skip to main content
Photos
Photos
Advice
Stories From Houzz
Houzz Discussions
Houzz Research
Sign In
Houzz Logo Print
Explore Discussions
Design Dilemma
tommyflan

Tell us your best or worst neighbour stories!

Tom Flanagan
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
Neighbours are so important when it comes to choosing and living in a home, whether we'd like to admit it or not. We've asked you about your neighbour no-no's but now we want to hear about your best or worst neighbour stories!

Has a neighbour ever done something to make you smile? Or have you got a tale of the worst kind of neighbour behaviour! Leave us a comment below (we won't tell the neighbours)!
St Marys Grove · More Info
Featured Answer
  • Kate Burt
    8 years ago
    My eccentric former neighbour Oskar, who sadly died last year, could be a nightmare: among other things, he hoarded old vans and filled up all the parking spaces in the mews where we live in with untaxed, rusting heaps he couldn't bear to part with. But he was also incredibly kind: one day I was off work with awful flu and he saw me shuffling towards the shops wearing lots of jumpers. When he discovered I was ill and home alone, he insisted I go back home and went off and did my shopping for me. True neighbourliness.

    Comments (34)

    • mrsmcee74
      8 years ago
      Neighbours who had huge arguments all the time and then obscenely loud make up sex. After that experience we bought a detached house!

    • Related Discussions

      Houzz Book Club: Your best book recommendations

      Q

      Comments (34)
      Immediate standouts are 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini. 'Sister' and 'Afterwards' by Rosamind Lupton are unputdownable and I have her third preordered since April, 'The Quality of Silence'. Have enjoyed all Gillian Flynn's to date though 'Sharp Objects' was a tough read. I loved 'The Book Thief' by Markus Zusak. Don't judge if you've only seen the movie, it doesn't come close to the book...nothing unusual there though. I'm working my way through 'The Gold Finch' by Donna Tartt at the moment. So far so good.
      ...See More

      Tell us about your worst date!

      Q

      Comments (19)
      This old girl went on a date two years ago , I thought the guy was going to the ' the one' . I'd met him on-line , we got on well . We met for lunch , my treat - but he was awful - he had no teeth, had forgotton his wallet then proceeded to tell me all about his stepdaughters . They were prostitutes , their kids were all in care . Yikes. I wanted away from him so quickly paid our meal said thank you for meeting me then walked him to his car . I shot off in the other direction for home, he'd left me a message saying he wanted a full relationship with me - I deleted contact .
      ...See More

      POLL: Do you like your neighbours?

      Q

      Comments (24)
      Hi. Before 1.5 year ago we had a wonderful neighbours! Was really good friends and we still visiting them and they us. But new owners are nightmare, horrible. They do everything what they wont and no body can help! Build shed along boundaries without asking permission, when we was build fence at boundaries they was demanded fence at 2.5 m high. They smoking meat at weekend day time, knocking at walls in the middle of night, swearing when play games - with open windows, loud music . Just no words! We try to chat with them - but they polish and was just two answers - I do not understand and Its my property I can do what I want! Council was told its both private properties -we cant do nothing! We just wait maybe they decide to move somewhere . But its just one house in community - where bad neighbours-others are friendly and we make bbq together and do children's parties.
      ...See More

      What was your worst decorating disaster?

      Q

      Comments (65)
      My worst decorating disaster - I was painting the hallway and doing the skirting boards in thick gloss paint. My hair was quite long at the time and I had it in a ponytail. I kneeled down to get at an awkward piece of skirting board and yes - my ponytail went straight into the paint pot. I jerked my head up and the ponytail, covered in gloss, swung and slapped me across the face. My son's thought it was hysterical! Several attempts at washing didn't get rid of the paint and I ended up having to have around 6 inches cut off my hair.
      ...See More
    • Clare Ainsworth
      8 years ago
      My family home is in a close (no, not Brookside Close) and every summer we do a close BBQ. Every one brings a dish, pulls out their garden chairs and we all eat in the middle of the road together. Great neighbours can't be bought!
    • alant1000
      8 years ago
      I am so lucky now to have the most wonderful neighbours ever, all similar age to me and we do each other favours and socialise all the time. They are fantastic.

      I used to live in a block of 6 new build flats. Directly below was a really friendly nice guy - but he had the most ridiculous loud parties, genuinely loud enough to rattle the cutlery on my table. People were too scared to say anything as he looked like Vinni Jones. The parties would go on with music full volume until at least 5am.
      Above me in that flat was a 'new dating' couple who were about 55-60. They had a small dog living in the flat who barked 24/7, and had the loudest sex I've ever heard (he was louder than she was!!) it was not pleasant, even if it did only last about 2 seconds. Finally opposite me was an alcoholic who was retired and stank of drink, he would get into his car everyday smelling of drink, we were not sure whether to tell the police. She he parked next to my car I was terrified that he'd smash into it. So glad to be out of that block of flats!!
    • PRO
      Landscape Design by James Brunton-Smith Limited
      8 years ago

      Designing gardens all over our wonderful land we encounter all sorts of neighbours 'good' and 'bad', I cant help remembering the unexpected naked photoshoot taking place in one London suburban street that certainly took me by surprise................

    • Helen C
      8 years ago
      We've had neighbours from hell for the past 3 years and thankfully we are moving in a couple of months- to a detached. Heavenly, can't wait for the peace and quiet!
    • tiredoldwoman
      8 years ago

      I suffered a horrible neighbour for years , she let her kids wreck my garden daily when I was out . They bounced in my hedge,smashed my fence and solar lights , threw their litter , toys and even dirty nappies into my garden .I was shocked into being a prisoner in my own house - I don't know how it all happened as we always chatted amicably - I seemed to ignore the problem and so did she ! I sent her a note asking her to retrieve all the toys as the landlord was inspecting the houses , her mother did it . The girl bullied her mother, too !

      It made me ill and I was about to leave but she was allocated a larger house and I got lovely new neighbours with delightful kids .

    • apismalifica
      8 years ago

      I have a flat in a 6 floor early Victorian house - it's a really beautiful place. Problem is that the roof needs mending and the top three flats, including mine, have for the last 2 years been badly affected by damp, and in heavy rain we have to put out buckets. The repair work is being held back because the person in the basement flat wants to avoid paying their share and has done everything possible to hold it all up. A few years ago we all paid out thousands of pounds towards repairs in the basement, with no hesitation as we were concerned for this persons wellbeing, so this does not feel like neighbourly behaviour. This person is not financially strapped, just wants to avoid paying towards something that will not benefit them directly (although it will soon enough as the problem is travelling down the building and will just get more and more expensive to fix as time goes on). Now the 5 other owners are having to go through lengthy legal processes to get repairs done. I have previously only ever owned houses, and immediately fixed problems like this. It's my first flat and I'm still waiting for it to be dry enough to decorate and buy carpets after 3 years! Good news is that the work will go ahead this Summer :) and I have got to make some good friends in the bulding along the way.

    • Luciana
      8 years ago
      last modified: 8 years ago

      I am lucky to live in a lovely, friendly neighbourhood - everyone on my street is wonderful. We somehow ended up with holding keys for 3 of the neighbouring houses (one because the mum and her 3 girls always misplace theirs; next door's because they tend to lock themselves out weekly and across the road to feed their cat whenever they work late).

      That being said, I thought murderous thoughts about my next-door neighbour few months ago. Her dryer broke, she couldn't get one delivered soon enough and asked me a couple of times if I could dry her stuff (fair enough, it was only her girls school uniforms and their socks&knickers). Of course I can, I said, I wasn't personally going to blow hot air on the clothes to dry them.

      My problem was when unloading the dryer. I mean, what is the code of conduct when returning one's children's dried knickers: do I knock her door and say: hey, the dryer's finished, come get your clothes? or do I take them out and then --do I have to fold them? or can I get away with just piling them in the basket? Would she'd think I'm a weirdo if I fold her girls' underwear, or a lazy slacker if I just pile them up... You see, murder would be justified when one is confronted with this sort of thoughts.

      In the end I just piled the socks&knickers and folded the school shirts - I thought that would be a good compromise. I mean, she and her husband are both MDs; I don't want to (god forbids!) need CPR one day and for them to hesitate thinking "not sure she's worth saving, her folding skills are just so bad she shouldn't be allowed to live". Other than that (and if nobody brings up parking) we have great neighbours!

    • PRO
      JML Garden Rooms
      8 years ago

      When we moved into a house, we spent all day with the removals team everywhere. Humphfing boxes. Our neighbour popped in, just as the crew left, with fish suppers for all, plastic cups and a bottle of verve cliquot. We have been the best of friends ever since!

      Tom Flanagan thanked JML Garden Rooms
    • peediewee
      8 years ago

      we have fantastic neighbours & know them very well even though we just moved in at the end of august last year. we socialise with a few & spend time chatting to the rest. the first day we moved in the lady in the house opposite brought homemade scones over with butter & jam. lovely. most people say hello to you just walking along the street. it's a very friendly neighbourhood. :o)

    • metsina
      8 years ago

      Hi

      This is a bit of a warning to be fair.

      Purchased a bungalow to really modernise perfect!

      Not so

      Between buying and moving in but after several viewings neighbours built another boundary fence ( now he has two )

      One clearly over the boundary

      Main problem

      really limits access down side of detached property


      Predessors never declared any issues on property info

      Neighbour I asked before completion further up had no knowledge of any issues but after speaking to a cross section of neighbourhood similiar thing had been happening for years boundary has been changed moved/adjusted many times.

      Major parking issues

      The list goes on and on

      Please if lesson to be learnt don't believe property info forms ask numerous people not just one do your research and don't let your heart rule your head.

      Land registry

      Surveyors

      Deeds

      Os

      All not clear enough as he has changed things when he feels like it so loads of confusion so back up is not good people

    • Kim
      8 years ago
      For the past 3 months, we had drug dealers for neighbours. They were recently busted & evicted. Feel safe now, once again. Hopefully we get some nice new ones!

      The neighbours on the other side of our house are awesome! We frequently talk to them and they are kind enough to let us borrow a few tools that we don't have yet, for Reno's.
    • truronian
      8 years ago

      I have a lovely next door neighbour. On the day we moved in, she came round to introduce herself and I apologised for the fact that I couldn't offer her a cup of tea because the removal van hadn't yet arrived and the house was completely empty. She disappeared for a few minutes and reappeared with her husband and a tray with four glasses of wine plus nibbles ( which we drank standing up).

    • purplelore15
      8 years ago
      One side are fine- never really see not hear them. The other side, they have the loudest sex I've ever heard at really irritating times- like 3.30am on a school night!!!
    • Debbie Byard
      8 years ago
      For two years I had the neighbour from hell. He was forever banging and drilling from 7am till late weekends weekdays evening 7am in Boxing Day.

      They were rude had a really ugly and dirty camper van, pickup truck and car clogging up the communal car park.

      They have moved and my new neighbours are a delight although they had major problems with them. After they completed on the house the old neighbours refused to move out so over Christmas the new neighbours had to move in with their parents and store their furniture whilst seeking legal proceedings to have them removed.

      They have since gone and I was discussing the problems I had and he said that the wall in the kitchen that is on the wall joking my house has all these random holes in which were covered by wallpaper which we now think he did just to annoy me.

      Thankfully they've gone but I pity their new neighbours.

      They also left loads of rubbish in the car park which we've had to clear.
    • Tom Flanagan
      Original Author
      8 years ago

      Hearing all these stories I count myself very lucky!

      Keep them coming guys!

    • smuze
      8 years ago
      We once had dreadful people move in next door ... although in a town centre terrace, with a pocket handkerchief sized garden, they kept goats, sheep and ex batt hens (in a tea chest believe it or not) not as pets as I first thought, but all to eat ... and a series of psychotic dogs. The only nice dog they had was a GSD, but they got rid as it grew too big. (Well, they are a well known lapdog breed, aren't they?) Their kids threw all sorts over the fence and used shockingly foul language. Mum's excuse? "Oh, we didn't get on with our last neighbours, so they got used to doing it!" Five years of hell, I could write a book. No way we could have moved whilst they were there, I couldn't have lived with myself! Luckily, the marriage broke up and off they went. The new owner was a farmers daughter .... I told her about the livestock and her visiting Mum said, "I knew it! I can smell sheep in the bathroom!"

      Where we are now is lovely ... People largely keep themselves to themselves, but are ready to lend a hand if needed. Boundary issues and noise seem to be common problems tho ... the old saying about good fences rings true.
    • vurquhart
      8 years ago
      We had 11 adults move into the house next to us. The house was four bedrooms with two bathrooms. The cars, smoking, drinking, rubbish and noise was terrible. We were fortunate that the landlord evicted them as soon as it became apparent that it was being rented as a house of multiple occupancies. But it was a truly unpleasant experience.
    • milfordmaid
      8 years ago

      @luciana - overthinking the issue. Simple way out - how would you have expected your laundry returned if you had borrowed their dryer? Did they load your dryer? If so, they can fish laundry out again. If you loaded it, then they trusted you wish kids (dirty) underwear - then trust you to handle clean underwear.

    • milfordmaid
      8 years ago

      @smuze Good fences make good neighbours. Live in a field, small cluster of houses around. Get on well enough. Not in each other's pockets but always dependable. Lived in a housing estate when older kids were small. Enjoyed it whilst I was there, but was more than ready to move by the time we did. Had some of the best neighbours you could wish for + I missed them terribly. Also had some of the most horrendous neighbours - the type you read about in the red-tops!! And we had to live amongst them!! Still their weekend antics gave us plenty of gossip for the following , Mon, Tues + Weds !!

    • Average Jo
      8 years ago

      Oh dear. Mostly fine but they did announce a few years ago that they would be extending their house 3 inches into my garden. It was a very odd series of conversations, to be frank. But we all got through it in the end... and their house stayed in their garden.

    • PRO
      Ayegardening Ltd
      8 years ago

      When we first moved in our house the fence had a weird boundary line that was half way between our window. We could see our neighbour's garden and ours from the same window! So we put it right back to where it should have been.

      One Saturday we came back to find our neighbour cutting our window sill and moving the fence back to us by 1 inch!!!!

    • Lynn Robbo
      8 years ago
      My neighbours are awful dogs mess in the garden stinks in the summer I open the the doors in the dining room to smell dog poo
    • Juliet Docherty
      8 years ago

      Oh where to begin....we moved into a nice Victorian house and discovered our eccentric lady neighbour in our garden with her dogs. She was allowing them to do their business. When we asked her why this was she looked at us strangely and said that there was no fence at the end and it backed onto a field. When our kitchen fitters turned up her son came round and kindly threatened to pan their heads in with a crowbar. 'I don't know, you people coming here from Brighton with your trendy ideas, making your house all nice...disgusting'. We moved.


    • smuze
      8 years ago
      Gosh! That's a bit of a facer. We've just had some landscaping done and our elderly lady neighbour allowed us access for the paving and earth moving equipment thru her garden. In return, part of the work, we have had the fence between the gardens replaced and extended, plus the adjacent gravel paths in her garden re gravelled. OK, it's not cheap, but worth every penny. to maintain good relations. A win-win.
    • Juliet Docherty
      8 years ago

      Ah yes. We moved and got lovely neighbours and made a killing on the house so no worries. They were 'we've lived here all our lives' types.

    • Diane J
      8 years ago
      I'm a single mum & lived in a large Edwardian terrace next to a very snobby family who clearly thought I was bringing down the tone of "the Grove" and irritated that I could afford to! One hot sunny day my son & their daughter were playing & I gave them both an ice lolly; the daughter was delighted, not so her mother who screamed "you know *we* don't eat food like that!! We might have an ice cream after a hike but *we* don't eat cheap, nasty food that has no nutritional value!". Oh the fun me & my sister had after that, talking loudly outside about food when we knew they were in the garden "shall we have a *locally grown* salad with our hand reared beef steak, it's very fresh for optimum nutritional value!" So glad I don't live near them anymore.
    • gilliand14
      8 years ago
      Dark Grey on wall! Just love it!
    • Trisha Goodwin
      8 years ago

      The shortest time we lived in a house was 18 months - the neighbour turned out to have serious psychological problems, he took against me within weeks, pushing notes through letterbox saying I was a female she devil and deserved to burn in hell etc, etc. and quoting bible stuff. I had not even seen or spoken to him at that point, just held perfectly normal conversations with his partner. Then it was pounding on our adjoining walls at night, digging up the plumbing pipes behind our houses (he didn't want polluted excrement through the pipes?!) going out to his work leaving the Magic flute playing at full blast (echoes an episode of Morse?) until we had to call the police. The culmination was a throwing bricks at our french windows standing in our garden, apparently attempting to stone me (something biblical again?). We couldn't sell the house to anyone but a landlord who "took it off our hands" at a price below what we paid for it. I felt guilty as he continued to harass various renters afterwards, but eventually they moved out, not before breaking the legs of the last occupant next door. The police were very politically correct throughout and of course I felt immensely sorry for his condition, but have to wonder about care in the community as opposed to the days when people with serious psychiatric problems were locked up for their own good and the good of others. What do people think on that score??

    • gilliand14
      8 years ago
      Apologies posted a pic here by mistake that has nothing to do with the discussion topic... Sorry about that!
    • Trisha Goodwin
      8 years ago

      A nice wall and interesting picture anyway!

    • Pallas
      8 years ago

      The note the previous owners left for us on moving-in day described the neighbour as 'as thick as two short planks and with a short temper', so I guess we should have been warned.

      We got an all-capitals printed 'anonymous' note after our moving-in party bellyaching about 'our kind' ruining the peace and quiet. They spent their time lobbing empty bottles and other rubbish into the overgrown garden of the disused hospital at the bottom of the garden.

      When they moved out about two months later (fist-pump), the people moving in told us they found empty boxes of ammunition and bullet casings in the coal cellar and they subsequently sieved (truly) all the soil in the garden to remove the glass shards.

      I am not making this up.

    • Paul Beattie
      last year

      got neighbours who think iam being nosey looking out of my window, when there being nosey

      looking at me looking out the window ,when i am casually doing my own things in the house,

      since when as looking out of your own home window been a crime....the world dosent revolve

      around them.

    Sponsored
    More Discussions
    Proposed floor plan help please
    52
    roof lantern location
    6
    Advice re updating a tiredbedroom please
    9
    How can I fit an induction hob in place of a range cooker?
    5
    Above garage extension to create primary suite
    18
    United Kingdom
    Tailor my experience with cookies

    Houzz uses cookies and similar technologies to personalise my experience, serve me relevant content, and improve Houzz products and services. By clicking ‘Accept’ I agree to this, as further described in the Houzz Cookie Policy. I can reject non-essential cookies by clicking ‘Manage Preferences’.