People who move into nice neighborhoods and don’t care for the house

[Anonymous]

People in their 30s don't know how to care for homes. Their parents never cared for their homes, they hired it out. People in their 30s bought more than they could afford and now can't afford to hire the help they need to maintain their house and aren't willing to learn how to do it themselves. So the house falls into disrepair and looks like shit. I've seen it happen to several in our very large neighborhood, and the original owners are starting to get a little more picky about who they're selling to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In our neighborhood the home was an investment property, when the HOA tried to contact them they weren't able to locate anyone in the States, just an address Shanghai.

You post in every thread about "investor properties". These are not as much of a thing as you seem to think they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which “cultures” don’t do home maintenance?

I married into an East Asian family and definitely people in the specific culture of my husband’s family of origin do NOT do home maintenance. It had to do with growing up in very small apartments and usually not having private yards or gardens. He has tried to catch up but it’s not intuitive for him. He has gotten better about seeing what needs to be done. When people who moved in the last 50 years from his parents’ country sell a house or buy a house in our neighborhood, it’s really obvious and he’ll be like, it’s my people!

[Anonymous]

The shabby houses in our neighborhood are:

-student rentals
-former international expat and tech employee who divorced and repatriated and definitely resents no longer living in his fancy European city and having to deal with a yard. His strategy is to do everything for an entire weekend every 3 months or so. He has trees in his yard that are 20’ high that started from seeds and are technically weeds.
-weird developer guy who keeps buying more properties for his nieces, nephews, etc but never does upkeep

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They might be Asians.
My Asian mother moved into a nice neighborhood and has been ruining it for her neighbors. Asians don't have a history of a big lawn on their property and didn't ache to imitate the English estates via the big lawn. Look at any Asian home with the laundry strung out on the balcony and AC condenser perched wherever is most convenient. All sorts of knick knacks will be set out on the stoop to dry. My mother sometimes hung salted fish in the backyard.
My real estate agent Asian uncle looked at her house and side whispered to me that he could tell by appearances if a Chinese person owned the property.

I posted about my DH but missed this comment. This is totally my DH’s family and I love them but also would never want to be their neighbors. They’ll use junk mail and masking tape to make indoor repairs. They would move or hope for a natural disaster to trigger an insurance-funded replacement before they had to install a new roof or paint a house. When we lived in another state, we got multiple citations at our own house from the city while I was briefly working abroad because DH kept procrastinating mowing.

We are in southern CA and our neighborhood includes some questionable renovations. DH calls the aesthetic “closeout sale at the Asian building supply place”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s a suddenly single mom, or someone unexpectedly disabled, or suddenly in a difficult pregnancy. Life happens. It happened to me. Instead of being jerks, my neighbors offered to help. Try that!

I don’t keep up mine like I used to. Bad health issues.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:No time! I commute and work long hours to afford this house. I barely have energy to sleep let along caring for a house.

This is the part that I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it be better to sell the large house that is holding you prisoner and buy something smaller closer to your office? You are in a race to nowhere.

Exactly. And if you can afford a large expensive house, you can better afford a medium sized less expensive house that you can afford lawn care and maintenance for. Money and laziness are no excuse.

No worries, I am not doing law care in a small house either. It’s a waste of brain cells. No one is getting out of a historical low mortgage rate to please their average wit neighbors who have no hobbies other than criticizing some grass 😬

So a fancy way of admitting your laziness.

I can't speak for the PP, but the idea that you're lazy if you don't keep your lawn immaculate is dumb. You don't know what's going on in their life. If they've got some kids, a dying parent, a full time job, and sit on the board of several organizations, that's not lazy. Something's got to give, and lawn maintenance is easily the least important of these. Stay mad.

I’m not one of the PP’s who is mad or thinks it affects neighborhood home values. I just find it fascinating from a behavioral perspective. If that happened to me I would downsize/move to something low maintenance.

But my lawn service is $80/month, plus twice a year yard cleanups at $500 each. It’s just not that expensive at all. Under $2k a year. People who are down to their last $2k are too financially stretched to live in a big expensive house. It doesn’t “make me mad” - it’s just really bad financial decision making.

Wow! This is discount pricing! Here it’s $3000 for spring clean up and every single mow is $80- and they show up to mow at least once a week

[Anonymous]

You can call the county or hoa to enforce . Don't let them free load

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I live in a neighborhood where homes go for 2-5M. Our yard is a glorious mess: as in, my husband and I coddle our handpicked prize roses, jasmine, mock-orange, lilac, Japanese maples, etc, but leave empty plant containers and potting soil bags lying around. Debris come from the busy street into our front yard and we don't immediately pick them up. And my husband, responsible for cutting grass, lets it go to seed at least once per growing season. We don't rake diligently and when we do, we use leaf debris for mulch, as nature intended - no buying mulch ever.

The driveway is damaged because lots of people are surprised by the one-way sign and turn around in our driveway - I am not fixing that, it's going to get damaged all over again.

People probably excuse us because we have the smallest house in the neighborhood, and they think we're poor. Not at all! We'd the same on a large property with a large house. We love plants but we don't care about your ridiculous standards for lawn and whatnot.

So gripe away, OP! You make me laugh.

This is not the flex you think it is, I hate people like you, single handedly bringing down property values.

That doesn't bring down property values. But a recession certainly will! Sorry to hear it sounds like you put your eggs all in one basket *smiles*

Spouse and I put an offer in on a house in Va and walked away when we went got the HOA docs and saw they had no teeth. We noticed on visits to the neighborhood that houses had damage to garage doors etc that went unrepaired. We got the hoa docs and even went to an HOA meeting and dropped our offer after that.

God, I can’t imagine being so petty.

I actually enjoy taking care of my yard and working on the garden, but I would hate an HOA. I really don't understand this mindset either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s a suddenly single mom, or someone unexpectedly disabled, or suddenly in a difficult pregnancy. Life happens. It happened to me. Instead of being jerks, my neighbors offered to help. Try that!

I don’t keep up mine like I used to. Bad health issues.

So why don’t you downsize to a condo. Clearly the giant house is way too much for you. Bet you aren’t doing proper interior maintenance either. It’s not just lack of renovating which is fine - stuff has to be done regularly to maintain the property and you have to either do it yourself or hire it out, it’s called home ownership.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No time! I commute and work long hours to afford this house. I barely have energy to sleep let along caring for a house.

This is the part that I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it be better to sell the large house that is holding you prisoner and buy something smaller closer to your office? You are in a race to nowhere.

Exactly. And if you can afford a large expensive house, you can better afford a medium sized less expensive house that you can afford lawn care and maintenance for. Money and laziness are no excuse.

And we have to admit, we have all benefitted from the immigrants who do all the lawn maintenance. The costs to hire a crew to mow and do edging etc is so cheap it's ridiculous.

It’s cheap if you already have very well designed landscaping and no complications like terrain, heavily wooded area, water runoff from other’s properties carrying all sorts of seeds your way that you have to keep fighting and fighting. It’s not cheap when you have to redo things. Especially if it’s not just landscaping but hardscaping and when you have conditions you cannot control, like stuff being brought in by rain. Sorry, Japanese still grass we never planted is here to stay forever. Not a damn thing I can do about it, and I don’t have 10s of thousands laying around to fix this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s a suddenly single mom, or someone unexpectedly disabled, or suddenly in a difficult pregnancy. Life happens. It happened to me. Instead of being jerks, my neighbors offered to help. Try that!

I don’t keep up mine like I used to. Bad health issues.

So why don’t you downsize to a condo. Clearly the giant house is way too much for you. Bet you aren’t doing proper interior maintenance either. It’s not just lack of renovating which is fine - stuff has to be done regularly to maintain the property and you have to either do it yourself or hire it out, it’s called home ownership.

Why don’t you stop giving stupid advice to people? Condo life isn’t for everyone, and sometimes it’s cheaper and easier to live in your home. People can’t often afford to move. Guess what? If you care about living in an area with strict standards that’s what HOA is for. If you moved to an area without HOA then it’s a part of life that you may have to deal with seeing things on other’s lawns you don’t like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They might be Asians.
My Asian mother moved into a nice neighborhood and has been ruining it for her neighbors. Asians don't have a history of a big lawn on their property and didn't ache to imitate the English estates via the big lawn. Look at any Asian home with the laundry strung out on the balcony and AC condenser perched wherever is most convenient. All sorts of knick knacks will be set out on the stoop to dry. My mother sometimes hung salted fish in the backyard.
My real estate agent Asian uncle looked at her house and side whispered to me that he could tell by appearances if a Chinese person owned the property.

I posted about my DH but missed this comment. This is totally my DH’s family and I love them but also would never want to be their neighbors. They’ll use junk mail and masking tape to make indoor repairs. They would move or hope for a natural disaster to trigger an insurance-funded replacement before they had to install a new roof or paint a house. When we lived in another state, we got multiple citations at our own house from the city while I was briefly working abroad because DH kept procrastinating mowing.

We are in southern CA and our neighborhood includes some questionable renovations. DH calls the aesthetic “closeout sale at the Asian building supply place”.

I hate this but this was my recent "from that country" neighbor who just sold her house after half-assing every repair over a decade. There were never any upgrades that doesn't need to be said.

Before she sold, she literally hired a handy man to cut out pieces of structural sheathing all over the house exterior and simply patch it with plywood and caulk... CAULK, and then cover it up. Then she claimed with insurance hail damage to replace a roof yet nobody else on the street had any damage. Her roof was just old. I could go on and on. She made good income.

[Anonymous]

There are many uncounted reasons for this, OP. Do you really need to understand their reasons, do you really care? What are you going to do about this? If you find out they are disabled or depressed are you going to go over there and land them a helping hand? If they are too broke to fix it will you lend them money? Why do you need to know the reason other than unleashing a can of worms for people to fight one another?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our neighborhood the home was an investment property, when the HOA tried to contact them they weren't able to locate anyone in the States, just an address Shanghai.

You post in every thread about "investor properties". These are not as much of a thing as you seem to think they are.

NP. Seriously? They are very much a thing.