To think my neighbour's Halloween decorations epitomise how abusurd their setup is? (Pic attached)

[Carla786]

My 'next-door neighbours' have still not moved in, 3 years after they claimed to be arriving in their forever home. There's been a recurrent pattern with the house next to me where it gets redone by the latest buyer, elaborately & noisily & then gets sold on. No one has ever lived there for much longer than a year. (We suspect there is some kind of property-trading ring going on : our house was bought by my grandmother's parents in the 30s when prices were lower, but obvs have skyrocketed since. It seems criminal when there are so many people waiting for homes. Several other houses on the street are the same, it feels a bit ghost-town & def not neighbourly)
It was the same with this neighbour. They did heavy building works for a new basement & granny flat, among other big changes -noisy & very dusty, which was bad for several of our family who have asthma. Not to mention that I was doing my A levels then . And these are still nowhere near complete 3 years after they started. They haven't moved in : OK, it's not finished yet, but I suspect they'll follow the same pattern as previous owners.
But ofc they wanted to put these lovely decorations up, at the house they've never yet lived in & probably won't- and they're still up today.
My mother sent the pic (I'm at uni)- she's a bit of a conspiracy theorist & thinks the gravestone messages are a threat. I definitely don't go that far, though it feels bad taste. I love Halloween but have never liked gravestone decor, esp as the local cemetery is round the corner & we often visit my grandfather's grave.
MN verdict? Are the neighbours CFs, with this as the icing on the cake? Or are we overreacting?

TLDR : Neighbours who have taken 3 years to move in due to noisy dusty building work for a supposed forever home have decided to put up gravestones on the front lawn of a house they've never lived in and probably never will. Gravestones went up before Halloween & are still here today.

This is the most plausible explanation for the constant renovations to permanently unoccupied homes, I think.

I like the graveyard scene.

Just to wind your mum up even more, OP, the owners might move on to running brothels at the homes. Perhaps your mum's curiosity's the only reason they haven't moved the women in yet ... tell her to keep her eyes peeled for trip hazards when she puts the bins out 👀

Yes,,definitely money laundering could be it. They apparently work for JP Morgan, which they seem very proud of- not sure if that's relevant or not!

Brothels, hope not! Who knows at this point 🤷‍♀️ My mother would certainly be the first to realise, I expect,, if they did! 🤣

Crikey, if they were laundering while working for JP Morgan they'd be risking a (presumably) very well-paid career!

Back in the heady days of property flipping, it was sometimes worth carrying out 'Allowable Capital Improvements' which could be offset against capital gains tax when the place was sold for a gigantic profit. Doesn't feel like that would work now. But they could be exploiting some other wizard wheeze - I'm not exactly an expert on investment angles!

If your asthma is so bad that you can't handle your neighbour's home renovations you need to live in a bubble. That's the most ridiculous complaint I've ever heard.

Maybe get a hobby that isn't watching a house 24/7?

No neighbours and Halloween decorations all year round? That's actually my dream. I keep Halloween decorations in my house all year because I prefer it to typical homewares. Got cute skulls, buntings etc.

I imagine it can be annoying to live next to a house that’s under constant development. That said, I think you’re deeply over invested in what your neighbours are doing, and your mother’s analysis of the Halloween decorations is unhinged (to put it mildly).

I don’t get the whole TLDR thing. So for that, YABU 😅

Loads of decs like that near us

They prob are wanting to flip it for profit and are trying to avoid taxes / higher insurance on an empty non-primary residence if you have that where you are.

I know what you mean. The entire area where we live are all bungalows built in 1930. Almost everyone has an extension built onto generous sized gardens to create a large kitchen diner and have had loft conversions to accommodate 2 extra bedrooms. All good and OK…we’ve done the same, but within a 2 month period.
However recently there have been many people buying these properties and extending right up to the boundaries and are so close they could almost be sharing a gutter.
These are people are different in that they never intend to move into the house and have built massive extensions and sold on, making a massive profit in doing so, they are property speculators Although I can’t object formally its a hell of an inconvenience for their neighbours.

For 2 years now I’ve had tradesmen’s vans blocking my driveway, dust finding it’s way into my home and into my car and the constant noise from Mon-Fri 8am to 4pm.
I think it’s taking so long to complete the renovations because they will have more than one project on the go and any one time.
The Hallowe’en thing is just weird! 🤷‍♀️

😂😂😂

I don’t see how a single property can be repeatedly redeveloped at a profit? People buy doer uppers but it makes no sense to buy one already done to start over 🤷🏼‍♀️

But your neighbours aren't buying, doing up and selling. You've said yourself, they've owned the property for 3 years and they're making an investment by updating the property.

They aren't deliberately making noise, the modernisations cause noise. If you feel they are making excessive noise you can keep a diary of all the times they're banging and drilling, present it to the planning department of your local authority and they can determine if it's causing local environmental disturbance,... ah wait, you can't do that, because you don't live there, you're at uni.

if it's dusty then why are you expecting them to live there, surely that the whole reason why they're not living there.

It does sound weird and annoying. No idea why you’d put decorations out when you’re not there.

And for building works to go on that long must be a right pain as the neighbour. It does impact. Totally get it. And agree.

There’s only so much that can be done to a house so I do not get how they are never getting finished either but there’s no obvious answers.

I can see why this would be a constant topic. We have things going on around our house, particularly with one set of neighbours, that as a family we’ve lived with, all know about, comment on, and continue to comment on!

If she’s got dementia and moved in with family to be cared for, the house will be exempt from council tax, so no need to consider grassing anyone up: just enjoy the peace and quiet.

Is a "property trading ring" all about going on Rightmove and to estate agents and house viewings and stuff? So dodgy.

While the Halloween gravestone and the property trading ring are indeed scary, the real stuff of nightmares is the line "we've owned this house since the 30s". It sounds like you're the type of neighbour that drops this into any conversation with other neighbours because they think it's a trump card. It's really not. It doesn't matter when you bought your house. It doesn't give you more rights. It just makes you sound entitled. Ask me how I know...

I've never heard of a property trading ring. I don't understand the logic. If this were to do with money laundering surely they wouldn't do any renovating and just keep selling it on in its original state? And would criminals want a paper trail? And why spend tens of thousands of pounds (or possibly hundreds of thousands) or whatever denomination it is in your country? In an area with expensive properties it's likely that any building work is also going to be expensive. I just don't get it.

I think the Halloween decorations is a separate issue. I think it looks funny but I wouldn't particularly llke them kept them out forever but there wouldn't be a lot I could do about it and I wouldn't get overly het up about it.

Do you live in a really posh area? Where I live no-one would have enough money to keep renovating and not move in. It does sound annoying - though be careful what you wish for, perhaps neighbours who actually move in would be worse!

🤣

I live on the edge of a "naice" area - there's a big house backing onto our road which was rebuilt c. 20 years ago.
It's huge, probably worth well over £1.5m and nobody has ever lived in it....
And yet a pupil in my child's year was registered there (I found out later) and attended the very hard to get into local school.
It's clear that it's not being lived in - the front garden is still a building site, there are still metal fences all the way round, we can see the house clearly and there are never any lights on, and the unkempt back garden has foxes living in it (which is fine by us).
We don't know whether other children have attended local schools by claiming to be living at the empty house...

If your neighbours have a child coming up to secondary school age and you live in the catchment area of a good school, this might be what they're doing - having the house next to you as a registered address to get her into the school, then they'll sell it once she's in secondary school.....

I hope they DO properly move in..however, there is a previous pattern, that's the whole point, of neighbours doing years-long renovations & not moving in but selling on when renovations are done. That's what I'm sceptical about. If they're different & do move in, that's fine, though the renovations are a nuisance.

I wouldn’t like that next door. How do you think recently-bereaved people might feel if they saw it? And that covers a lot of people.

Especially if they’re not actually in residence- that’s really weird.

They are bog standard Halloween decorations.

My DM does a lot of complaining about the building of extensions and the extensive redoing of several houses near her, the fact that there are no children out playing any more, and the fact that all the younger peoole who have moved in are all out working all the hours. I generally just tune it all out, because I've explained to her the income level needed to get a mortgage for the €€€€€€€€€€€ the local houses now sell for and that this means the children are in after school programmes or childminders all day, but she hasn't really taken that in.

I suggest you try to tune out too, OP, when your DM starts on this topic. Repeating the 'property ring' theory as if it might have some merit makes me wonder if you have taken on too many of your mum's concerns, and whether there's a family dynamic centered around anxiety or other feelings of one particular member. Why is the lifestyle of the area in the 1970s relevant to you?

There's definitely a wider conversation to be had about availability of affordable housing, but you've muddied the issue considerably in your posts.