Next door telling us off for being loud?

[icelolly99]

Weekeend away we're sat outside chatting over a meal with friends (7 women all over 45). Man next door appears at balcony and aggressively shouts 'keep the noise down, we live here - it's not all holiday homes'.... it was 7.20pm...! Is it unreasonable to sit outdoors and talk over a meal? I could understand if it was 10.20pm...

I hate noise but at 7.20 in the evening that's not unreasonable at all!

We live next door to our neighbours beautiful annex which is used by an airbnb. They have a huge plot, so big they get deer but build their annex far from the main house but right up to our boundary!! It's like we have strangers sitting in our garden! On the whole it's fine but in summer you are waiting for the shoe to drop and do get a couple of obvious people sounding the foghorn at wine-o'clock.

Regardless of the time, there's a massive differences between the content and noise level between neighbours Vs Airbnb guests. You know your neighbours and they know you so you wouldn't sit outside and loudly blabbering about your personal life or carrying on like every day is an endless holiday.

However, it's also a blessing - because that means we can do as we please. They are not our neighbours and any issues they have with our normal residential noise they can take up with their hosts! Love being able to BBQ with impunity. Might even get some wind chimes and a hot tub 🤣

The neighbour is clearly at tipping point and your group happened to be the ones there when he snapped. The most polite thing is to stop stressing them out IMO, even if your party were not the ones who have been excessively noisy. Air B'n'Bs are causing these problems everywhere.

I mean you weren't unreasonable but others clearly have been so best to acknowledge that.

Those people who say that tourists shouldn't book places to stay in "residential areas" - what exactly is the alternative?? Should we only stay in hotels and bed & breakfasts? Or are cottages in the countryside allowed??

And also none of those would mean OP was being unreasonable either. Summer evenings mean that an amount of noise is expected. Don’t like it, go and live in the sticks with no neighbours.

and why do people keep going on about Air BnB when OP isn’t in one?

Yes I have actually. People are allowed to have a life however, especially at 7.30 at night.

If any property is close to another one (property let or not) I wouldn't make so much noise that it annoyed the neighbours. 7 women can get very loud!

A few people up thread have mentioned how folks didn’t used to sit outside and eat / drink/ entertain. Is this true? Is this a new fashion?

I grew up in the 80s/90s and we always sat outside a lot, but my parents had a lot of space and no immediate neighbours. Maybe we were outliers.

Genuinely very interested if any other posters have some insight into this. Especially if you’re older than me (I’m 40)

I am not sure they did. Now that you mention it!

but things have changed, gazebos, cabins. BBQs, garden kitchens, hot tubs, bifold doors.

Pur garden is an extension of our home, during the hot weather we eat outdoors and sit there every evening

Very few around us do the same.

We will continue to do the same.

It is definitely something that has increased in recent decades. The idea that a garden should have outdoor living space was not the norm in say the 1950s. I have read a book on the history of garden design that associates it with the rise of package holidays in the 70s - people went to Spain and were introduced to outdoor dining so patios became a thing in British gardens.
I am in my early 50s and my parents were reasonably well off with a good sized garden in the 70s and 80s but we didn’t have outdoor tables and chairs- on the very rare occasions we had dinner in the garden it involved setting up the camping furniture. Outdoor furniture is a huge thing now. My neighbours’ garden now is basically an outdoor living room with outdoor sofas, tables and chairs.
It’s fed into the design of houses too with patio doors that open into the garden so you have a seamless flow between indoors and outdoors.
So yes it is something that has increased though it is not that new. You were probably on the fashion forward side without being actual outliers.

Oh, and the other factor is that people drink alcohol at home far more than they used to. Most drinking used to happen in pubs. Now we mainly buy our booze from the supermarket with the weekly shop and drink it at home, inside or out. Which is obviously going to make a huge difference to how much noise people make in gardens.

Goodness, I’d never dream of shouting at people chatting outside at 7.20pm on a weekend, that’s madness! The holiday let thing is a bit of a red herring imo; the behaviour is fine and normal whether or not it is a holiday let or a permanent occupancy.

Last night we had friends over and we sat outside in the garden for dinner and chatted between 7.30-9.30. That’s perfectly ok. My neighbours played football with their little kids from 4-6pm with lots of shrieking and excitement and the ones on the other side had a BBQ with their extended family. All completely normal behaviour for a nice summer’s evening at the end of the week. Completely different to loud music, swearing or loud chatting later at night or during the week. You did nothing wrong OP.

Good morning, interesting to read the variety of opinions on here. Our response was to immediately clear up and move indoors. We were a bit incredulous that we we're shouted at and not particularly happy about it. We're respecting his feelings but it makes me wary for the rest of the weekend. Oh well, sun is out and we're going out for the day. (The houses layout has 4 floors and each rear facing room has a balcony/terrace with great views of the area and sea. The result is there are no windows as such, just huge patio doors - the row is only about 5 years old)

Leave a review on the website about the rude neighbours to warn anyone else who wants to book.

@Avondale89 I didn't mean the OP. I meant the man who's having to live next door to this holiday home.

They are everywhere here in Gwynedd, Wales. I think we have the highest ration of holiday homes to residential homes in the whole of the U.K. I've been looking at houses for a while now that are under 200k which are 2 - 3 bed small cottages. Of the 10+ houses I've been to see, only 2 were owned by anyone locally as a permanent resident. The rest were owned by people in England as holiday homes, mainly people from the Manchester and Cheshire area. The estate agents were open about this. It shows very starkly who's been buying all that stock up for all these years that would normally gone to local people, and who I'm still in competition with. We're basically a sweet shop for them and they cash buy without even seeing the place. I'm in my mid-30s, have a good job, but still live at home. I can't even compete on the rental market as they get snapped up so quickly with lists of 50 - 100 interested people.

In an area where the ratio of holiday let/holiday home to residential home is low, then I think it's ok and holiday lets are popular because it's pleasant on convenient to have a proper kitchen and not have to rely on eating out all the time. The problem is that it's out of control in certain areas and destroys communities. 'Your luxury home is our only home'.

It's made worse by the fact that in my opinion, holiday chalets around here are really expensive which is driving people to buy residential properties as holiday homes or lets.

ratio*

@icelolly99 7:30pm is a bit early to be having a go. Maybe you were being a bit louder than you thought, but unless you had thumping music on or a large dog that wouldn't stop barking, a lot of people wouldn't raise it. Past 9pm, I think a resident would start getting worried about how long or late it would go on for and certainly past 10pm, but it's likely that his reaction was a build-up of all the people who came before you and he was probably at the end of his tether.

I imagine he wouldn't do the same if it was a group of 7 burly blokes making much more noise and at a much more unreasonable hour. He was unreasonable and tou should have stayed outside to enjoy your evening. He needs to take his complaints to the owner.

I should imagine you are louder than you think. I live in a rural village and at the edge of the village is a big house turned into an air bnb. Every weekend a new group rock up, fling doors open, rack up the music and start leaping in and out of the hot tub. Doesn’t bother me as I am the other end but a family who moved here from a large city for the peace and quiet (they were brought up here) are faced with this noise and say it’s louder than being in London.

its not just that family who are affected, there’s quite a few, also a family who have been here over 30 years and now each weekend is ruined by noise. This is the problem with holiday lets near neighbouring properties. Residents are probably sick to death of the noise.

Though given op is describing it as a new house with a sea view I have less sympathy with shouty man than I would have- it’s not like he has lived there for decades since before the trend for holiday letting began so maybe he should have anticipated that the terrace might end up being a mixture of holiday and regular homes?

@EarthSight Genuinely horrifying, I'm so sorry for you being stuck in that situation. It's the reality for all big cities and areas of natural beauty. Unfortunately, every time councils try to do anything about it Airbnb use their very expensive lawyers to force them to overturn any rulings made to try and protect residents. When areas are torn apart by short term lets, where is everyone going to live?? And why are these properties given so many rights and the actual residents are given no power?