How do you check your future neighbours aren’t arseholes?

[Asdawindowandglass]

Just wondered what strategies you have employed to suss out future neighbours. Do you knock on doors before you’ve purchased?

A house we like has a high, solid, Reed-type lining on the fence on one side only. Makes me slightly suspicious.

@GingerTum

Don't understand the problem with this photo? Its not even your direct opposite neighbour? The next doors shed / garage is bigger.

OP ask around and visit at different times of day. Also check the state of the gardens - that will give alot away.

@negomi90

You don't. Even if they're lovely they could be in the process of moving and be about to be replaced by arseholes.

Very true!

We had four years with generally ‘good’ neighbours.

Unfortunately, most of them have moved on and been replaced by what we now call the ASBO brigade.

I don’t understand what has happened to make people so selfish and psychotic. In our experience it’s the male of the couple that sets the standard. Some act as if they own the whole place.

We’ve had threats of physical violence, and one guy who shouts the most disgusting abuse at us. Before you ask, absolutely no reason at all.

We’re completely at a loss to know why this happens.

Older neighbours kowtow to them, presumably wanting an easy life.

Some of the newbies hide away and never say a word to us. Maybe they’re wondering if we are like the others. Who knows?

We also have a lot of dog-walking gossips, and we have nothing to do with them either.

Most people only own the fence on one side (either left or right) so it's not unusual to have mismatched fences so don't read too much into that. Mine is 6ft on one side and lower on the other.

Generally though it's impossible to know for sure and even if they are lovely now, they could move and someone nosy or noisy be about to move in! Or they could do what my next door but one quiet neighbour did and get a yappy dog or build an extension like next door did...

We bought a lovely house in a great neighbourhood with nice, quiet neighbours and a year later some absolute arsehole bought the house opposite and is now, without overstating it, spoiling everyone’s lives in this previously peaceful village.

Good luck OP because luck is all it is

Are they hosting raves in the shed?

@SpeckledlyHen - We had lovely neighbours on both sides when we moved who both were overjoyed that the previous occupants had moved away. It stayed that way for a while and was lovely.

However both sides have changed at least once in the seven years we’ve been here and one of the current ones are very annoying. They have told visitors and tradespeople to ‘just park on Machine’s drive’ (it’s not a shared drive), play music turned up very loudly out of their backdoor in the afternoon ‘so they can hear it down the garden’ (my wfh office overlooks their back door and interestingly as soon as her partner gets home it goes off), put a noisy hot tub on the patio near the house and leave it on all the time (to keep it warm) and hold parties during the week that go on past midnight regularly. To top it off they are trying to extend because the house just isn’t big enough for the family but keep going for ridiculous projects that can’t get planning permission. Hopefully they’ll give up and just move, but who knows what sort of neighbour we’ll get next.

You can't! The neighbours we had were lovely but moved after a year and hideous vile bastards moved in.

Hot tubs seem to be the biggest single source of anti-social behaviour out there. So much so that I think it's time they were just banned outright. They're wasteful of energy and water, quite apart from everything else, ridiculously so in the UK climate.

@negomi90

You don't. Even if they're lovely they could be in the process of moving and be about to be replaced by arseholes.

This

I've got bamboo screening up at my fences but it's nothing to do with the neighbours. It's because a cat sits on a shed roof in a garden at the back of us and my dog goes crazy when she sees the cat.

One of my previous homes was on a relatively busy road of over 200 houses. Despite this, we didn’t have any problems with bad neighbours.
After about five years a young couple moved in two doors from me and from day one they proved to be problematic. Weekly parties with loud music ( even on a Sunday night). During the summer months they had daily barbecues . They even had a live band in their garden ( bear in mind the houses were three bedroomed terraces with a few four bed semis not five bed detached homes with large gardens). They then decided to buy a massive dog which barked incessantly . A year after they moved in , we put our house up for sale. We planned to move, but having nightmare neighbours just speeded up the process
Moral of the story.., good neighbours is just down to luck

Ask the postman they know all the gossip 😂
I buy mine a bottle of Jack Daniels every Christmas because he’s so fab 😂

I put in a few notes for the estate agent when selling my parents house
About who lived next door - how long they had lived there .
Single, Families, any pets just stuff that I thought potential buyers might want to know

Funny...just posted on another thread about searching only when proceedable and it occurred to me that we haven't always done enough neighbour "research". One clue though I've learnt from experience is their garden...does it look scruffy, uncared for, bits of junk? I don't mean an elderly person alone who can't cope but belonging to a youngish, perfectly fit family.

having once lived next door to a drug dealer, who would flick the used silver foil bit out of his front bedroom window, landing on my front garden (heroin) I would carefully look for those signs and use my nose whist walking around sniffing for ' weed'

plus many other bugbears,
re the shed in the garden that Ginger tom is looking at, I sympathise, looks dreadful, can you plant some slender trees that have their canopy the right height to block the view of it

All very well, but, you cannot see into the future!

Even assuming these tactics work, within weeks you might be faced with the neighbour from Hell.

In our case we had a few good years. If we go to the expense of moving, can there ever be a guarantee of life quality?