standard 2-3 bed properties won't let to students, because of their reputation for leaving places in such a mess. Also students usually want to fix their accommodation for the next academic year by around now, to take possession in the summer, rather than looking for places on the open market to move into immediately.

So it makes sense that there is a specialist student market for biggish houses in poor-ish condition, near universities, which are let out from July-July each year - and landlords can therefore get away with charging over the odds for them.

I'd agree with having an informal word, you sound like you're realistic about what students get up too so tell them you don't really care what they do in private but tell them what isn't acceptable - dealers coming round in public view, excessive noise, swearing etc.

Tell them what the consequences will be if they can't manage that, telling the landlord or Police etc.

Give them a chance to moderate their behaviour and follow through with the consequences if they do not.

Student drug users have a lot more to lose than users who aren't answerable to a landlord or a University.

I've known plenty of students who had no real grasp of the effect their behaviour had on others or what the consequences may be. Tell them and see what happens. I'm guessing they'll probably comply.

Thanks for the replies but surely when you leave home for your first self supporting job, you don't want to rent a two bedroom house? What you want is a rented room in a house or flat shared with others in similar circumstances so you can make friends to socialise with, near your place of work.

I wouldn't have wanted to live on my own when I was doing my first job. I wanted to be in the city centre, with other people.

And learning how to pay bills and budget for them is part of growing up surely?

Why would a single person choose to rent and heat a whole house on their own when the done thing the world over for that demographic is to house share?

I know the going rate for a rented room here (not London but Scotland) is £450-£500 a month in a two or three bed, in a five or six bed that might come down to £350-£400, but a two bedroom flat would be £800-£1000, with extensive references required. I've lived in Munich and Brussels and it was more expensive.

Even my mother and her sisters rented rooms in shared flats when they moved out of the parental home in the 60s to work in the Civil Service!

Oh and I live in a big city (not London) with two major Universities and am not at all surprised by the enormous amounts of cash that student landlords are making!.

Sounds really(!!!) expensive there LessMiss!

I probably would have wanted to stay living with friends had I not met DP. I imagine I'd stay with less friends tho and share say, a two bed, with one friend, possibly a three bed with two. I don't imagine many go straight to live in their own.

I know there are A LOT of shared houses around here tho.

Not sure you get my point. I'm not saying people sharing with others are incapable of budgeting. I'm saying that £320-£400 is too much for a room on its own without bills being included in that!

I lived in a centre, sharing with other people, because I had to. Not because I derived enjoyment from sharing a kitchen or bathroom, or from being woken up at 3am when I had to be up at 6am.

I'm guessing that your mother and sisters weren't vastly overcharged for the privilege of renting a solitary room? Part of the reason why young people traditionally choose to share rather than renting and heating a whole house is because the former, even after taking into account inconveniences of sharing, WAS economically a good deal. At £320+ that is not necessarily the case any more.

I have a flat to myself and family, including own bathroom, own kitchen, and control over the heating bill (I don't know whom, but someone used to switch the radiator up to 5 in the separate toilet- it was like a sauna in there!). For just under £400. I have many entertaining tales of flatmates, but I don't think gaining the ability to tell those anecdotes was worth cold, actual hard cash!

I live next door to a house of 13 student lads. They are mostly ok but occasionally have extremely loud all night parties. I've complained to the council and the university but nothing is done. They also leave litter everywhere but I turn a blind eye to that as it doesn't directly affect me in the way their noise does.

Had a similar problem years ago, for us it was solved when they all got flu and one came round to borrow paracetamol. I went into mummy mode and made soup etc. then one of their mothers rang to thank me and I told her of our difficulties with swearing in the garden so DC couldn't play there. It stopped that day. Most parents co sign leases, see if you can catch one when they go home at Easter,

So I went over last night to 'av a word!'

One of the naughtiest ones was there and he was actually blushing! Tried to blame other naughty boy for inviting the "crack heads" back (nice) and I just said that regardless of who's invited them back, it's not on. They live in a predominantly family area and our house is our HOME. We have worked hard to make it naice and we work hard to pay our mortgage - we want to enjoy it at the weekends without loons being next door!

Said that they can and should obvs use the garden, but not after an all nighter whilst still off their tits as they have no concept of what is/isn't ok. Just stay inside or go elsewhere. Said that the drug taking is entirely their prerogative but we just don't want it in our faces.

I also said that a dealer rocking up was 100% out of line and I will not tolerate that ever again. The end.

Was all taken on board and they were extremely apologetic. Feeling hopeful but we'll see.

Definitely plan to corner a patent ASAP! Great tactic!

Thanks all for replies x

Yay! Great news. Very happy that you should now be able to enjoy your home

Oh I totally sympathise (not read all thread) when I was a student and a pretty quiet one at that, I used to hate the hosue of boys next door on the terrace. Played one song over and other for months, and I genuinely don't know when they slept?! The smell of pot used to creep into our house.

The only comfort I can say is that, they will only be there a year (if that) as surely they all go home for summer/xmas/easter? I used to be home from mid may to mid september.

However if they aren't being super noisy and aren't being offensive so your kids can hear over the wall, they don't seem toooooo bad, but agree you'd prefer a nice group of quiet girls.