Bad neighbours can ruin a lovely home, how do you get over it?

[CherryPieFilling]

Growing up, my mum & dad were very strict about not upsetting the neighbours. Probably too strict! But they are all still in touch and some have even visited my 'grown up home'. So it worked.

DH & I bought our dream home, it could be amazing but the neighbours have been awful. It's tainted all our hard work.

How do you deal with that?

We moved. Our neighbour's obnoxiously loud all night shagging sessions and unhappy dog who barked all the time ruined the house for me and caused severe anxiety. So we finished renovating as soon as we could and hot footed out of there.

My aunt used to knock on the neighbours door "by accident" whenever she was seriously interested in a property to see what they were like. She must have looked like a right idiot when the for sale sign was clearly next door but she swore by it. She would also make sure to visit in the evening to see what the noise level was like.

We had dreadful neighbours in our last house, they used to get really pissed at the weekends and be generally obnoxious, tell lies to local council saying we had fly tipped etc, wrote racist language on their own garage and claimed that we did it (opposite neighbour had CCTV!) , when I was pregnant with DD the husband used to sing out the window if i walked past 'who ate all the pies etc etc' , they used to rip up our flowers in the front garden amongst many other crazy things.

It all came to a head one day when my DH was fixing his motorbike in our garage and neighbour came in and punched him, police called and neighbour arrested, went to court but no charges as his word against ours etc.

Neighbour wrote us a letter saying we were too noisy, young family - both working up at 6am, showers, new baby, shouldn't be using washing machine after 6pm etc, previous owner had been a single middle age man. Really unreasonable things and we were not noisy at all, in fact we went out of our way to be quieter so as not to start them off!

It certainly knocked my confidence, sanity and made me quite ill on reflection, nothing is worth that.

Saw the wife of the couple a few years back and she tried to engage me in conversation, totally blanked her and walked off.

Best thing we did moving, but it makes you wary, we don't really engage with our neighbours now, polite hello / quick chat but that's about it.

OP I feel your pain. Sounds like we had a very similar upbringing.

I grew up in a detached house and in the summer my DM would nag me to keep my music down in case the NDNs could hear it coming through my window!

Sadly I've endured many noisy arseholes above, below and next to me over the years.

DP, DS and I live in a middle terrace now and have a lovely, quiet single lady on one side and a nice family on the other. The family are only renting though and are the 5th set of occupants in 6 years, so we never know what we're getting next.

The odd shout or door slam doesn't bother me at all, the bane of my life has been music, usually music I hate, blaring through into my home.

Anyway, in response to the original question, I agree that being extra nice to them usually works. One of our previous sets of neighbours, who to be fair were actually nice people, often had friends come back late after the pub at the weekend and the loud music would go on. As we'd befriended them, DP would only have to text the guy something like "Take the edge off it please mate" and a few seconds later it would get quieter.

I find it so sad that some people have such an utter lack of consideration for the people who live around them.

We live in a very large house which is basically an old barn. The NDN house is in another barn which is very close to ours, like only meters apart. They have 10 acres of land, we have 4, which stretches off behind and to the side of each barn.

Their very expensively educated teenage children have very very loud parties at least once a month, in a kind of permanent marquee extension to part of their house, the part that is right below and to the side of our bedroom window. The parents sleep at the other end of the house and don't hear a thing. Because they are posh and wealthy, they feel they can do what they like and are incredibly rude when we mention the parties.

They also refuse to erect a fence between our land (its their boundary). We have argued so much over this and now I basically let my dogs roam their land as well as my own. I truly hate them.

I grew up in a flat, the only child in a block with mainly older people. We had carpet squares and lino surrounds. Shoes off at the door and slippers on. No running or jumping indoors, and no loud music. My parents never got a complaint. We mainly lived in semis when our DC were growing up, they understood no excessive noise. Decent standards for when they left home and lived in shared accommodation.

Fast forward to a job as a housing officer in the 1990s. Laminate floor was becoming a 'must have', but really should be a 'no no' in flats with poor insulation, as every footstep can be heard. The fact that so many people just didn't seem to care if their noise impacted on their neighbours made life difficult for many tenants. The issue of who to believe in neighbour disputes can also be quite tricky without CCTV or independent witnesses.

We've had one serious neighbour noise nuisance, in about six moves. Teenage son next door, unemployed, used to play drum and bass loudly whenever he felt so inclined. His mother, who was in a management job, was at her wits' end because she was working most of the time. We did speak to her, and to him, but we tried to remain on decent terms. She did remove his musical equipment at one point. He got older, got back to full time working, and the noise ceased even before he left home. His mum lives there on her own now, and its a very peaceful street. I'm glad we hung in there.

Bite the bullet and invite them over, befriend them. Make them welcome at yours, and then slowly raise any issues with them gently.

If it is your dream house you need to find a way to win them over. Unless they are doing something illegal and then simply report them.

People have all sorts of reasons for being seemingly anti social (death in the family, breakdown, MH, health issues etc). I would find out what is causing the problems before coming to any kind of conclusion about them.

I'm having the same problem. My neighbour is a piece of shit.

I see your shit neighbours and raise you an alcoholic drug-dealing neighbour who screamed at his kids and periodically smashed his own place up. We did have brief periods of respite when he was a guest of Her Majesty's , but he always came back.

Reader, I moved.

This is always a worry of mine, we live in a nice medium sized 2 bed house but we are expecting another DC. Our neighbours are fucking awesome. Genuinely wish we could keep them if we moved.

We are staying put for a little while due to finances and Brexit, but I dread getting awful neighbours

Had horrid neighbours too:

Dog escaping and breaking through the fence into our garden

Dog poo near to our steps

Parking in our driveway outside of our house, and guests too

Being threatening and aggressive especially while I was pregnant and with a toddler.

Turning their garden into a dog park: read dog babysitting facility, without permission

Constant slamming of front door

Their son climbing a tree in our garden and not caring

Throwing cigarette butts into our garden, especially on to the terrace where DS aged under 2 at the time used to play.

Using our bins

School skipping children

The list goes on.

Reader, we had to move.

BigusBumus. You can put up a fence yourself, as long as its on your land. It doesn't matter who the boundary belongs to.

@redhat and @BigusBumus was thinking the same , couldn't handle that shit . Would erect my own fence .
Doesn't matter who owns the boundary you can still erect fence as long as it's on your land .

Weird NDNs one side. The man came round shouting that he'd found a dead pigeon on his path and it was killed by my cat (though he didn't see it but it had to be her....

Shouted, Feffing and jeffing, that we should put a collar on her (tried that a couple of times, she gets the collar off), said we should put a wall up (there's a 6" hedge between our properties plus his front drive has no gate and anyone can walk round to the back of his house) or we should keep her in.

Couldn't placate him. He shouted that he knew what to do the next time she was in his garden.

No proof, but just under a week later about 4" of fur was stripped off her tail. All bloody. Had to go to vet for x rays as her tail was trailing, overnight stay to make sure she could wee and poo, and a couple of shots for inflammation and pain.

Making me nervous! We have one NDN (road on the other side). Young couple with 2 preschoolers who we barely hear, except back garden hijinks in high summer 😊.

They told us a month ago that they're moving (while saying that no one they'd shown around thus far seemed odd or weird!) but having had grim NDNs in the past, I'm a bit worried 😳

We had to move. Our neighbours didn't care that I had a newborn and they were having all night parties during which her twat boyfriend fucked about on his decks thinking he was a DJ.

He definitely wasn't!

BigusBumus We had noisy, entitled neighbours whose teenage children had loud noisy parties living next door to us. The language was disgusting, drinking all night, throwing cans all over the garden, music blaring out.... Fast forward a couple of years, the children went to uni and started going abroad for party weekends instead and the home parties stopped. Then the parents relationship broke up and she moved out. He stayed in the house for a bit and then sold it....... to a lovely family with 2 teenagers who are really considerate nice neighbours.

Redhat & Windydoggy, honestly I'd put my own fence up and have done on all 3 other sides at massive expense, but the fence would need to be over half a kilometre long (4 acres but in a long and narrow way). The formal garden near the house is walled, so they tend to stay in there, but if we go out walking further there is no boundary so I just let the dogs go where they want after 5 years of asking them!

Chottie I've heard on the grapevine that their marriage is on its last legs, so there is hope!

@BigusBumus Understand totally , far to too much for you to fence

Twats !
Thanks for clarifying.

It’s awful. The one and only reason we are moving is because of our neighbours. We’ve made our house just how we like it, love the area, even love some of the neighbours - but it’s so built up that despite some of them being great, the disgusting ones override it all. Filthy and messy, endlessly loud all day and night, smoke skunk constantly, obnoxious visitors again all hours, horrible children that are out until gone midnight in the summer. This is not just one of the neighbours, there are loads of them!

We used to have the most amazingly lovely neighbours: notes through the door 'Away for the weekend, feel free to use our pool' - if it was a week it was also 'would you mind watering the hanging baskets'
Sadly she died and he moved to live in Derby near the youngest daughter. Still keep in touch with the eldest daughter as she lives locally often spot her in Waitrose, she has the most loveliest little family of 3 cutest ever and ever so polite girls. Really delightful family, much missed.
New people are nice enough just odd, just a middle aged couple no kids, in a big house, but they seems to be always away on holiday or away with work, often nobody there for a couple of weeks at a time. Have ruined the fabulous landscaped gardens - old lady was a bit of a garden wizz, knew her plants and it always looked lovely, in later years she had a gardener, it was the sort of garden you could sit out in and always spot something new. They ripped everything out so it's all lawn and fence now, before they moved in they did a badly executed side & rear single storey extension (that went on forever and the builders were loud and annoying and forever blocking our drive),. When they are here they complain about everything wrong with their house/garden. Most of which is because they ripped out what was there when they arrived, eg they don't like the lack of hedge at the front as people look in when going past (we have a lovely hedge) - their problem for ripping out what was there rather than hacking it down and letting it sprout back as it got rather overgrown while the builders were in before they actually moved in. She doesn't like the lawn because it's too much effort to mow. He doesn't like the fact there is no colour but he has no idea about plants. We wonder why they spoilt what was there, it only needed a good trim back and was planted such that it would just grow again with plenty of interest. We don't get invited to use the pool instead we had them grumbling last year how much the pool, cost to run and how cold the pool was (personally I'd have loved to swim in a cool pool in that heat but then again it's not the Maldives or wherever their latest holiday was). Everything is apparently 'wrong' about their house - the rooms are too small. the gas bill too high etc. We just think if you don't actually like it why the hell don't you move again, at least we might get a chance of really nice neighbours again. They seem to have plenty of money so here's hoping!

CherryPieFilling Do they own their home? The house nearest us is a rental property and we have finally got rid of the tenants from hell after nearly 2 years. This is some of what we endured:
We had the mother chasing her child round the house calling them a ct and b*d at the top of her voice.
The parents got drunk and beat each other up. An ambulance and the police were called. It was so bad that when we got up in the morning the police forensic team were parked in our driveway. Social services were also involved.
They couldn't be bothered cleaning up after their dog. The everlasting memory I have of last summer is the smell of baked dog poo because of the hot weather. When we complained they decided it would be a good idea to hose their dog poo under the fence into our garden.

The father was rather keen on smoking outside late at night and then using our garden as his personal ashtray. By that point I was ready to kneecap the lot of them and we started to "return" their stuff through their letterbox. When the landlord turned up to repair something I complained to him and mentioned the police/ambulance incident. He was able to confirm this with the police and the tenants were given notice. There are now new tenants and they couldn't be more pleasant.

Firstly thank you for talking about your own experiences with less then perfect neighbours. Sorry, but it's good to know it's not just me.
We started off positively, aware we could be next door for 30 or 40 years. Overlooked aggressive dogs, hoping they'd improve. Tried the love bomb route.
Tried better fences, polite but respectfully distant.
Bottom line was they wanted us out, they bought their cottage knowing the neighbouring (our) property had planning permission for conversion but hated us making a success of it and then not selling it on to their grown up kids.
Rats - he killed one once therefore our fault despite his supplying food via his hens
cockerels - despite an acre, next to our house but ok because they sleep the other side
Vicious dogs barking everytime we went outside, chasing us along the fence line.
Hideous dog incidence resulting in miscarriage, found it hard to get over particularly because of no shocked apology just ' you can't have been that pregnant'

Last few years settled down to ignore each other, now find he had terminal cancer but I am struggling because I don't care, in fact I'm pleased but obviously lots of bad memories have come to the surface in order to feel like that.

They have clouded the joy I once felt about our stunning home, if I'd know ten years ago how bad it could be I'd have sold.

I know this thread hasn't had any activity since last year but I just want to add. My neighbours keep reporting me to the RSPCA, the local Council and the local Police. None of the complaints have been upheld because we have done nothing wrong. Social Services, the RSPCA and the local Police have all been called to investigate us and all have been happy to support us and not them. It is so frustrating to be in this position and it is making us hate our neighbours as it is so unfair.

Our neighbours are so fucking entitled and awful, we get members of the village coming up to ask how we’re getting on with the Pair of Cunts next door

They are all cheering us on in our campaign of zero Cunt tolerance

They go out of their way to tell us!

Lucky This pair is OLD, so it won’t be too much longer and we’ll be rid of at least one of them