To think that owning your own home doesn't give you the right to be rude and entitled?

[k2493]

AIBU to think that owning your own home doesn't give you the right to be rude and entitled?

We have been having issues with our neighbours and how entitled they appear to be for years now. i.e please stop allowing your guests to park where they block our driveway.

We have asked the agent but we keep getting told try to have a discussion.

Well I finally had enough and politely asked must you constantly allow your guests to block our driveway? It's making our life very difficult. The response straight away was Do you own your property? Nope. Well we do.

What the actual? I am genuinely confused. Does it really matter in this day and age whether you rent or own? DH says he's a twat because it should have nothing to do with money but if he wants to play that game, we pay 1.5 times more in rent than he does for his mortgage so he needs to get a life.

Also I appreciate there have been some bad tenants in the past but there's a lot of us good ones and I appreciate not all home owners are this bias but surely this is bang out of order lording it over and thinking it's there god given right because they own and we don't. I work with clients needing housing all the time so I know how severe the housing shortage is at the moment. Surely anyone who is keeping a roof over there head at the moment is doing a great job mortgage, tenant or otherwise. Why do we deserve less respect because we are renting.

@ Sasquatch Because he had the audacity to tell me that he is aware that we pay a lot more in rent than he does for his mortgage because not only does he keep an eye on prices of rent in the area but he also knows the landlord. Our nice neighbour on the other side has the same house and we know what they pay for there mortgage because they happily tell us when they see rent going up and up. This neighbour went on to say we are still just renters. No it doesn't give us one upmanship but I understand my DH making the comment because he was angry that we pay a lot of money and the neighbour was implying we are trash and have no rights/less rights because we rent.

We rented a house for 6 months when we moved to a new area. The snobbish next door neighbour was horrified to have tenants next door instead of the RAF officer owners, and caused a lot of stress and trouble with complaints and reports. When we told her were moving she asked where to and clearly didn’t believe we were buying the much bigger nicer house than hers. A couple of days after we moved we saw them slowly driving past the new house peering in to check it was us.

Urgh I sympathise OP it absolutely should not matter you rent but sadly some people get very excited or irate about renters. When we moved in we got a vibe that the neighbours were all actively avoiding us despite us being friendly. About 8 months in one finally spoke to us and referred to us as renting. We said we weren't renting and suddenly all smiles. She is the street's gossip so within a month suddenly everyone else started being friendly. We've since had regular unsolicited updates on who owns and who rents on the street. Bizarre how much people care about this sort of stuff.

I like the previous posters suggestion of reminding him any neighbour disputes will have to be declared if and when he sells his house.

Yanbu they shouldn’t block your driveway.

But you have no idea what their mortgage is…

I’m having a very similar issue. I live on a nice new build ‘estate’ where all of the houses are owned and are worth around £1m+. On this estate is two small council block of flats, we pay over £1k to the council so our rent isn’t cheap - but they treat us like crap because we’re council and they own their homes. The flats have a car park where we have allocated parking spaces. The houses don’t want to lower the status of the area by making it look ‘messy’ with cars on the road so they send their visitors to park in our car park - which means them parking in our allocated spaces. I mean when people have parties, all guests park in our car park which means none of us residents cannot park in our own spaces. I have brought it up the council and they do nothing, yet when one of the houses bring something up - the council send out a letter to state to ‘not park on the kerbs/road’. I have two allocated spaces and one car and a lot of the time cannot get one of my spaces. These houses have garage/garages AND large drives and still have the audacity to use our carpark. Yet they think because they own their homes and we’re ’just’ council that we’re beneath them.

I agree with your DH. I do own and I commend anyone who rents as I know I couldn’t afford it. Also you are paying for the use of the house and your neighbour isn’t so it’s your right to use the property and driveway not theirs.

Correlation is not causation. Your neighbours are just wankers, home owners or not.

For gods sake let’s not add homeowners v renters to the tribalism debate - theres enough already!

You can’t look up what rate their mortgage is on, what term it is and what their deposit was though 😂

Call parking control at the council? Once I parked in a hurry when I was late for work and forgot to check the position of the front of the car. It was partially blocking someone's drive and I got a fine. I assumed the resident called the council as it's unlikely a parking warden just happened to be patrolling. (We live in a CPZ and one year I forgot to renew my yearly permit - they are online now so nothing put in the car window. It was 6 months before a warden noticed.)

They're making a point about entitlement.

I've not encountered this with home ownership but I've definitely encountered it with cars - ie if you have a cheap (relatively speaking, I'm not sure any second hand car is cheap these days!) car you must be poor and therefore not worth speaking to.

Experienced it with parents of members of ds's football team. Also a neighbour. And a neighbour of my mum who was inspecting our 2014 reg car (my mum spotted him looking at it said our Porsche was in the garage )

The thing is, I probably afford a new(er) car but I don't want one - I work from home and don't need to drive very much.

And by the same token it's a bit of an assumption that people who rent can't afford to buy - there are lots of reasons why people rent! And so what if they can't afford to buy. Lots of people can't afford to buy. It's weird how people think they are morally superior because they (think they) have more money.

Silly snob OP but it's hard when you live next door to them.

You should respond and say its a good job you rent because you don't have to live next to people like him for the rest of your lives and can easily move away.

Take lots of pictures and ask your agent to send them to your LL. Maybe if the homeowner turns up to have a word they might listen. You could always just say you are the LL daughter/nieceor something if that works.

Why don't you just block them in when they do that? That's what I do.

I bought both sides of a semi detached so I could control my neighbours. I didn't want scum renting it with no control ...

... scum can also buy houses so yeah that's satire.

Agreed. I have both owned and rented. It is your home regardless and of literally no relevance to anything if it is social housing, private rent, or owned in terms of issues like this!

The snobbery around owning a house is also very baffling in the UK. Yes it's good to own as you don't pay for housing after 25 years, but what people don't seem to realise is that house prices have only really increased in nominal terms, in real terms when you factor in inflation there is no gain. They haven't risen in real value. They've just bought a house and that's it.

I think this about car ownership too. As long as my car is economic, gets me from A to B, I’m happy. But lots of people judge others by the type of car they drive. Many people who drive their large cars though, lease them, paying as much as a monthly mortgage in some cases. Bonkers. My small suzuki is paid for in full.

So it's OK to rent a car and feel superior, but not a house? Strange times we live in.

I would point out that it’s a lot cheaper and easier for you to move than it is for him so if he wants to live next door to really bad neighbours then carry on being an idiot and he’ll find out what it’s like.

Or just start blocking his driveway.

This.

The mortgage comments are making me laugh, because you can very easily figure out roughly what people's mortgages are if you know either what £ or % their deposit was and roughly how old they are. Or at least, you can figure out the worst case scenario for their mortgage payments!
Price of house is available online, so you'll know roughly when they applied for the deposit and what interest rates were available at that time.
You need the deposit and the term length... done.
No, it doesn't account for the millions of variables that can get your rate up or down, but you could absolutely get a ballpark figure for most people. But it's unlikely people will tell you deposit/equity so.

I would message your local councillor about this. Or go and speak at a council meeting. Genuinely.

So they have a mortgage? Tell them the bank owns their house then.

Yet you just pointed it out AND added the 'outright' which is entirely irrelevant! 🤣

I think the point your neighbours are making, albeit in the most bonehead way possible, is if you rent you do not have boundary disputes as you would with an owner, or party wall dispute if it’s a neighbouring property involving owner occupiers. However, your landlord would be able to take up this matter with them on your behalf. I’d suggest speaking to the LL to request that your neighbours park elsewhere. Are these properties new builds by any chance?