Crazy or annoying neighbor story

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am literally moving next month because of this. Our neighbor is just ridiculously loud and our houses are SFHs but have very little room between them. His roaring up his driveway at 12:30am with his music blaring, slamming the car door, and yelling into his phone on speaker got to be too much (amongst many other things -- including putting his trash bins in front of our house and then leaving them there for 3 or 4 days before taking them back). I often have to leave for work at 6am and I'm a light sleeper and have issues if I don't get enough. His kids are loud as hell too, and totally unsupervised. Can't take it. Moving. Life is too short and I need more peace than I have living next to this guy. We have owned this house for over a decade and he bought the one next door about a year ago. Oh, I forgot the dumbest thing -- picture this: It is late at night. The whole neighborhood has gone to bed. Loud music, bad music -- like, I don't know, maybe NSync or something -- starts blaring from this neighbor's porch. He and new girlfriend (3 mos post divorce lol) are dancing away on the porch. Like ugly embarrassing Elaine Benes dancing. You can't make this stuff up.

Will be renting out my house. Would love it if the eventual tenant annoys the neighbor. Poetic justice.

Your fault. I'm sick of hearing about people complaining because the house they knew was 2 feet from their house - has noise issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our elderly (and crotchety yet talkative) neighbor had a large (and dying) tree in their backyard, close to the fence line. Branches would hang over our property, often dropping branches or touch our car when under the weight of rain, so we would trim what hung over our property only. She would always have an absolute fit when we would do this, would tell us we were killing her tree, and she loved that tree.

One year she started paying a professional annually to trim (and trim and trim) the whole tree. And not to be kind, but because we were “probably killing her tree”.

One day she came out to tell me it was going to be cut down, to let me know they may have to access our driveway to trim and clean up. Then she went on to tell me she was sad, explaining me she had pushed her children, and then her grandchildren, in a swing hung from the lowest branch. They had played under its shade. The tree was full of memories. She loved that tree.

They came and cut down the tree and cleaned up well, but oddly enough, left a perfect circular “slice” of the tree propped up on our side of the fence. My husband took a little sander to it and cleaned it up so it was smooth, and I brought it over to her, telling her I thought maybe she’d like to keep the slice of tree, since it held so many memories.

“I don’t want that! I hated that damn tree!”

Winner!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted about it at the time. Crazy, volatile, psychotic back neighbor. Our houses back up to each other and we have a pool that’s enclosed by a screen. Outside that screen for five feet is a row of bushes, on our property (you can’t have a screen enclosure closer than that.) Back house goes up for sale and real estate agent mulches our back bushes to match the mulch in the other house. I called and asked what the what, don’t do that, it gives the impression their property line goes all the way to the screen. She apologized and then these psychotic people moved in. This row of bushes (which gives us privacy) became his hill to die on. But if you dropped a blade of grass, or placed one foot over his property line he would literally lose it. Our landscaping company was doing annual spray treatment and he came out with a knife threatening him. He’s threatened to shoot us. It’s surreal.

So many unhinged people out there! About a decade ago, a friend’s FIL was shot and killed by his neighbor over a property dispute. Something like the neighbor was angry at the man for crossing the property line while mowing his lawn (the neighbor was mistaken).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine tried to get my historic chestnut tree chopped down because they were convinced of had termites. It didn't, but I had to spend $2500 for an arborist to certify it.

Their brat child throws his ball into our fenced backyard and helps himself to retrieve it, constantly letting our dog out because he doesn't close the gate. The dog could get hit by a car, and it's just a hassle to canvas the neighborhood searching for him

Put a lock on the gate, it's cheap and immediate. The kid will climb the fence, but at least he won't let the dog out.. After that, pursue whatever remedy you like with his parents.

Kid climbs fence, falls, breaks his arm. His parents sue. Ask me how i know

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine tried to get my historic chestnut tree chopped down because they were convinced of had termites. It didn't, but I had to spend $2500 for an arborist to certify it.

Their brat child throws his ball into our fenced backyard and helps himself to retrieve it, constantly letting our dog out because he doesn't close the gate. The dog could get hit by a car, and it's just a hassle to canvas the neighborhood searching for him

Put a lock on the gate, it's cheap and immediate. The kid will climb the fence, but at least he won't let the dog out.. After that, pursue whatever remedy you like with his parents.

Kid climbs fence, falls, breaks his arm. His parents sue. Ask me how i know

Did you actually lose?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine tried to get my historic chestnut tree chopped down because they were convinced of had termites. It didn't, but I had to spend $2500 for an arborist to certify it.

Their brat child throws his ball into our fenced backyard and helps himself to retrieve it, constantly letting our dog out because he doesn't close the gate. The dog could get hit by a car, and it's just a hassle to canvas the neighborhood searching for him

Put a lock on the gate, it's cheap and immediate. The kid will climb the fence, but at least he won't let the dog out.. After that, pursue whatever remedy you like with his parents.

Kid climbs fence, falls, breaks his arm. His parents sue. Ask me how i know

Did you actually lose?

No but i still spent a lot of time and attorney's fees that i will never get back

[Anonymous]

Remember the liberal / progressive conspiracy-theorist neighbor in Arlington?

His house exploded, taking the neighbors house with it (its a miracle no one was killed).

Don’t ignore crazy liberal neighbors; they can be dangerous.

[Anonymous]

Even famous/powerful people are not immune from unhinged and violent neighbors:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/prosecutors-reveal-why-rand-paul-was-attacked-neighbor-n839366

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Remember the liberal / progressive conspiracy-theorist neighbor in Arlington?

His house exploded, taking the neighbors house with it (its a miracle no one was killed).

Don’t ignore crazy liberal neighbors; they can be dangerous.

He was not liberal/ progressive, he was schizophrenic and delusional.

[Anonymous]

One time our next door neighbor decided to attack a hornets nest in a bush with a shovel. I'm serious.
We watched in amazement and horror as he got stung multiple times. My wife graciously went over later to see if he was ok and offered him a can of wasp spray.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Remember the liberal / progressive conspiracy-theorist neighbor in Arlington?

His house exploded, taking the neighbors house with it (its a miracle no one was killed).

Don’t ignore crazy liberal neighbors; they can be dangerous.

He was not liberal/ progressive, he was schizophrenic and delusional.

He was a leftist / progressive:

https://dallasexpress.com/national/meet-the-reported-owner-of-the-exploded-house/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We lived in a small townhome community in VA, with one crazy guy. We decided to replace our original windows (which were horrible) and found that the wood around the windows was rotted (most of the homes were brick, just the area around the front windows had wood). My H was on the HOA board so we talked to them and replaced the wood with siding in an approved color by the board. We had emails to prove approval and color was extremely close but not exact.

Well, the crazy guy threw a fit. The "color change" affected the whole neighborhood. He decided that he was going sue us and the HOA board over this change. So...he was going to pay for his OWN lawyers, and also (through HOA payments) pay for the HOA lawyers as well. It was ridiculous. Everyone else was like, your house looks so much better.

Eventually he dropped it. But he had his "those people are trying to take over" moments (directed at our lovely, sweet Middle Eastern neighbors). Our president at one point was an awesome Jewish guy with an Asian wife...they eventually sold and left due to this guy. I can't say it wasn't a factor when we sold, since my H isn't white.

The funny thing is after we left, he complained to the county about the mailboxes in an open space that would occasionally flood. Fix it! he said. WELL. The mailboxes didn't have a permit to be where they were so the county moved them to a much less inconvenient spot outside the community. Thanks, crazy guy! Sometimes these kind of people create MORE problems than less.

x

We have a neighbor like this. Moved in two years ago and all they do is complain about everything all the time. They take they approach of "well this should have been fixed years ago before we even moved here" which is baffling because if they thought the community had so many issues, why did they move here? Anyway, a lot of the problem is that they don't understand the context of anything and when people try to explain it, they get angry and defensive and accuse people of ganging up on them. Like they threw this big fit about a metal gate in a community area that has peeling paint and were demanding it be repainted immediately. People explained to them several times that the gate will be removed this summer as part of a larger improvement project that has been budgeted and planned. They think this is stupid and that this [decorative, non-functional] gate needs to be repainted immediately before being scrapped in two months. They have been roundly overruled but will not accept it. There are many examples similar to this, where they think they are making demands to "improve" the neighborhood but because they haven't been here very long, they don't understand there are good reasons why certain low priority improvements might be skipped. They also don't seem to understand that if we were to do everything they demand, everyone would have to pay like double our current HOA fee, which no one wants, including them. They voted against a very modest increase in HOA fees last year! While also demanding a laundry list of expensive upgrades including hiring a full time landscaper (!!) for the summer months to keep the grass on community property perfectly trimmed at all times.

They also have this idea that because they paid more for their home than most of the rest of us (due to having bought in 2021 whereas most people have been here for anywhere from 8 to 25 years), they are more entitled to make demands. Again, people have explicitly told them that the premium they paid on their home all went to the previous owner -- it's not like the community takes a cut. And I paid twice for my home in 2014 than my neighbor who bought in 2001, and it's never occurred to me that this means I'm more important than she is? It's just a weird, entitled attitude, but they don't let logic or basic human decency get in their way.

At this point I think many of us are hoping they just get so frustrated and mad they move, but it also feels just as likely they will escalate. They've screamed at neighbors and send a multitude of lengthy screeds to the HOA via email. Alternately refused to come to HOA meetings (fine, it's easier without them), tried to send a proxy without following proxy rules, and shown up to meetings and then disrupted boring, necessary business with their rants.

Until this, the idea of the crazy, miserable neighbor was a construct to me, something that gets exaggerate for drama in a TV show or something. I didn't realize how insane people could be in real life. These are just otherwise normal white collar professionals with normal jobs and backgrounds. I remember meeting them after they moved in and thinking they seemed nice and reasonable. I had no idea. I think the husband may have had some kind of psychotic break. Or potentially a personality disorder that he was able to conceal for the first few months they lived here.

I tell my kids to stay away from their house and we avoid making eye contact if we see them out and about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine tried to get my historic chestnut tree chopped down because they were convinced of had termites. It didn't, but I had to spend $2500 for an arborist to certify it.

Their brat child throws his ball into our fenced backyard and helps himself to retrieve it, constantly letting our dog out because he doesn't close the gate. The dog could get hit by a car, and it's just a hassle to canvas the neighborhood searching for him

Put a lock on the gate, it's cheap and immediate. The kid will climb the fence, but at least he won't let the dog out.. After that, pursue whatever remedy you like with his parents.

Kid climbs fence, falls, breaks his arm. His parents sue. Ask me how i know

Did you actually lose?

No but i still spent a lot of time and attorney's fees that i will never get back

Seriously? I hope that homeowners’ insurance helped with at least some of this

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted about it at the time. Crazy, volatile, psychotic back neighbor. Our houses back up to each other and we have a pool that’s enclosed by a screen. Outside that screen for five feet is a row of bushes, on our property (you can’t have a screen enclosure closer than that.) Back house goes up for sale and real estate agent mulches our back bushes to match the mulch in the other house. I called and asked what the what, don’t do that, it gives the impression their property line goes all the way to the screen. She apologized and then these psychotic people moved in. This row of bushes (which gives us privacy) became his hill to die on. But if you dropped a blade of grass, or placed one foot over his property line he would literally lose it. Our landscaping company was doing annual spray treatment and he came out with a knife threatening him. He’s threatened to shoot us. It’s surreal.

I think I know this neighborhood and this guy. One of my friends moved from someone who meets this description and thinks of himself as a "pillar of the community". It is amazing that you still live there, though I suppose you can't let the terrorists win, so good on you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted about it at the time. Crazy, volatile, psychotic back neighbor. Our houses back up to each other and we have a pool that’s enclosed by a screen. Outside that screen for five feet is a row of bushes, on our property (you can’t have a screen enclosure closer than that.) Back house goes up for sale and real estate agent mulches our back bushes to match the mulch in the other house. I called and asked what the what, don’t do that, it gives the impression their property line goes all the way to the screen. She apologized and then these psychotic people moved in. This row of bushes (which gives us privacy) became his hill to die on. But if you dropped a blade of grass, or placed one foot over his property line he would literally lose it. Our landscaping company was doing annual spray treatment and he came out with a knife threatening him. He’s threatened to shoot us. It’s surreal.

I think I know this neighborhood and this guy. One of my friends moved from someone who meets this description and thinks of himself as a "pillar of the community". It is amazing that you still live there, though I suppose you can't let the terrorists win, so good on you.

I don’t live in the DMV anymore so it’s not me, scary to think there are two of them!!
Not related to the dispute but we wound up ripping out the bushes to put ones that are denser in. Left it empty for a while and watched him freak out over “his” lack of privacy. That was fun.