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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Tell me about your shitty neighbours

137 replies

SpeedbirdSquawker · 10/09/2023 09:21

So before 9am this morning, after a lovely soak in the bath, I thought I would potter out into the garden with a cup of tea and listen to the birdsong. No chance of peace and quiet. My neighbours two doors down were out with their constantly screaming/crying young boys and playing loud music. What is wrong with people?

If it's not them making noise, my next door neighbour is out playing whatever loud on her phone and then my other next door neighbours often blast music. There's no peace!

I am on a mission to move next year though.

OP posts:
Cakencookieobsessed · 10/09/2023 10:03

My next door neighbour is a mum from the school. Not one I know well or have spoken to a lot but always said hi in passing. Since moving in, we had a few casual conversations, then she started ignoring me, actively turning her head the other way so she doesn't have to look at me or walking past with blank expression on her face. I've caught her looking at me from her bedroom window when I've been putting clothes on the washing line. At the school I overheard her saying she hates me.
I'm quite a shy person and keep to myself but I have only ever been nice to her. Obviously, I don't say hi anymore and I ignore her back. Her sister is often at the school with her giving me filthy looks. It doesn't bother me a lot, but it makes things awkward and I wonder what the hell I've done wrong.

TheLightSideOfTheMoon · 10/09/2023 10:03

My quiet, introverted elderly neighbour who never made a peep except to occasionally ask DP if he’d mind driving him to Tesco has gone into a nursing home and is selling his house.

I dread to think who’s going to move in. Loud people, children, tap dancers, sex pond users - I dread to think…

<shudders dramatically>

YouJustDoYou · 10/09/2023 10:03

The ones who used to live above us when we used to be in a flat were two very heavy set, very loud, very obnoxious people. I mention heavy set because the nurse who lived there before them was a normal sized human and we never once heard her. These two would get up at 7am and our literal window panes would rattle and shake and they walked across the floor. They would slam doors, have extremely loud sex, lob food out the window onto our driveway below which ended up attracting rats, smoke out their window and chuck all their fag butts onto our doorstep, park across peoples parking spaces with their rattlingly loud suped-up mazda so everyone would have to try and get them to move, and they flooded out flat when they used their broken washing machine (which they admitted they knew was broken but used it anyway) then went away on holiday, causing our whole flat to be ruined with water coursing through the ceiling and firemen having to break into their flat to turn off the water. All our clothes got ruined, I lost all my GCSE paperwork, my university degrees, mold grew everywhere because of the damp....and they didn't give a shit. The two young people in the flat directly next to ours would put music on FULL VOLUME so it would rattle the windows, literally rattle them, from 10am until 10pm, would smoke huge amounts of pot all day long which would in summer gust all through our flat. We had a little baby so the mold and the pot smoke and the noise and stress was just too much.

Dontcallmescarface · 10/09/2023 10:05

Mine has spent 3 evenings (and by evenings I mean between the hours of 6pm-11.30/midnight), building a shed. I was on an early shift so 3 nights of not being able to sleep due to the hammering/ sawing/swearing has been great. I'm on lates next week so may plan some late night revenge.*

*only in my head though as, unlike him, I'm not a knobhead..

Lwrenagain · 10/09/2023 10:08

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

Trigger warning animal abuse and serial killer vibes all over this, please don't read if you're sensitive to these kinds of things

⚠️ PLEASE READ TRIGGER WARNING ⚠️

Okay, so in the 90s I was a child and we moved into a new house.
My parents were moving our furniture in from a rented van and this very handsome charming man came out of next door to help my parents lift a fridge etc, nobody asked for his help, he just saw them from his window and came over. Super kind!
I remember giving him a big grin and and he winked at me and I fell a bit in love. (He was mid 20s, I was 7 so he probably wasn't the most suitable candidate for my affection!) Anyway, he would be out in his garden doing woodwork and then I'd go outside to pretend to not just want to chat to him, he said he'd show me his woodwork inventions one day. I was thrilled, felt like I was going to date this boyzone tribute act member.

3 days after we'd lived in New house sirens outside were going wild, 4 police cars outside and they kicked his door in.
His crime wasn't imitating Shane lynch.

He had been collecting dogs from shelters across the country and dismembering the poor things.

No idea how he was caught, but that was his hobby. His house left vacant for a year, so it must have been a horrific sight inside.

I'd have 100% snuck out my house to visit his workshop had he suggested and I'm thankful every day that he was arrested within days of us living there.

QueenCamilla · 10/09/2023 10:08

10HailMarys · 10/09/2023 09:58

And he speaks one of the louder languages (from a loud culture)

Hmm

Dunno the point that emoji is trying to make but I have Romanian multi-generational family as neighbours. Jesus the noise! They seem to just shout as a way of speaking to each other. Makes me jump when I hear them unexpectedly.

On the same par with British grey-trackies and a pitbull brigade just every shouty word was obscenity in some form.

AmandaHoldensLips · 10/09/2023 10:08

Neighbour's dog has major separation anxiety so we know whenever our neighbour goes out, even for a pint of milk, because the howling starts up and doesn't stop until she gets back. She goes out to work so it's ALL FUCKING DAY LONG.

HelpMeGetThrough · 10/09/2023 10:12

Next door decided to get a dog.

Endless bloody barking, day in day out and then the idiot neighbour deciding to play with it and a squeaky toy in the garden at 10:30 in the evening for ages, never misses an evening.

HoraceTheLlama · 10/09/2023 10:17

My neighbours stomp about ALL day, slam doors constantly, screaming kids, mum screaming at the kids like an old fish wife.

still not as bad as the ones who tried to stab our dog through the wire fence with a garden fork, sent her husband round to try and beat up my dad, reported us to the council for having decking, and many other things. Quite happily called her a cunt to her face when she asked where we were moving to on the day the removals van turned up.

Thebigblueballoon · 10/09/2023 10:20

Lwrenagain · 10/09/2023 10:08

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

Trigger warning animal abuse and serial killer vibes all over this, please don't read if you're sensitive to these kinds of things

⚠️ PLEASE READ TRIGGER WARNING ⚠️

Okay, so in the 90s I was a child and we moved into a new house.
My parents were moving our furniture in from a rented van and this very handsome charming man came out of next door to help my parents lift a fridge etc, nobody asked for his help, he just saw them from his window and came over. Super kind!
I remember giving him a big grin and and he winked at me and I fell a bit in love. (He was mid 20s, I was 7 so he probably wasn't the most suitable candidate for my affection!) Anyway, he would be out in his garden doing woodwork and then I'd go outside to pretend to not just want to chat to him, he said he'd show me his woodwork inventions one day. I was thrilled, felt like I was going to date this boyzone tribute act member.

3 days after we'd lived in New house sirens outside were going wild, 4 police cars outside and they kicked his door in.
His crime wasn't imitating Shane lynch.

He had been collecting dogs from shelters across the country and dismembering the poor things.

No idea how he was caught, but that was his hobby. His house left vacant for a year, so it must have been a horrific sight inside.

I'd have 100% snuck out my house to visit his workshop had he suggested and I'm thankful every day that he was arrested within days of us living there.

Jesus 😬

I kind of want to know more. You didn’t ever find out how this came to light? No court reports on the case?

JaneyGee · 10/09/2023 10:21

Horrible woman lives next door. I have never met anyone so passive aggressive in my life. Everything she does is designed to make you feel uncomfortable. She is also pathologically jealous. I mean it's like an illness. We had a conservatory built in 2010 (only a cheap little thing) and she didn't talk to me for a year.

Another major problem is noise. I'm on a new build, and they've jammed so many houses together it's insane. A plot of land that shouldn't contain more than 4 houses has 12 squeezed onto it. Also, quite a few people round here have motorbikes that wake me up early in the morning. Or they have cars with those stupid modified exhausts that screech and explode like a firework display. At the weekends, they race them round the block, sometimes at two or three in the morrning.

Anti-social neighbours really do ruin lives. It's happening all the time. There ought to be much, much stricter laws to prevent this, starting with severe penalties for noise pollution. How can people get away with waking up the entire neighbourhood at three in the morning becasue they've attached something to their exhaust?!

Razzle39 · 10/09/2023 10:22

The neighbours on our landing who sat on the steps from 7am drinking beer and smoking dope. The stairs were right outside our front door. They left after they were raided by the police and we couldn’t leave our flat for 4 hours whilst this went on.

The neighbours above us where there was awful domestic abuse. Once heard screaming ‘I’m going to kill you and the baby inside you’ - we of course reported to the police constantly but nothing was done. Parties all the time. Pit bull dog in a one bedroom flat. I often think of the baby and hope he’s well and safe.

I often think thank god we left that flat just before lockdown.

MrsKarlUrban · 10/09/2023 10:24

Every f'in weekend morning before 8 JET WASH! for agessssss
God I hate that noise
Neighbours two down have been having an extension built for over 18 months now!
And we've been through the neighbours from hell (they've gone now) but caused about two years of noise, mess - it was like a local tip in the garden- arguments. When her ex finally got hold of the house he went in and there were big holes in the walls and floors!!??! Some people are just feral

Spanne · 10/09/2023 10:27

Hot tub in their tiny garden positioned under our bedroom windows that they’re in all hours of the night. I don’t really mind them but they’re so inconsiderate.

Cheirosa · 10/09/2023 10:29

Mine (or possibly her DD) stole a delivery intended for us. There was a whole saga, but the short version is that it was left on their doorstep by mistake, claimed they didn’t have it and that ‘anyone could have taken it’.
We only have one other neighbour and we know them - they’ve often looked after parcels for us. This neighbour had just moved in.
It only had a few packs of sweets in it (with the branding on the outside, so obvious what was inside). I’m still fuming. They were my sweets. 😠

We also had to make a noise complaint once via their landlady who investigated what on earth was going on. Multiple people (both the neighbour and visitors) crashing about, then loud music through the walls.
They told her they ‘hadn’t been there’ at the time. Rightio, we’re hallucinating then, given they came in and out of their front door several times.

After that it started to get a bit weird. She waited by her window one day to see my DH arrive home and ran to catch him as he was putting his key in the door.
She then, completely unprompted, started to tell him about how she used to be homeless and really needs this home, then about how her DD has autism. He was a bit taken aback, didn’t really know what to say and it made him a bit uncomfortable. Obviously I empathise as sounds like it’s been hard for their family, but this interaction was obviously set up to make him/us feel bad.

Not long after that we found a metal stick with spikes on it under our car! I didn’t see it, but thankfully DH did as we were getting in.
We use a locked/gated car park for residents. Whoever did it would have needed access and we don’t have problems with anyone else here, so it’s fairly obvious who it was. Sadly, no proof as the CCTV only covers the entrance/exit and not individual spaces! It’s so frustrating.

DrMadelineMaxwell · 10/09/2023 10:29

Not my immediate neighbour but close enough...is lovely.
But ... has in his town house garden
Chickens inc a cockerel
Ducks
Turkeys.
The stench is unreal on a hot day and I feel sorry for their immediate neighbour on each side as it is strong enough where we are!
And cockerels are loud.

His ndn told me her children once looked out of their bedroom window to see him wringing the neck of one of the birds. Lovely.

Lwrenagain · 10/09/2023 10:36

@Thebigblueballoon I haven't any more information, disappointing I know!
It's all second hand from my mum. Now I've googled the address, (I think it was in 1995, I could be wrong though) and I've checked on things such as newspapers.com and its returned nothing.

If I ask my mum she'll say, "Oh I'm not talking about that, don't be so morbid" and if I asked my father he'd just say, "Oh yeah, that Fred West fella next door".
My dad potentially knew more but died before telling me anything.

I have no idea the man's name, just he had tattoos, mid 20s and looked like he could have been on the front of J-17 magazine, again this brings up nothing from Google.

I always wondered how he was caught, he'd have never needed to have taken the poor dogs into the house through the front door as there was an entry at the back of the house, so nobody would have seen him bringing dogs in had he had any sense.

Maybe he frequented the pound so often it caused an alarm, but this was a extremely poverty stricken area, you'd see more stray dogs out than red cars back in the day!

Chickenmumsticks · 10/09/2023 10:37

My neighbours have really fighty boys with a single Dad as the parent. All three of them have this raised whiney disappointment pitch of speech. ALL THE TIME.

It's horrible but I can't do anything.

One of them plays the tuba too ☹️

I have asked once for the balcony doors to be shut as the noise really carries and he was really apologetic.

Happened again this morning and I wanted to cry. Luckily I think they saw me and shut the doors.

LBFseBrom · 10/09/2023 10:41

Mine are nice both sides. They aren't loud but have the odd barbecue in the summer which is normal and there's no loud talking, laughing, or music. I don't really know any others, used to be very friendly with a couple a few doors up but they unfortunately died. One widow with adult daughter grows beautiful veg and gives me some occasionlly. I'll be moving (downsizing), at the end of the year and will miss this house, been here since 1984, but I can't cope with it now and have found a lovely flat which is modern and quiet.

Nutterjacks · 10/09/2023 10:44

Tara336 · 10/09/2023 09:32

We have a next door neighbour who seems to think we should consult her everything we do something on the house. That may not sound too unreasonable until you consider that even putting planters on our drive sent her into a meltdown. She actually cried! We have a fence up so it's not like we were trying to be passive aggressive or anything just thought they would look nice. Any work we have done sends her into a frenzy, we bought a wreck of a house and have slowly turned it into something that didn't bring the street down. Anyone working on our house is threatened with the police (she called them once because our builder had some sand on our drive and a tiny bit blew on to her garden), DH washed his car and water seeped under the fence (not a flood just normal dampness from a car wash) she had a fit about that.

If she sees anyone turn up to carry out work, she immediately calls her Df who turns up puffing out his huge belly and wants to know from our workman what's being done and why... had we know what an utter twat she was we would have never bought the house

She sounds very much like my old neighbour, always had something to complain about.

When she decided to sell up and move, I was so elated. During the selling process, I was just about to leave for work when a tree surgeon turned up to cut down my tree that she never liked! I swiftly sent them bloody packing. 😡

AgnesX · 10/09/2023 10:47

The present ones are incapable of closing a door quietly. They slam them and the pictures on our side shift and they do it in tandem...first one goes out, then the other and then they do the same coming back in. 🙄

That's on both sides (we're the jam in a house sandwich) and on one side we have the guitar practice (sorry but you're shite).

Compared to the previous occupants these ones are ok.

KimberleyClark · 10/09/2023 10:52

Tara336 · 10/09/2023 09:32

We have a next door neighbour who seems to think we should consult her everything we do something on the house. That may not sound too unreasonable until you consider that even putting planters on our drive sent her into a meltdown. She actually cried! We have a fence up so it's not like we were trying to be passive aggressive or anything just thought they would look nice. Any work we have done sends her into a frenzy, we bought a wreck of a house and have slowly turned it into something that didn't bring the street down. Anyone working on our house is threatened with the police (she called them once because our builder had some sand on our drive and a tiny bit blew on to her garden), DH washed his car and water seeped under the fence (not a flood just normal dampness from a car wash) she had a fit about that.

If she sees anyone turn up to carry out work, she immediately calls her Df who turns up puffing out his huge belly and wants to know from our workman what's being done and why... had we know what an utter twat she was we would have never bought the house

I know it’s a bit of a Mumsnet cliche but how old is this neighbour? My mum started to get really paranoid about the neighbours and was eventually diagnosed with dementia.

PostItInABook · 10/09/2023 10:53

My immediate next door neighbour are lovely, but loud and have an inability to close a door without slamming it.
The ones behind me are hideous. They are so inconsiderate and entitled it is beyond belief. They can’t simply talk to each other. They have to shout. Any whiff of a half decent day and their pretentious bi-fold doors are thrown open so they can loudly go about their day forcing the rest of us to endure every tiny detail of their lives.
The youngest is around 10 now and a screecher / screamer. They set up the paddling pool next to the fence (which is owned by me but they have painted it on their side without asking permission or even acknowledging it’s my bloody property) so the screecher is in it all day making my garden unusable. If she’s not in the pool, she’s on the trampoline doing the same.
They have a dog that barks all the time. They have parties that go on loudly until 1-2am.
They had an extension built two summers ago that went on all summer. Builders effing and blinding, playing music ridiculously loudly, building noise. Of course they pissed off on holiday for most of it leaving the rest of us to suffer.
They just do not consider their neighbours in anything they do. Ever. I hate them.

HelpMeGetThrough · 10/09/2023 11:02

The neighbour we did have behind us, was a performance shagger and would have the landing window open, so the performance could be heard by all.

Never knew whether to clap, or shout "she's faking it!!!"

Fortunately she's gone now and the chap and his three teens in there now, are really quiet.

Florencefox · 10/09/2023 11:10

Our last set of neighbours were difficult. We lived there for 4 years & moved away 3 years ago. It was never a forever house, we moved there to be near my mum after she was widowed & it became clear that it wasn't just grief that was making her behave in a slightly odd manner but the very early stages of Alzheimer's.

Neighbours on one side seemed okay at first although excessively friendly - couldn't leave the house without one of them popping out to say hello & start a chat. It was a quiet road with a long curve, the houses were all set back with longish drives, their house was at the back of the curve (if that makes sense) so they had good visibility of several houses & driveways. They'd always be sitting by the window, you could see them through the slats in the blinds, so any neighbour walking by got the same treatment.

However this gradually morphed into racist & homophobic comments, didn't stop when I told them my mum was Irish & I've always have an Irish passport since a child etc, I then got lots of 'paddy' jokes & IRA comments plus all kinds of ignorant assumptions about my Irish background. As my family are from the south & Protestant, (which is unusual & difficult but that's another story!) every assumption was completely wrong!

They took all my parcels in. I was at mums most days so was initially grateful. However, they would ask what was in it..... & some of them looked liked they'd opened them & taped them up again but I couldn't be 100% sure enough to challenge them. Despite me asking all the delivery companies to leave parcels behind the wheelie bins on the drive several times, my neighbours still got the parcels, so I suspect they saw them their & just took them in.

He thought I dressed oddly..... I still don't know what he meant about that, I favour a slight boho look & like colour but nothing too extreme, a lot of my clothes are monsoon /boden type. Mind you this is from a man who lived in his grey track suit bottoms & vest.

She came round with a parcel one day, took it, said thank you. She then stood on the doorstep looking at me which I thought was odd but said 'is there anything else I can help you with' as I couldn't think of anything else to say, she asked where my DH was, I said out for the day at the rugby, she still stood there, so after what felt like a long uncomfortable silence, I said goodby, have a good day & shut the door. Her husband came out the next day when DH in the driveway asking what his wife had done to offend me & why I hadn't invited her in for coffee as the previous neighbours had always gone this when the husbands were out for the day!

Lots more along these lines but the final straw was when my mum was dying (which they knew) they suddenly started to complain about a tree at the bottom of our very long garden throwing shadows onto their conservatory. It was an ornamental tree so not that large, looking at the distances it looked fairly impossible for it to be doing that. It was a slow growing tree that appeared to have reached full maturity when we've moved in so didn't seem to have grown which the old estate agent photos proved. However, we said we would trim it, they could say to what height (within reason) but as my mum was dying, it was only a matter of days & once the inevitable happened, we'd be putting the house on the market, could she wait a couple of weeks. No she couldn't, we were 'selfish neighbours as good neighbours put other people first.' When my DH, said, 'Great, then as a good neighbour I'm so grateful you'll put us first in this difficult time ' she had s complete meltdown & tantrum. To be fair, her husband did come round and sort of apologise but it was all about how we needed to understand how everything was difficult for his wife!

We've now moved and have lovely neighbours either side!