To want to tell these people to tidy up

[Smarterthantheaveragebeaver]

Im aware that this is probably U and that some will want to wedgie me with my judgy pants.

An elderly lady in my road has recently moved to a care home as running her own house has become too much for her. She has no living family. Care has been arranged by the girlfriend of her son who was killed in a road accident 40 years ago, but the GF has always kept in touch.

Her house, that she owns and has lived in since it was built in the 1950s is being rented out. This covers her care fees.

She is very houseproud and her house has always been immaculate - garden and hedges neat and mowed, windows cleaned regularly, etc. Due to her age (she's in her 90s) she had help with the garden but loved to potter in it and it looked gorgeous every summer.

A family have moved in and within about 5 weeks it's become an absolute tip. Broken furniture piled up in the front garden, dog turds in the grass, bins overflowing and rubbish strewn around and piled up in the porch. I was a bit to see piles of coats being hung on hooks that have been fixed to the outside of the front door (bearing in mind that there's a downstairs cloakroom just inside the entrance of this house!). The blinds in the windows and the garage door have been trashed and the place is generally becoming a bit of an eyesore.

Fair enough, people are entitled to live however they choose. But I hope it's not just me that thinks these people should have a bit more respect for someone else's property? If the lady that lived there ever sees it, she'll be heartbroken. It is still her house, It's not as if she's a buy to let landlord IYSWIM.

The local council has a number that you can call to take bulky furniture away so there's no excuse for it to be festering in the front garden!

I am a landlord and so long as they are not doing damage to my asset, I don't care how tidy my tenants keep their home/garden until they leave.

We had similar but lesser issue with my mum's tenant (she is in a care home as well). When the tenant moved in, he left lots of cardboard outside the front of the house on the pavement, presumably waiting for it to be collected. The neighbour told him that the collection day was every other week and that he should take it in and wait until the night before collection. Sometimes, people just need to be told about bin collections etc. However, furniture etc is something else and as the LL, I would want to know. If my mum's lodger treated the house her house like this, I would be issuing notice.

Do you really not care tarka? I care about the neighbours,where I own properties. I like a sense of community and understand that one crappy house can affect values of other houses. I find that mutual hugh standards keep a neighbourhood good.

I am a landlady and my tenant never did the garden ( it was in the tenancy agreement) so I did it myself so it did not upset the lady next door!

My DH and myself have become accidental landlords and don't agree on how much slack to give the tenant - I'm more easy going than DH, but DH has never rented and I have (and never lost any deposit, I might add) so know how it feels from the tenants side.

There is a big difference between living messily, in a way that could be cleared up on moving day, and trashing the place. Unrestricted enjoyment of the property does not give the tenant the right to destroy the place. Our tenant is messy but not some kind of demented Visigoth so I don't feel we should be looming over his shoulder lecturing him on his hoovering... If he took a hammer to the front door however he would find himself looking for somewhere else to live.

Ring the council yourself pretending to be the tenant and tell them to come and collect everything that's in the front garden!