47. The Making Of A Legend
This goes back to nearly 45 years ago when I built my first house. The neighbor at the back was immediately angry that I bought two lots directly behind him and would not sell them to him or swap. His antics were beyond deranged. The dude would call the county inspectors and report my "violations" constantly. After we moved in the next spring, I began to regrade my property.
I also did things like plant grass and plant 20 trees, including six 5-feet blue spruce trees towards my property line, which I shared on the west with this neighbor. They were a good 10 feet in from the "agreed"-upon property line that HE was using. I spent two months doing all this, and one Saturday morning my neighbor and his wife were out and measuring their property and such.
I paid no notice until he knocked on my door and handed me what appeared to be a "bank survey" of his property that he had for 15 years. It indicated the location of property lines, his house and garage location, etc. He explained that my trees were on top of the "property line" and I need to move them. I kind of agreed with what he said based on his site survey and I proceeded to move them.
Then I looked closely at the survey. What I saw made me gasp. It also indicated the location of an abandoned alley we both had 1/2 possession of with dimensions off his garage. This clearly indicated not only was he claiming ALL of the alley, but a 20-foot strip along the entire back of my yard. Matter of fact, ALL the neighbors were claiming this and did so for years.
My house was the first one built on my side of the block. What makes this interesting? My neighbor had a huge strawberry bed (over 10 years old) along almost the entire backyard ON MY property. 500+ plants, all prime producers and HIS PRIDE AND JOY. I immediately got my own REAL survey done with steel pins driven and stamped hard copies of the site survey.
His bank survey was basically correct. But this was truly bad news for him. It meant that he and his neighbors really were freely stealing this strip of land across the entire block. 12 households in all. This is a small rural farming town (fewer than 800 people) and in all this dust up, I found out this neighbor is THE TOWN's big enormous jerk.
So I took my survey over to this guy and said, listen, no rush to move your plants (this was July) but you need to get them off my property in the next few months. He tore up the survey and threw it at me. Now it was game on. I worked second shift and commuted 25 miles to work. My wife would go out into our garden, which was a huge one, when she got home at night and do some work in it.
About three or four days later, she is out there and the rear neighbors are disrespecting her for all the trouble "us new people" were causing. She told me the next morning and I went to those neighbors (who all refused to talk) and left them copies of the REAL survey in their doors. A couple of days later I am at work and my wife calls me pretty upset.
The bad neighbor along with two of his neighbors screamed at my wife when she was in the garden in such a bad way that she was driven to tears. I told her I will be home in 45 minutes. I called my brother-in-law (a farmer, less than mile out of town) and explained the situation. He told me he can have his John Deere tractor with his tiller at my house at 6 pm.
I next called the country sheriff’s office to request a deputy to be at my house at 5:30, and then I called our police chief and requested the same. I get home and minutes later, both officers show up. I handed them my survey and walked them to show them the steel pins. I asked them what property are the strawberry plants on? They say clearly on my property.
Then I asked them, it’s my property and I can do whatever, right? They said sure. Now, we have about 20 people mulling around, though not my bad neighbor who ran inside the house. He was not going to face me after how he spoke to my wife. Instead, he sent his wife to the door to order me off his property or he will call the authorities. I said, too late, I already did and you have 15 minutes to relocate as many of your plants as you can.
It was almost exactly 15 minutes later when my brother-in-law showed up, and now it’s getting fun. I showed my brother-in-law where to start tilling. Took him 30 minutes to completely grind up all the strawberry plants. The silence was awesome. The rear neighbors were shocked and I became a legend.
48. What She Does In The Shadows
I put up a doorbell cam yesterday. My neighbor has not slept and I woke up to 45 new motion alerts. One of which was her throwing herself down the stairs. I now figured out what that thumping in the hallway I’ve been hearing is. It has not stopped going off. She also stands in front of our door and stares at our apartment for random intervals of time. Wonder how long she's been doing that!
49. This HOA Was For The Birds
My friend and her husband moved into a gated community. She gardened a lot and loved having a birdbath in her backyard. Her HOA figured out that she had said birdbath in her backyard. Apparently, a birdbath was considered a lawn ornament, which was forbidden. She told them she would remove it. A week later, she got another message saying that it hadn’t been removed—it wasn't.
She and her husband put two and two together and figured out that the HOA was snooping in her backyard. So she decided to set a trap to catch them. For a week, she spent her time outside sunbathing in the buff. Sure enough, an HOA member opened the gate to their backyard and saw her without any clothes. She called the authorities for privacy breaches. The HOA gave up and let her have a birdbath.
50. Not Quite Black Or White
I had just moved into my house a few months prior when I got a letter. I was threatened to be fined $200, stating that my mailbox wasn’t black. I thought surely they had the wrong house because my mailbox was, in fact, black. So, I contacted the HOA, and they gave me the runaround, arguing that it wasn’t. I told them to come and look.
Of course, they said it was on me to prove to them it was black. So, I snapped a photo and emailed it to them. I heard nothing back for well over a month, then got another letter giving me a “courtesy” week extension before I would be fined. At that point, I was livid. I contacted the HOA again, asking for an explanation of what the problem was.
I was finally told that my “neighbors” felt my mailbox was rather worn and needed to be painted or replaced. It wasn’t black enough for them. So I painted it. A few months later, I learned that the HOA would replace the mailbox. I called them to ask why they threatened to fine me when they were the ones who should replace it if it was not up to standard. They stated it was because they had no open work orders for my mailbox and that it was my responsibility to notify them if it needed maintenance, not theirs.
52. Ride On!
My parents lived in a neighborhood with several local physicians. One had around six kids, and the youngest had profound autism and was non-verbal. He was about five or six at the time and loved riding his little tricycle in their driveway, which was pretty large. He would do it for hours. His mom stayed home with him for the most part, and she and her husband became concerned that he would drive into the road if they happened to look away.
So, they got some orange construction netting that they would just put across the end of the driveway while he was out there and would take it down when they went back inside. I always thought that it was a good idea to keep him safe. Several of the families in the neighborhood were not pleased with this and said it was an "eyesore," so a meeting was called. Then things went off the rails.
It turned into an onslaught on how they were taking care of their son and how it made the neighborhood look "ignorant" to have that netting up. Needless to say, no one offered any other options, and this family was so irate that they packed up and moved within a month. They moved out to the country somewhere, where the son could ride his bike for hours on end.
53. They Tried To Rock The Boat
When we moved in, someone stopped by to say hi, but more like to tell us our boat couldn’t be parked on our lot. My wife told her well, we read all of the rules, and it didn’t say that. She replied, “Well, I wrote the rules, so I should know.” My wife told her to go read them again. We didn’t hear anything for months. I thought it was over, but I was so wrong. When we got our annual dues packet, there was a newsletter saying our lot was in breach and that we had stated plans to modify our garage to fit the boat, which we never said.
They suggested setting a deadline for us and setting a vote to add boats to the list they already had, which included campers, fifth wheels, motor homes, and travel trailers. We bought the house, intending to build a detached garage. However, to comply with the design rules, it would cost us $90K. My neighbor had been there longer than we were, and they had a boat in their driveway as well.
54. Some People ARE Out To Get You
Back when I was 18, I was helping my cousin, who is white, and his newlywed wife, who is Black, move into their new home that has an HOA. I was carrying boxes into the house and I was covered in sweat. As I was enjoying some rest with a bottle of water, one of the HOA members came up to me to introduce himself. We exchanged pleasantries and then he asked, "How long have you and your husband been married?"
I told him to please wait and brought in the actual married couple to meet the HOA member. They came out and the man's face dropped. He then faked a phone call from the HOA and left. We didn't know anything was wrong at the time. Not even a week after they moved in, I get a call on my cell phone from my cousin. He said that officers were raiding his house for possible substances.
I know my cousin. He has the record of a boy scout. Every time he gets a prescription for pain medication, he either shreds the note or dumps the unused pills in the toilet due to fear of addiction. The officers found nothing and left, though they did apologize. The very next day, his wife was stopped by officers in her own driveway. They said that she was suspected of selling her body!
This, even though she was wearing a pantsuit from her job as a cardiologist. They called her hospital to confirm her whereabouts and she was let go. They came back the day after that, after someone claimed that his wife was breaking into their own home. How can someone break into their home through the front door and with their OWN keys?
After a month, the HOA came up to them claiming that they are a nuisance and attempted to put a lien on the house for so many calls to the authorities. Luckily, my cousin's brother is a lawyer and fought against the lien in court. At court, the HOA member that met the couple on Day One was revealed to be the one that sent the officers after them so they can be kicked out of the neighborhood. The whole story came out then.
As it turns out, that person testified that he didn't want "their kind" in his perfect neighborhood. Everyone in that room was dumbstruck. The HOA lawyer immediately dropped the case and apologized to my cousin and his wife. That HOA member was kicked out of the neighborhood for his views. Apparently, he also called the authorities on every black and brown person that even passed by his house.
Since then, they moved out of the neighborhood after my cousin’s wife got a better job offer in her field.
55. Starting All Over
My wife and I bought a house in an HOA back in May of 2020. We bought it from family and were told the HOA is very relaxed. Basically, you pay your dues and submit the proper documentation when doing major changes to the house and landscaping, and that’s it. We received the rules and regulations when we bought the house and it was very generic.
Nothing in it mentioned security cameras and motion lights. Well, this past Monday my father-in-law and I finally installed two security cameras with lights. We had to run new electric lines due to the house not coming with a doorbell. Tuesday afternoon, we received a warning about modifications to the house without prior approval. We already had four motion sensor lights up months prior to installing the camera.
I figured they just wanted a statement or something similar to explain why we put up the new system. I submit the statement and don't hear anything back for a couple of days. The response I finally got was that the cameras needed to be removed, paperwork submitted, and then they can be re-installed. After spending six hours running wire and installing the system, I'm not pulling it down.
I will not be changing anything until I get a response to my submission. If it wasn't mentioned in the rules and regulations, I figure they really don't have a leg to stand on in general.
56. Any House Will Do
Yesterday my boyfriend came to my house to watch movies. He dropped by the pizza place on his way here, ordered a pizza and paid for it in advance. We hear the motorcycle passing by so I go out to get the pizza—but I see the pizza delivery guy a couple of houses away…and my neighbor receiving the pizza as if it was his!
For a couple of seconds I didn't say anything because it was probably just a coincidence. But no, it wasn't, it was my pizza and that man tried to take it. And screw the delivery guy too. When he gave me the pizza, I don't remember what he told me, but I replied with "Yeah, they were trying to take it". He replied with "Oh no, he told me he would pay for it".
I was livid so I didn't reply, but like, screw you!!!! We had already paid for the pizza, I don't care if the neighbor was going to pay YOU for the pizza we had already paid for! So yeah, I have awful neighbors and now we won't order from the same pizza place.
57. The Neighbor Agenda
So this has been going on for a year now. I've lived in my home for about seven years, but have owned it since the late 90s. I used to rent it out before I moved in. Back when it was a rental, my neighbor put up a waist-high picket fence in the front of our adjoining properties. It came over on my side of the property a little under a foot. When I moved in, I honestly didn't care that much,
We got along relatively well and I try to be peaceful with my neighbors. Last year, she's having all her fencing replaced as the old one's falling apart. I see her outside and ask if we can put the fence that's on my side down the actual property line. I can’t believe her response. She completely lost her mind on me. The way she reacted you'd think I reached across and slapped her!
I didn't engage, and immediately called a survey company and had them out the next day. She did as well. Both came back a week or so later confirming the fence was on my side. About a week after that, code enforcement showed up regarding a house under construction across the street from me, completely unrelated to the fence or anything.
He parked in front of my house and was standing in my yard to take pictures of the house across the street. I came outside not knowing who he was and spoke with him. Once I knew what he was doing, I came back inside. This turned out to be a horrible mistake. As soon as he left, she came outside screaming at the top of her lungs calling me horrible names for calling code on her.
I'll admit I lost my temper and we had a screaming match. 20 minutes later the authorities show up, and she claimed I just started screaming at her for no reason and she was in fear for her life. But there was something important she didn’t know. I have two cameras in my front yard, and the entire exchange was caught as she was in front of my house when she lost her head.
I showed it to the officers and they left quite irritated with her. The biggest mistake I made, though, was posting about it on my Facebook group, which is quite large and contains members of our community. She called the authorities on me again for inciting threats or something like that. So to make everyone happy I deleted the post. Was this the end? Nope.
She called the authorities on me a third time a few months later for the same thing again, though I'm not sure what for as I hadn't posted anything else. The officers were confused as well and they left. A few months later, I'm on my porch having and she's in her van. She stops in front of my house, rolls down her window and calls me a ton of names again, then takes off.
Again, caught on camera. So I figured, screw it, and posted the video to my group. Sure enough, she calls the authorities. This time, they turn on her. They tell her she needs to leave me alone. She got angry and started screaming at them! They said if she doesn't calm down she was going to be detained. A month or so later, I'm having a tree trimmed on my other neighbor’s side who we get along with.
She called code enforcement trying to say I did it without a permit. It got thrown out as it was a Camphor tree. She called in officers again, and when they showed up she wouldn't answer the door. We all still have no idea what that call was about. A few weeks later, a detective comes by my house saying she's been investigating this case. I start to get worried, but there was a twist.
The detective actually says I've done nothing wrong, and she's going to speak with my neighbor to inform her of just that, and tell her to leave me alone. My neighbor loses her mind on the detective. Keep in mind I've never once called anyone on her, Code enforcement, etc. A week after that, she installs Nest Google cameras pointed right at my front door.
Nothing I can do about it as in Florida, there is no expectation of privacy at the front of your house, and neighbors can mount cameras at you. About two months ago, someone broke into my storage and took a bunch of stuff. I check my cameras, but unfortunately it's too dark outside, so all you can see is someone with a flashlight over my neighbor’s fence while someone else is rummaging around in my storage.
I've since upgraded to night vision cameras. At this point I'm getting tired of it all. Buuuuut, I go over and speak with her in person after one whole year of this. I recorded the conversation on my phone and made her aware I was recording as I don't trust her. We speak for about 10 minutes, but in a nutshell I tell her that we may not like each other, but we are neighbors and we have to live next to each other.
I say that I'd like to just go about our business and lives. She agrees surprisingly, and a couple months pass with no issues. I should have known it was too good to be true. Then we come to yesterday....which is the crown jewel of insanity! My boyfriend went outside to talk to his mom, and I get a text from my neighbor saying we are not to come outside when she's outside as were spying on her.
She says if it continues, she'll take this farther! Also in the text, she threatened to call code enforcement because I detailed my van with a buffer and it was loud. I promptly told her to screw off and she will not dictate when we can or cannot come outside, and if she keeps messing with me I'll file for a restraining order.
58. The Grass Really Is Greener On The Other Side
Australia had some hectic wildfires going on and was in extreme drought. My hometown has high water restrictions in place, so things like washing your car and watering your garden are a MASSIVE NO-NO. The water supply is scary low and there has been talk about the council potentially needing to pay for water trucks to fill it.
Even though I live in another city and my parents have moved to the coast, they still own the house we grew up in my hometown and have been trying to sell it, so it has been sitting uninhabited for about six months. We have friends who occasionally check on it to make sure nothing has been taken and to mow the lawns. You can imagine their shock when they received a water bill for $500.
My dad went back there on Wednesday to check it out. The answer was jaw-dropping. He found out that our neighbour has removed one of the pickets from the border fence and has been feeding a hose through to her yard from our backyard tap. Her backyard is like a tropical oasis! Vibrant green lawn, flowers, etc while everyone else’s lawn around it is brown.
The bill says the amount of water used is about 200,000 litres. He’s taken photos of her lawn in contrast to ours and of the removed picket from the fence and reported her to council. My dad is essentially the lawyer/investigator of our family, he’s very good at stuff like this so she’s absolutely screwed. We just cannot believe that in such a time of crisis, as the land burns around us and farmers struggle to feed/water their livestock, all she cares about is her garden.
59. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
I was messing around with my bad laptop's Wi-Fi card and saw I had an access point I could connect to that wasn't there before. The signal was so/so and I had my own internet so I didn't bother trying to use that one. At that point, I just sort of forgot about it. About a week later, I was unplugging some stuff and accidentally unplugged my wireless router.
While it was unplugged my phone found the next accessible Wi-Fi access point. This was the one I'd found previously and not really bothered with—not my circus, not my monkeys, you know? Then something weird happened. My phone pops up saying I need to install all of these smart home apps to make the appliances work. This didn't make sense.
I'm enough of an IT guy to know that unless there's a burning need for it, home automation isn't really the best idea. Absolutely no telling who can access that information. These people nearby me had their garage doors, heating and air conditioning, lights (interior AND exterior), televisions AND refrigerator hooked up. To a Wi-Fi. With no password.
In the industry we call that dumb as a bag of hammers. Once I plugged the router back in to appease my suddenly irate family members wondering where the internet went, I hooked up my dog and took him for a walk. Before I left the house, though, I had a plan. I installed the smart home app and turned on one exterior spotlight, then looked for the house it was attached to.
Presumably if I was able to use their Wi-Fi they were in the line of sight. Once I saw the light that was on, I turned it off to make sure. House was on the next street over directly behind my house. There's a huge hill in the way that the builders left because mother nature didn't flatten my part of the country as a courtesy, so lots can be next to each other without being accessible.
That meant going the long way around. My dog is an adorable cockapoo who has much better people skills than I do. So when I have to go talk to people I don't know, he comes along because he's about as threatening as a wet noodle (don't tell him I said that) and I can't be that bad a man if my dog is as awesome as he is. So we make our way over to the neighbors’ house and I knock on their door.
A nice older lady answers it, old enough to have moved out kids but not old enough to be considered a Q-tip in my humble opinion. She forgets to ask what I want and IMMEDIATELY goes gooey all over my dog, and her husband hears the adorable appreciation sounds coming from his front door and investigates. He too is floored by my dog's awesomeness.
There's about a minute of him getting all the attention (and I thought building a rapport) before I remember why I'm here. I ask how they like their new smart home stuff. This backfired on me. They immediately start getting weirded out. Husband says: "We like it just fine...how do you know we got that stuff?" I take my cue and launch into trying to help them.
"Please don't take this the wrong way, but you don't have a password on your wireless. My phone connected to it by accident and told me about all the stuff you had installed." The wife cocks her head to one side and the husband's brow starts developing a thunderous quality. I start talking faster, "I'm just here to let you know that you really should put a password on your Wi-Fi, or ANYONE can use it to do stuff like open your garage doors."
The husband's brow is now in full fury mode and he opens his mouth to (presumably) shout at me. But before he can, the wife says "Oooooh, THAT’S what the installer guy was talking about. He kept saying I needed to encrypt the thingie or something like that. We've never bothered with a password because it's a pain in the butt to set up and remember."
Husband has gone from thunderous fury to bewilderment, and he looks at his wife and says "Encrypt the what now?" I don't feel like getting voluntold to set up these people's network and appliances for them, so I say "OK gotta go bye!" I power walk away from their house and once clear we head back towards my house. I thought it was over, but it very much wasn’t.
About two hours later someone starts knocking at my front door. I live in an in-law apartment in the basement of my parents’ house, so that's not my door. My mother answers the door and then stomps down to the door to my part of the house, throws it open, and tells me the authorities here. Again, in a frosty voice. I hustle up the stairs.
There's Officer Dave, the only officer my town had who knew enough about computers to actually have a conversation with me without getting a must-smash-nerd face. I say, "Hi Dave, what's—" He cuts me off before I can even finish, he says, “WHAT did you do?” "What? I haven't done anything!" "Then why the heck am I getting calls about you opening and closing people's garage doors and turning their lights on and off?!"
To be fair that DID sound like the sort of thing I'd do. Not to break into someone's house, just to mess with them. I'm mischievous, not evil. And then the light dawns. I point and ask, "Did you get called by the people living in that house? Because I went over there a little while ago to tell them they needed to put a password on their Wi-Fi, and the only thing I did was turn on a spotlight to see which house it was. Nothing more than that, swear to god."
"They don't have a password—" There's a thud as Dave facepalms. I let out a yuuup in sympathy. He sighs and says stay out of trouble, and I wave bye. Turns out, the husband called the authorities and gave a vague description of me and the dog and said I lived nearby. The couple got a call back to tell them the issue is resolved and please secure your Wi-Fi.
Two days later, there's a password on their Wi-Fi and we all lived happily ever after. Except for getting the stank eye from that couple whenever I walk by.
60. From Good To Bad
I lost some great neighbors about eight months ago when they moved. I knew the bliss wouldn't last forever, and I helped them pack up their stuff, took trips to the dump for them, and even said "anything that comes up at the last minute you need ditch, toss in my trailer on the side yard". The new neighbors moved in a few days later—turns out he runs his own business out of his home.
All home-based businesses require a permit which must be signed. The permit outlines the requirements/rules of a home-based business. Two of these rules are a) no customers before 7 am on the weekdays and no customers before 8 am on the weekends, no business to be conducted after 7 pm, and b) no more than three customers at your home at a time.
Sadly, our neighbor runs a gym/personal training out of his garage. We found out that he has classes every hour of every day between 5-9 am and then from 4-7 pm. He will routinely have four or more people at his class. After the first complaint to the city provided no relief, I purchased and installed some video cameras. I know it sounds bad, but get a load of this.
We are routinely woken up by his customer traffic, sometimes as early as 4:45 am. His customers love to talk—and talk loud without much thought given to anyone in the neighborhood. There was one that would announce her arrival by setting her car alarm several times while she walked into his garage. One Saturday, he decided it would be a good idea to open his garage up, pull out his equipment, and have class on his driveway.
About a dozen people showed up by 7 am. His customers routinely use my side yard and driveway to access his garage. His customers, generally 4-5, will line up outside his gate at 10 minutes to the top of the hours waiting for the prior class to finish. Routinely they will drop weights in the garage (on a padded floor) which will rattle his side door.
When his side is open, my side door and sometimes the windows adjacent to his home will rattle. And there is so much grunting going on. Clearly, he wasn't obeying the rules set forth in the home-based business policy set by the city. Finally, after several months of complaints, video evidence, sworn statements by myself and likely other neighbors, his business—and sole means of support for his wife and three young daughters—will be cut off this next week.
I hope for his sake he decides to move or open up a commercial space. Hopefully, he decided to move. I can suggest a few realtors that could help him and he'd be welcome to use my trailer to move his stuff.
61. I Pity The Fool
We bought a house in April and the neighbors across the street from us are in the process of moving out. They have a HUGE house, six-bedroom, five-bathroom, that was top of the line....25 years ago. It was listed for 600k about six weeks ago (they took forever to pack), has been pending three times, and is now at 500k, so I'm assuming an inspector is finding an issue.
Other houses in my neighborhood that are that size are selling. They asked us to help change lightbulbs and fix little things, which was perfectly fine. Or it was until their latest actions. They’ve now started sending "requests". Painting their frame of the screened patio, replacing faucets, and cleaning their house. We painted their screened-in patio because we thought (mistake) it was the last thing they'd ask.
We honestly felt bad because the house is in need of some MAJOR TLC. It's got original carpet that has been cleaned and stretched so many times that it is desperately in need of being ripped out. The bathroom tubs are peeling, the house was freshly painted but was terribly done. When they put it up for sale, they left some huge furniture that they requested us to sell, and we could keep 10% of the profits.
They acted like this was a HUGE reward. It's a 20-year-old couch, mattresses, three dressers, and other outdated furniture that is worth nothing, and weighs a ton, and is upstairs. So obviously it didn't sell for anything, and is still sitting upstairs in their house. One person came for a dresser and it was too heavy for us to move, so we figure this is all custom-built and assembled in the room.
When they left, they "requested" us to do daily walk-throughs and send daily reports of their house, which is fine, but we stopped after a week because we have our own house that we are working on, work, and are not trying to spend weekends and time off at someone else’s house when we literally bought a house to spend time there.
We both get up at 4 am for work, get home around 4:30 pm, eat, and sometimes will literally nap the majority of the rest of the day. Yesterday was one of those days. I had no idea what was coming. Little did I know, these neighbors were back in town and had called each of us several times after 7 pm—once we get off work we don't look at phones.
They had then texted us multiple times. We gave polite replies but said we weren't able to help them. We wind down for the day around 7 pm because we get up at 4 am. So then they knocked on our door at 8 pm, 9 pm, 10 pm, and 11 pm according to our ring camera. If you had a problem, you wouldn't be going to just my house, you’d be asking other people.
I really want to just tell these people that we cannot help them anymore and this is not my problem. This doesn't go into detail about everything we have done for them, but it quickly became too much. Every time we leave their house after doing things there, we both feel so bad because it needs so much work. It’s so dirty, and with three people walking away from it, there has got to be some major issue as I notice it goes back on the market after an inspector is there.
62. Kooky Colors
We had a cookie-cutter house built. One of the color palettes we could choose from included an accent color for the door/shutters that was a dark purple. The hubs and I are a little kooky, so we selected it. At our final walkthrough, our door and shutters are brown. I tell the general that it’s wrong and show him my contract.
We were the only homeowners in the subdivision that selected that color, so the HOA decided to not offer it anymore. But we knew just what to do. We said fine, that puts you in breach of contract and we want to be released. A few phone calls later, my door and shutters are purple and I’m happy.
We purchase the house. At least once a year we got a nasty letter from the HOA about our “unapproved door color”. Every time, I send them a copy of my contract and their by-laws stating that the colors from the builder are allowed. Not my problem you discontinued it after I picked it.
63. Do Unto Others…
Last month, my daughter had a seizure. I had my teenage sisters staying over at the time so my parents came to pick them up. My dad’s car blocked over a bit of my neighbor’s driveway as he came to collect the girls. A few minutes later, my neighbor knocked on the door, demanding the car be moved. It was nearly midnight and the ambulance was blocking our driveway.
My dad immediately went out and moved the car and apologized. He explained they didn’t mean to block her in. Quite a few times since that night, the neighbor has now started to park over our drive and block us in. It’s got to the point where me and my partner park one of our cars on the drive and one blocks the drive, even though our drive can fit both cars on it.
When she’s blocked us in we’ve knocked on the door to ask her to move but she doesn’t answer the door. We can hear her in the house but she doesn’t answer. It’s driving us crazy and we’ve now got to the stage where we’re getting a lawyer’s advice.
64. Buzz Off!
My next-door neighbor is a middle-aged woman who lives with her elderly mom. Not because her mom needs to be taken care of—I believe it’s the other way around. She doesn’t work and is basically a little girl in a 50-year-old body. I work from home, and this woman is home all day, doing who knows what. Whenever I go outside, she magically appears and gives me her “expert” advice on whatever I’m doing.
If I engage in a conversation with her (just to be nice), it’ll eat up 20 to 30 minutes of my time. It's one of those inescapable conversations. And if I do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, like bite my fingernail out of nervousness because I don’t know when I’ll be able to exit this conversation, she’ll go: “STOP! Wait, I got a cream for that!”
Or if I shoo away a fly, she’ll go: “WAIT! I got the BEST bug spray! Top of the line!” Everything she has is “top of the line” or “the most expensive, highest quality out there," and she's got something for everything! I literally can't MOVE around her, because she's got something for everything I'm doing! One time she caught me painting a statue in my garden.
She came over with boxes and boxes of paint. And once she starts up with a new topic, tack on another 20 minutes of time And that's just my experience with her while I'm outside. Behind closed doors, it’s a total nightmare. Before I knew any of this about her, I made the mistake of inviting her into my house for a cup of coffee. No wait, let me correct that.
She actually saw me drinking coffee on my front porch one day and asked if she could have one. While I found that a bit intrusive, I felt rude saying no, so I made her one. And while I was making the coffee in my kitchen, she continued talking to me from my front porch, and I couldn't really hear what she was saying. I felt rude, so I invited her into the foyer rather than have her stand outside.
MISTAKE. Now she comes over twice, sometimes three times a week for coffee! And whenever she sees me outside, she asks, "can I have a coffee?" And when she rings my doorbell and I answer the door to greet her, she's already stepping into my house, like a vampire that I can't stop from coming inside because I've already made the mistake of inviting her in once!
And each time she comes over, I face new horrors. She's getting more and more comfortable in my house, sitting on my couch (She reeks of smoke. I don't smoke, and prefer to have my house not smelling like that). And now she's asking to borrow things, browsing the shelves in my living room, and then exclaiming, "Oh! My mom would love to read this! You're not reading it right now, right? I'll bring it back, you know where I live anyway”.
And then she helps herself to an item on the shelf. I don't like being mean to people, but I feel like the only way to stop her is to be That Person. I'm a single, 30-year-old woman, living alone. I think I'm way too nice, to the point where I let things go beyond what I'm comfortable with. This was my mistake, I know. But how do I undo all of this in the nicest way possible?
If I had it my way, I would have it so that she never comes back into my house ever again. She is my neighbor, not my friend. She is not my type of person. We have nothing in common. I just want to be left alone.
65. Disturbance In Suburbia
My husband and I moved into our first home last summer. Coming from the city, we found our slice of “suburban heaven," as the property offered a beautiful yard with well water-irrigated lush grass. We also chose it for what we perceived as privacy, at least compared to where we had lived. It didn’t take long for us to discover we had made a grave error.
When we first met our neighbor closest in proximity to us, she seemed very nice and thoughtful and we thought how lucky we were to have such a lovely neighbor. This changed quickly, as she became overbearing to the point where I couldn’t be in my backyard without fearing she’d yell over to me and to come over. She would interrupt me no matter what I was doing.
She has a dog of her own, and she’s single, middle-aged, no kids, divorced, and she let us know early on that our backyard was like her dog park before we moved in, as the old man who lived here previously passed and the lot was vacant for a year or so. She has her own fenced-in backyard, but it is the opposite of our green grass with rocks and planters and is quite unkept.
For a few months, we let her over frequently, then we began to avoid her. Other strange things happened with her that are beside the point of this thread, but anyways what really started to irk me, especially because I work from home all the time, is that she would be in our side yard property all the time. She tied her dog to our fence, on our lawn, and she used it as a potty spot multiple times a day.
One morning, I even woke up to her loudly on the phone BELOW my bedroom window, looking into our first-floor window. It was getting obnoxious. Our side yards have no barrier, aside from the fact that ours has lush green grass and hers has rock and pine needles. Not once did she have a conversation with us about this. And then it took another turn.
She started to call me in the middle of the workday as I was in meetings and trying to focus, to ask if her dog could come into our backyard. The final straw was when she left a voicemail, asking for permission to let herself into our backyard whenever she pleased, since my two dogs “were always outside”. I felt like that was asking too much after she’d been overbearing for the past four months of living there.
Granted, I think she had good intentions in her efforts to be nice to us, but my introverted husband and I found her overbearing and annoying, especially in the way she used our property as if we didn’t exist or as if she was entitled to it. So, I went outside to talk to her after I listened to the voicemail. It took a lot of working up to and courage because I truly hate confrontation.
I politely and timidly let her know that we don’t feel comfortable with her using our backyard whenever she pleases. She didn’t take that well at all. To begin with, she rolled her eyes and talked back. I went on further to ask that she stop using our side yard because we like our privacy. Then she really lost it on me. She said, “Well so much for having a good neighborly relationship” and stormed off.
I was taken aback because if someone let me know I was overstepping someone’s comfort and property zone, I would say “so sorry, I had no idea”. But of course not. Later she came to our door to pick something up we were borrowing, and she started saying some nasty things, like how I hadn’t tried to be nice (I had, but in my own way), and that my husband and I should get a fence if we were so concerned.
Needless to say, she’s a grown woman and the property line is obvious, but alright. Months have passed, and we hadn’t talked to her much, and I observed that now she would stand on her property with the dog leashed, but the dog is on our property so it can go potty. She was making an effort...? Well, that didn’t last long. A couple of weeks ago she got a new puppy.
She has returned to using our yard as she had done before. She is literally training her new puppy to “Go poo poo! Go poo poo” on our lawn. Really!?!? So my husband wasn’t too upset at first…until he found five piles of poop sitting in our grass. That was it for him. I’ve been annoyed about it for a while because I work from home and see/hear her doing it, and it is also the principle for me at this point.
He went over to talk to her with the poop bagged up in his hand and let her know our property is not her dog’s potty spot. She made a few excuses and said she’d get a property surveyor, and my husband said we’d respect the results. He also asked her to respect us, left the poo on her porch, and walked away. She hasn’t apologized or taken any accountability.
When she makes excuses as to why she uses our property, she passively tries to make us sound like jerks. As mentioned, we will respect the results of a surveyor if she gets one, but I know for a fact that our entire side yard is not her property. I genuinely don’t think any of it is because of land markers and the deed I read, but whatever at this point.
She’s still using our lawn with her dogs after we talked to her twice. Now my husband and I are submitting a fence permit with the town so that we can hopefully resolve this by building a barrier. But I’m bummed it had to come to this. This has caused us a lot of frustration and it slightly feels like “suburbahell” now. So much for our oasis.
66. A Game Of Chicken
I’ve been living in my current home for a little over five years. About two years ago, we bought some chickens and I made a run for them beneath our scuppernong vines. It’s a good sized area. This is in the back corner of my property, probably about 200 feet from the road. Shortly after, an old couple moved into a house across the street and one house down.
My neighborhood is an old mill house neighborhood, and my house is on two lots so my yard is twice the size of everyone else’s. I believe there used to be a house next to mine that burned down or something and that lot was purchased by whomever owned my home at the time. Anyway, one day it all started to curdle right before my eyes.
I started getting visits from animal control. I was told by my neighbors directly next to me that animal control would come by when I wasn’t home and walk around my property. I have one chicken who escapes daily and visits my neighbors, who feed her and let their kids play with her. The old couple across the street and one house down once saw my chicken in my neighbors’ yard, took a photo, and called the authorities.
I was given a ticket which cost me $295.25 even though the neighbors whose yard it was in didn’t mind. Animal control eventually stopped coming by after she and I had a conversation. She said the old couple across the street are the ones calling, specifically the wife. Her claims were beyond stupid. She says that the chickens are making her ill and she is deathly afraid of being ambushed by the chickens.
She claimed that it isn’t legal to own chickens within city limits (animal control assured her that it is). Animal control also told her that there is no smell from my chickens and said that I have the cleanest run they’ve ever seen. The neighbors also claimed that a specific animal control officer took their friend’s chickens last year because chickens aren’t legal but the guy who they say took them hadn’t worked in animal control in almost two decades.
The animal control officer also told me that the woman across the street calls animal control and/or the authorities least five times a week to complain about my chickens. My wife recently got a promotion and our landscaper is purchasing our home as we’re having to relocate about four hours north of here. He usually brings his son when he cuts our lawn and the little guy loves the chickens.
He asked if they can keep them so we’ve decided to include them on the sale so our awful neighbor will get to deal with the chickens for years to come.
67. Privacy, Please
So I had a neighbor flag me down as I’m backing out of the driveway to “chat”. He proceeds to make small talk, then ask me about why my ex and I divorced, or basically outright asked. He then said, “She must have found someone else, huh?” What the heck is wrong with people? You really think I want to talk about this with you? Then he asks me why I didn’t move back home to my hometown.
I don’t know, not everyone wants to live on top of their family. And he wonders why I avoid him like the plague. Mind you, we have covered both of these topics already previously. It’s like we practically have the same conversation every time I see him. I don’t want to talk about my divorce and family issues with you.
68. Be Careful What You Wish For
My neighbor took issue with a small mistake we made in parking, and she has now been blocking our driveway at every opportunity. My partner won’t park on our drive anymore as he needs his car to get to work. I didn’t want to tow the car, because if there was the tiniest scratch she could claim compensation off us. I also didn’t want to ring the authorities.
Even if it was the non-emergency number, I know how busy they are right now. I spoke to a friend who knows about parking laws. I found out you can contact the council and my friend also told me to mention that I was unsure if she got permission to create a dropped curb in front of her garden. I’ve been taking pictures of her doing it each time she blocks us.
I’ve also filmed her ignoring us as we knock on the door (you can see her peeking through the curtains to see who it is) to ask her to move the car. I sent in all the evidence and today they visited. The neighbor had parked in front of the drive when they visited. The karma was instant. They decided to give my neighbor an immediate fine as they can see she’s prolific at it from my evidence.
Also they checked out the dropped curb onto her driveway. I’m not going to lie, I did tell my daughter to ride her bike so I could watch her and listen in to what was being said. Apparently, the neighbor applied for a dropped curb. However, it was refused as she has had a porch built and it means the garden is too small. You can only be approved if your garden is over a certain size to make sure that you can park your car in the garden without overhang onto the footpath.
My neighbor just built the dropped curb herself. The person told my neighbor that the council will decide what will happen. Most likely she will have to pay for the curb to be reinstated and may be fined on top of that.
69. Ruining The Holiday Cheer
I live next to a park trail that heads to a dog park. Yesterday, my security camera caught a neighbor stopping to let their dog pee on my Christmas decorations. The decoration in question is a stack of three Christmas presents made out of a wireframe wrapped in fabric with lights inside. The item is placed about 6' away from the sidewalk on my lawn.
The neighbor just stood there for several seconds with their hands in their pockets watching the dog pee on my stuff. I took stills of the images. They are grainy so you can’t make out the person's face, but you can clearly make out what they were wearing, and that the dog is a shih tzu. I printed them out, put them in plastic protectors, and hung them on the boxes with a sign that has The Grinch on it that says "He sees you when you're peeing".
My camera is pointed, and I wait.
70. Power Tripping
I used to lived in a neighborhood that has a one-dollar-per-month HOA because we have a shared drive with an area drain. That money goes to emptying the area drain every couple of years. The CC&Rs are very laid back and there are no rules so I wrongfully assumed that would be the experience living where I am now.
Turns out the HOA president is a boomer on a power trip. He is in my business about everything. I got a new furnace and he threatened to sue me because the utility company had to use the driveway. I scheduled a specialty garbage pickup with my garbage company, and he called me screaming that I put garbage out in front of my house that morning.
I have a retaining wall in front of my house, and he came by and yelled at me for cleaning it. The list goes on and on. It’s a total nightmare experience and I will never live somewhere with an HOA of any kind ever again.
71. Up A Tree
My partner and I are renting the rear townhouse on a block of two. We have a shared driveway, and the area directly in front of my house and adjacent to my neighbor’s garage (technically our land) had a potted ornamental pear tree. The tree is beautiful and provides us with some privacy to our upstairs landing. The neighbor has made a comment that he does not like the tree as the leaves fall on his car in autumn.
The tree receives good lighting and is watered regularly, and, until last week, was very healthy. Last Monday, the leaves started getting dry but were still green. Unusual for an established tree. On Thursday, my neighbor came out for a chat while I was inspecting it. Without hesitating, he offered to cut it down. I told him that I’d fertilized it and would like to wait and see if it gets better.
On Sunday morning, I realized that the tree had been cut down, leaving an ugly stump with no leaves. On further inspection, three weeds that were thriving in the same planter were also withered, leading me to believe that the tree was poisoned. I don’t want to cause drama with our neighbors, but I am furious. Even if he didn’t poison the tree, he overstepped a boundary by cutting it down.
72. Screw That Noise
So yesterday, I had an incredibly important job interview. It was my final interview with my local police branch and if I passed this interview, then the past six months of training and tests would have been worth it, and I would be a full-time officer. My interview was three hours long and I had a time slot for 10 am-1 pm. I had deliberately picked this time slot.
I thought an earlier one would mean that there would be less chance of noise from any of my neighbors. 7:30 am, next-door neighbors’ music is on full blast. No warning, so I was already startled from a rude awakening. This came after not being able to get to sleep until 3 am because the same neighbors were having a party. Less than four hours of sleep, and a three-hour interview coming up.
Safe to say I was not amused. However, I thought that I would give them the benefit of the doubt and give them time to turn it down. It got to 9 am and it was still going, and now the kids were screaming and running around outside, having to shout louder than the music just to be heard. So I sent my neighbor a text, just politely asking them to turn the music down (not off), as I had my interview in an hour.
It got to 9:30 am and I had had no reply and the music was steadily getting louder. So I went and knocked on their door, and of course, they couldn't hear me above the music, so I had to knock on their window and more or less felt like I was invading their home. It very much did not get better from there. The wife answered, the same woman I texted, and she was oblivious to the fact that I had texted her.
Unbelievably, she didn't seem to think anything was wrong with the level of the music. I asked if she would turn the music down, and she said that she would but she couldn't stop her partner from turning it up again if he wanted to. They were having another party, apparently, as it was their son's A-Level results day and he had done well. Oh, great.
I told her that as nice as that was, I had an important interview that I could not rearrange and could not afford to not get. Her response infuriated me. It was a shrug, and she said she would turn it down a bit. Thanking her, I went back home and immediately noticed that the music had turned down a bit, so I was a bit happier. I set up in my kitchen/makeshift office, and sat down to wait 15 minutes until my interview started.
I could still hear the music and the screaming, but it was enough that I could drown it out. The interview was going well until about 10:30. And I think you can guess what happened. Music whacked back up to full volume, even louder than before. All of the neighbors’ doors and windows are opened. The kids are screaming louder than ever, and everyone is now standing outside in the garden and talking loudly, right by my kitchen window.
I tried not to let it get to me, but when I saw one of the guys doing the interview look confused and distracted, I knew that they could hear it too. I immediately apologized and explained what had happened and said that I could move to another room and carry on. So I had to move from a proper office set up to my small and partially decorated, dark living room.
The interview went ahead, but I couldn't focus properly as all I could feel was their music thumping, and I was now getting a migraine. I had to ask them to repeat questions numerous times and I just couldn't drown out the music and screaming. The interview finished at 1 pm and at 1:15 pm, it suddenly went silent from next door.
The whole family and their friends (there were about 20 people there altogether), left the house at the same time. They 100% did it on purpose. Then I got horrible news. I just found out this morning that I did not pass the final interview, and I have to wait six months before I can apply for the position again. And to rub more salt into the wound, I have to do all of the tests and interviews (that I had already passed), all over again.
I have appealed the decision and have further explained the circumstances, so hopefully, they are lenient. I'm planning on confronting my neighbors today, after I've calmed down.
73. She’s Lost Control Again
Every time I tell this story, I feel so dramatic, but how else do you describe this situation?
In the fall, our elderly neighbor either got confused or lost control of her car, plowed forward, destroyed our trellis, bushes, and hit our house. We have a big dent in the front, awaiting cooperation from contractors to repair and likely replace all the siding. Oh, AND, she snapped our gas line when it happened so it was a very scary 20-30 minutes until that was repaired.
Thank God we both work from home because I hate thinking what would have happened to our dogs. Somehow though, it was the aftermath that hurt the worst. During those moments, she didn't come check on us. When she hit the house, my husband immediately ran over to her, asking if she was all right, showing genuine concern. This neighbor?
She has never apologized and has almost completely avoided us since then. The only time she has spoken to either my husband or me was a couple of weeks later when my husband was attempting to replace the trellis. She came outside to argue with him, claiming he was digging on her property. And then she said things like "No one is more sorry than me that this happened to you…”
He reminded her this is the second time she had lost control of her car. The first time, she plowed over her bushes, but she had paid to replace them. Hilariously enough, she plowed over those new bushes, too, in this incident. This trellis? So, the property line essentially runs through a flower bed. I am super into gardening and she is in her 80s.
I gradually took over the entire flower bed, always with communication with her. I weeded her side, I mulched it..."Hey, I like these flowers so how about I have them all through our shared bed?” "What do you think about me removing the lilac bush". "Hey, I want to put a trellis up. That way, all these morning glories we have can climb it. Will that bother you?”
“No? Ok, where exactly is the line? I would hate to put it on the wrong spot and have future people in your home getting angry. It will be this high—will that bother you?" She said it was nice to have me care for all of it, since she was too old. She told my husband she and I never talked about that trellis—not helping with her denial is the fact that she has dementia.
Every time she sees one of us outside? She scurries inside. Totally avoids us. Could you imagine being in your 80s but being afraid of your neighbors who are only in their 30s? We have a land surveyor coming shortly to tell us exactly where that line is because I want that trellis for some protection to stop her car. But there’s a secret I’m keeping.
I will not lie—I hope she gives them heck when they come over. I am ready for a fight. The authorities were useless. The transportation department in my state were useless. Her children are insane AND useless. So, fine. I'll fight an old lady.
74. He Takes Care Of Everything
My HOA president walks around the neighborhood every day and takes pictures of any violations he finds. There is a management company that does monthly checks for violations, but that's not enough for this old, bored, retired man. About a month after having a baby, I got a knock on the door from the HOA president, which I answer in my post surgical breast-feeding outfit.
Then I got a written notice the next day, then I got another notice two days later. The HOA also maintains the roads and there's a 15-mph speed limit. People already drive pretty slowly, but these idiots put in three speed bumps on just a 200-foot stretch of road! I've never seen anyone blast through and I regularly go on walks.
They also put up a security camera, raising our monthly dues, because one neighbor left their garage door open all day and someone took a few things. We clearly live in a dangerous area full of troublemakers…I can't sell yet, but when I do, never living in an HOA again!
75. Making Repairs
When I was a kid, my parents had a house in a nice cul-de-sac, but it was a working-class neighborhood. The transmission in my truck broke down, so I replaced it in our driveway. A few days later we got a letter citing a clause stating all improvements done on property must be done by a licensed contractor.
It was a far reach, but they stood by it as there was nothing in the CC&Rs against working on personal vehicles. My dad made me pay him back for the fine, but for a while afterwards I’d go put some oil or coolant under the HOA president’s cars and hope he wasting money chasing a nonexistent problem.
76. Why Didn’t You Say Something?
Several years ago, a co-worker told me about how she and her husband put in a small in-ground pool in their backyard. They got all of the required permits and everything and nobody said anything during the weeks of construction. After the pool was installed and they were getting ready to open it, the HOA sent them a letter informing them that it was in violation of the HOA rules, and it had to be removed.
They ended up going to court and spending thousands of dollars to fight it. In the end, they agreed to erect a high privacy fence around it so that it wouldn't be visible. How ridiculous!
77. Sudden Sprouts
I lived with my wife in officer housing on a military installation. Of course, we had to follow certain rules so that everything looked ship-shape. That wasn’t hard to do. What did get under my skin was the colonel driving around, taking notes, and then having her underlings issue tickets to residents for minor infractions.
The one that sticks in my mind was the “suckers”, as they were called. Although I kept my grass mowed per regulation, little maple tree seeds would sprout up overnight and be an inch taller than the grass. I got a ticket for suckers in my lawn, even though the grass was freshly mowed. Okay, sure. I guess I’ll just mow the lawn every day now. Sheesh.
I never lived under an HOA, but that experience was enough for me to realize HOAs weren’t my thing.
78. I’m Always Watching
We had an awful "nosy as an elephant searching your pockets for peanuts" neighbor who sat outside on her porch swing all day watching everyone with the HOA on speed dial. She made complaints about us night and day for the most minimalistic things. She had called them one day and said we had a "mysterious oil barrel" on our porch that should be investigated as a fire hazard.
It was actually the spare tire from my SO's car, which was under our porch swing and is completely hidden from view because of the HOA maintained front lawn shrubbery. How she even saw that without literally being on our doorstep, I'll never know.
79. Too Close For Comfort
My driveway way is also the school bus stop, so parents would park in a manner that cut off the street because the street parking was taken. Well, that’s stopped because we put my fiancé’s work truck with cones around it in front of our house. Now the issue is that parents know who I am and where I live—I’m a teacher. Now they always want me to answer their questions or solve their problems in school.
Like, I had a parent Friday at the morning bus stop come ask me (while I’m trying to potty train my puppy) about her kid. Another mom then asked why an elementary school teacher who I don’t know nor have ever met gives so much homework. This morning, a dad asked me what my contract says in terms of teachers’ days off because his child’s teacher has been out for a week sick.
And they found out because I wore a t-shirt to work Friday with our district and union’s name on it. There is a certain expectation of how I behave and act towards people outside of work, so I can’t speak to people the way I want to or it could impact my job.
80. Let Sleeping Babies Lie
My wife and I just had a baby about two weeks ago. She is a very fussy newborn and cries several times throughout the night. The colic is no joke and we are both sleep-deprived. I go to work during the day and my wife stays at home with the baby. We live in a rather nice neighborhood with great neighbors who have all lived here for a long time.
We recently had a family of about five move across the street from us. They are loud, leave piles of trash out, blast music late at night, and constantly annoy the neighbors. Lately, one of the kids, who I’ll guess is about nine, has been ding-dong ditching my house several times a day while I’m at work. This causes our dog to bark and in turn wakes up our sleeping baby.
This has also caused my wife to pretty much have a nervous breakdown. We know it’s him because my wife has caught him doing it. Anyway, the other day I stayed home from work. I was making coffee in the kitchen and I saw him creeping up from my window view. I immediately swung the door open and told him that next time he comes on my property, he would be shot.
81. Not Coming Up Roses
This all started last fall when I planted 30 tulips in the large flower bed in front of my house. Since then, I’ve caught my neighbor’s dog running amok, digging up my bulbs. At that time, I let my neighbor know and it seemed to be handled and over with. Or so I thought. Once my tulips started breaking soil, it only got worse. The little girl next door actually started taking the dog with her to play in my garden.
Play, meaning letting her dog eat my tulips while she rips apart the leaves. Once I saw this, I quickly ran outside and politely explained to her why I’m not okay with this. Again, she apologized and I thought it was handled and done. Boy was I wrong again. For the last month, the little girl and the dog have been having a free-for-all in my flower bed.
Every time I catch her and run outside, she darts off like it’s some kind of game. I’ve tried getting in touch with the parents again but I feel as if I’m being purposely ignored. I eventually reached out to the landlord to just send a little friendly reminder out. Which they did. But now I’m at my wit's end. Yesterday afternoon I watched the little girl next door take a stick to my last standing tulips like a baseball bat.
Petals flying everywhere and they all snapped at the stems. I was beside myself. I also knew I was too upset to confront anyone at that moment. I gave myself some time to cool down and then went over to knock on the door and talk to the parents. The outcome disappointed me so much. No answer at all, even though I know they were home for sure.
At this point, I don’t know what to do or if there is anything I can do. Our landlord is aware of everything. My landlord even gifted me new flowers to plant, but they also got destroyed in yesterday’s reckoning. I know at the end of the day it’s just flowers, but I honestly had a mental breakdown this morning when I went out to try and salvage them and realized they are all done for.
All 30 of my tulips that took 6-7 months to bloom. Destroyed.
82. The Landscaper And The Lawyer
My mom is an incredible landscape architect who has written two books on the subject. We live in a good-sized house in the suburbs. When my parents first moved in, our entire front and backyard was just grass. My mom didn't like this, so she spent years outside gardening and developed our yard into something really beautiful and unique.
Basically, we have two small patches of grass on either side of our driveway, which are surrounded by a multitude of well-maintained bushes and flowers. It was beautiful. Then it all fell apart. After my mother had spent years on this project, the HOA sends us a letter about how there is a designated amount of grass that every yard must have.
Our yard looked amazing, and my mom was clearly distraught, so she ignored the letter. They sent more and more until an HOA representative came out. The person was being a total jerk to my mother. My mother heard them out for a bit. But she had an ace up her sleeve.
She then calmly responded with, "Thank you for making the trip out here Mister, but before you take action, I should have you know my father in law is a lawyer who has been certified to testify before the supreme court” which is true, “and, between you and me, he doesn't make a habit of losing cases, especially those as mundane as this".
The man was slightly taken aback and stuttered something before my mom added, "I'm a determined woman, and as you can see from my garden, when I start something, I make sure I finish it my way. If you don't stop pestering us, I'll see to it that your whole organization is taken down. Get the heck off my property and have a good day".
We never heard from the HOA again.
83. Some People’s Sisters
Miraculously, I found a home within a Homeowner’s Association that isn’t horrible! Unfortunately, Every HOA requires at least one Karen. Last year, I joined the HOA board for my neighborhood of townhomes. I wanted to finally have a say in what was happening in my community. In this short time, I have learned that very few people bother reading anything about their HOA before buying a home.
Because of this, I see endless issues where people don't know what rules they have agreed to live by. It now surprises me when somebody acts responsibly and contacts the HOA with an appropriate request. Two months ago, a responsible homeowner asked for approval to add a small patio to the grass in front of his home. This is a common landscaping feature in our neighborhood.
Our rules state that he is welcome to add the patio as long as it is identical to the others in the community. So of course, we approved the request. Now enters our neighborhood Karen. Karen lives next to this responsible homeowner. On Monday the construction began to install the patio. Karen started a verbal altercation with the homeowner's contractor.
She demanded to see written approval and construction designs for everything. Karen was told to mind her own business. As a Karen, she then felt it was her responsibility to contact our HOA management company's emergency line. She berated the office staff for never calling or emailing her to ask permission to do the construction or inform her that it was approved.
She felt that the space was close enough to her home that she had just as much right to it as her neighbor. She also kept repeating that there were many other HOA violations without giving any details. Karen was transferred to the property manager's mobile phone number to leave a message. Apparently, Karen said something concerning enough in the voicemail that I received an urgent call from the property manager.
She begged me to walk over to the responsible neighbor’s house, take a few pictures, and see if there was anything unusual about the construction work. She was worried that the patio may look different than the others in the neighborhood. So, I packed my toddler in her stroller and took a walk down there. Ladies and gentlemen, what I saw made me so mad.
Everything was perfectly normal. There were no problems. Worst of all, the construction was not occurring anywhere near Karen’s property. I was baffled as to why Karen would feel she has some claim to the area that is on the opposite side of the neighbor’s house from her. A few hours ago, I learned Karen isn't even the homeowner of the property next to the responsible neighbor.
She is the sister of the real homeowner. I learned this because the real homeowner went to our online resident portal to send the HOA a message. She seems to be embarrassed by her sister's behavior and stated that she actually read her homeowner documents and feels the HOA has done a great job of handling this situation. I am praying this is the end of this week's drama.
84. Ghosts Of Homeowners Past
We recently moved in January. The previous residents moved out in the beginning of January, while we moved in at the end. One package she had sent here I held because maybe it took a minute for them to change their residence. But since then, it’s gone to a new level. She has had multiple packages delivered and comes to our home looking for them all the time.
Not only that, but someone has been checking our mailbox late at night. I continue to send the packages back and we also drop the mail off as “return to sender” but it just keeps coming. Almost as if she hasn’t updated her address. I don’t feel like at this point it is my or my husband’s obligation to hold her mail or packages. I don’t know this woman and it’s getting ridiculous.
85. Never Doing This Again…
My sister bought a house in an HOA neighborhood three years ago. To be fair, none of us are super familiar with HOAs since none of us had ever lived in one and my sister was told the HOA fees were just for lawn upkeep and snow removal.
The realtor who showed her the house said that the HOA really didn't get involved in anything except for doing the lawns, removing snow, and trimming weeds. It turned into an utter nightmare.
The whole experience has been an "I'll never live in an HOA again" story for my sister. The trouble started pretty much the second she moved in there. The first issue was the electrical not working. My dad was a master electrician, so he went over there to troubleshoot and fix the issues.
He was over there working on some re-wiring and one of the HOA board members came up and asked him what he was doing. My dad told her he was fixing the electrical. The HOA board member had a fit about my dad having a small red toolbox out on the porch.
My dad got back in her face, and she went off in a huff. Then it got surreal. The second issue was my sister planting some roses. The roses were the wrong color, because only pink, white, or light peach roses were allowed. My sister had committed the cardinal sin of planting red roses!
The HOA flipped out and demanded she remove them and fined her for it. Another dumb issue was a citation for her teenage daughter "loitering with a group" on the front steps. Her daughter had been standing on the steps for a few moments talking with another girl and exchanging phone numbers.
My sister has always been a person to do what she wants, so you can imagine this went over really, really poorly. She painted her door bright blue out of anger. She rips up the notices of fines and leaves them in the HOA president's mailbox. She now has the house on the market and has another picked out. My sister’s supposed to hear this week if she is approved for it or not.
86. Holding A Grudge
My neighbors planted a line of quite ugly bushes on my parents’ property about 10 years ago. My parents told them to take it out, and they freaked out saying the property line is wrong, refused, and are now incredibly territorial. Like, they still give us issues about it. I just want to finish them and get it taken out but I am unsure because it’s been a while.
87. I Need To Know Everything
I usually like living in HOAs and the ones I’ve lived in have been decent, but my parents’ HOA is insane. When my dad was diagnosed with cancer and began his chemo, he became too weak to walk. My parents installed a ramp at the front door so he could get his wheelchair into the house. This ended up becoming a terrifying problem.
See, their neighbor, the HOA president, is totally crazy. She demanded doctors’ notes, appointment slips, and that my dad prove to the neighborhood that he could walk and was lying. My dad was too weak to do anything, and mom is too passive, so I had to step in.
I threatened to lawyer up and sue her personally. She eventually backed down. My dad passed in April. A week after, her cruelty absolutely blew my mind. She came banging at our door saying she saw the funeral home come and pick my dad up and that we need to take the ramp down now “that he’s finally gone”.
At that point, I called the authorities right in front of her to report her for stalking and harassment. I moved in with my mom and now every time this woman sees me, she runs back into her house. On another note, she follows neighborhood kids home from school asking their names and where they live because she wants to know if “they really live there". Many neighbors and I have caught her many times looking into our backyards.
88. The Silent Treatment
This afternoon there came a gentle knock on our front door. I answered to find an 11-year-old boy holding our newspaper. He introduced himself as Michael, and he was darling. Ever-vigilant for new neighborhood playmates for my kid Alex, I introduced them, and within minutes, Alex was invited to this child's home around the corner. I didn’t think anything could go wrong—it did.
I wrote a note to the parents explaining who we were, how we met their adorable son, and asking them to please send Alex home when they were ready and also to call me so we could meet properly. Ten minutes later, Alex showed up devastated. The dad, who was working in the yard, refused to speak to him, snatched the note and crumpled it, while Michael went into the backyard.
Alex came home. Figuring it was a simple misunderstanding (maybe the dad thought my kid was selling something?), I walked over with Alex. I walked across the yard, and in my very-best-meeting-someone-for-the-first-time demeanor, introduced myself. Y'ALL. The man stood sideways, grinning, and completely refused to acknowledge me as I explained I'd written the note, etc.
The entire minute or so, he made sure I saw that he was ignoring me and that he was enjoying it. I finished my spiel as if I were not being completely ignored, said, "Come along, Alex", and we left. The moment we were out of earshot, I told him to stay away from that house, to run away if he sees that man on the street, and to be super-kind to Michael.
I am concerned for that child. What the ever-loving heck?
89. Coming Out On Top
I have a huge hill right outside my backyard. A family has been sitting on top of the hill right in front of my backyard. I caught the husband staring into the window and the wife was filming/taking photos of my house the very next day when they came by again. This is stalking and creepy. There's a park right next to the neighborhood that they could sit and do whatever.
Why sit right in front of my backyard? The first time they came, I came out onto my deck with my dog. My dog was going crazy barking at them and as soon as I sat down, the husband jumped up and started to walk away. The wife was slower and laughing as the two kids and their dog were leaving. Next weekend if they come again, I plan to come out with a megaphone.
I’m going to ask them why have you been sitting right in front of my backyard looking into my window and taking photos the past few days? No one else in the entire two developments sit on top of the hill because everyone has the decency to know it’s rude to sit right in front of someone's backyard. Still, I don’t know if I’m overreacting with this situation.
90. Watch Your Back
So this was almost 10 years ago. My dad moved to another state for work the summer I graduated high school. My dad had to leave a few months early for his scheduled start date and to have time to look for a new house while our family was packing the old one. Being unable to afford taking care of my 18-year-old self, I was forced to move with them much to my disappointment.
Still, my dad managed to pull some strings so that I could start my first job under him over the summer and get a jump start on enrolling at the local college. After a couple months of hotel living (paid for by dad’s company stipend) we found a great house that was relatively new, being rented out by the original owners. They had just finished building their new house by the lake and obviously didn't need their first house, so they thought renting it out would be a good investment.
This house was everything we were looking for, exactly where we wanted it to be. Near the schools for my siblings, near my dad's work, and with a pool and a rec room for movie nights and video games. The area and time of year made house hunting pretty tight at the time so my dad basically jumped on it. The landlord got the lease typed up from a template and my dad reviewed the whole thing before signing it.
Now my dad is a very meticulous person and has always ingrained the idea of keeping an eye out for loopholes that could be used against you. Read every word of every contract you sign and if something doesn’t seem clear, ASK! He isn’t a lawyer by any means and has made false assumptions himself, but he knows how to search law books if he needs to.
This is important later. We move in and get all settled, but quickly start to learn the truth. The landlords didn’t really want to leave their old house, they just couldn’t afford to keep both without extra income. They essentially viewed my family not as tenants, but as groundskeepers that paid them for permission to maintain their house.
One of the landlords for the most part wasn’t actually that bad, but the woman clearly wore the pants in the relationship and the man was busy with his full-time job as the local postmaster (also important later), so the woman did most of the landlord-type things. It was very clear that she no longer had anything else to do now since she had been a stay-at-home mom and their youngest daughter had started school.
I will say that I did not like this woman from the start. There were disturbing signs. There was a comment she made when we toured the house. In a very thick southern accent, it was something along the lines of not needing to worry about her younger daughter (who was adopted) growing tall enough for sports because she’s Asian.
This woman was a cartoonish stereotype who gave off narcissistic, white savior vibes. The orphanage lady from Despicable Me crossed with Paula Dean comes to mind. She also definitely did not like my mom and siblings when she first met them, as she had only met my dad and I who are white as white bread, but my mom is Hispanic so her and some of my siblings are more on the toasted whole wheat side.
She acted like it was a privilege that she was letting us live in “her house”. This lady would nitpick everything that wasn’t perfect about the house and loved showing up unannounced. We would get notes on the door about needing to water the flowers more, or that the grass is supposed to be mowed every Saturday, or don’t cut the invasive vines she planted and that were growing up the backside of the house.
I got up early to mow the lawn the next Saturday after the note to get her off our backs, and halfway through, a truck showed up with a paid lawn crew. Obviously, she hadn’t said a word about this to my parents. She would come to the door when my parents were gone and say she left something in the garage (which they had, like paint and insulation and other remodeling supplies), but then went upstairs because she was “checking on something she talked to my dad about”.
My dad of course had not spoken to her at all, and this was obviously an issue for my parents. But she didn’t stop there. At one point she tried to get my five-year-old brother to let her in right after he got off the bus. This was at a time of day when both my parents were usually working and I had just gotten out of class, but our middle siblings would have been home already.
So he wasn’t by himself, just no adults yet. To her surprise though, my dad had stayed home that day and parked inside the garage for once. He was so angry. He immediately told her she needed to leave and typed up an email to the male landlord stating that if they tried to enter the property again he would be going to court about it. This included not being permitted to enter the backyard.
She had obviously done this on numerous occasions, but the lease stated they had to give 48-hours’ notice if they needed to enter the property for ANY reason. They did not take this well and things just kept escalating. She would schedule “maintenance” on days we had planned for parties or family events, and we still have no idea how she knew when they would be.
She even had a tree removal service show up on my brother’s birthday to remove all the trees along the back fence. Supposedly for safety reasons, but that was obviously a lie. It did however prevent us from using the pool at our pool party. She would also claim all sorts of things weren’t allowed on account of HOA violations that my parents knew were false because the HOA president was also my little brother’s Sunday school teacher and they had brought up the issues with her.
The HOA president told us that she was a nightmare when they had lived in the neighborhood, and still showed up to the monthly meetings because she was still technically an owner and was using the meetings as an excuse to check up on us every chance she got, even asking the neighbors about us. The HOA was actually very lax in its regulations and mostly dealt with just the shared spaces and garbage removal.
My parents of course started looking for a place to move near the end of the lease and managed to secure a place three months before the end, but didn’t say anything to the landlords. Well come 30 days to the day before the end of the lease, she shows up at the door for no apparent reason. As I was the only adult home, I answered the door.
Just as I opened the door to hear her excuse, the mail truck pulled up behind her. She starts walking away as if she changed her mind because she thought my dad was home to talk to her, and I step out to grab the mail since it’s here. The postman gets out of his truck and says he has some certified mail that needs to be signed for by an adult. I still get chills thinking of the next events.
First, she pipes up, pointing at me: “He’s an adult, he can take it”. It was an eviction notice indicating that our landlords (standing three feet from me) had decided we were not keeping up to the standards of our lease and would not be renewing it. As such we should be out within 30 days. Well knowing that we were already moving, I just accepted it and went back inside.
It was very clear that she was there specifically to make sure we got the notice, which was only valid from the day it was officially received. She of course also knew exactly when it would get there, and likely timed it as such (again so that my parents weren’t home) because her husband, remember, was the postmaster. I called my dad right away and he was fuming.
Luckily we had actually already gotten the keys for the new house as the previous tenants were out the week before, so we were totally moved within two weeks and my dad and I spent the last two weeks going over every inch of the house to make sure there wasn’t a chip of paint or carpet stain in sight. We even went as far as repainting a couple rooms using the leftover paint in the garage.
Out of spite, my dad decided not to pay the last month's rent because we had paid first and last month's rent and security deposit when we moved in. Well, a month later, the couple have been harassing my parents about the last month's rent, and then claimed that we owed further beyond the security deposit because of all the “repairs” they had to make after we left.
We knew that was total nonsense because we had honestly left the place better than we got it. So one day we went by (we still lived pretty close) and peeked in the windows. My dad was wild with fury when we looked. Turns out, they were doing a full remodel and probably trying to get us to pay for it. This set a fire under my dad they would regret.
In that state, landlords are required to set up a specific bank account for security deposits that both the landlord and renter have access to that is not to be touched during the term of the lease. My dad, a couple months earlier, had asked the husband for the account information, having just recently discovered that rule while looking into ways to fend off their constant harassment.
Dad had only asked a couple of times and kind of let it slide because he was pretty high up the regional totem pole at work and always busy, including a lot of traveling. Now, however, he was on a mission and started demanding the security deposit be returned. In one particular phone call with the husband that was getting very heated, dad started spouting off the specific reference that he was reading right off the state’s website.
He very clearly heard the woman from the background say to her husband, “Is that the money that’s in the safe”? CHECKMATE. My dad immediately chimed in on not only that they had failed to meet state requirements, but also that the MINIMUM penalty, as stated on the state’s website in front of him, was forfeiture of the security deposit, but also any other dues and fees paid before move-in.
So not only were we not behind on rent and owing cost of repairs, but they actually owed us the deposit AND two months’ rent. My dad immediately pointed that out to them and added just to rub in that they couldn’t get out of it because ALL of their conversations for the last few months had been recorded either through email or the recording app on his phone.
91. The Ballad Of Frank
Meet my neighbor, Frank. He’s been my neighbor since I moved to the neighborhood around 8-9 years ago. To give a bit of a description of Frank, he’s a middle-aged divorced man with several kids, a love for riding motorcycles in the middle of the night, has a knack for confrontation, and has some sort of a superiority complex. This already sounds like a troublemaker, but you better brace yourself.
Here is a highlight reel from Frank’s extensive catalog of things he’s done. When we (my family) first moved into the neighborhood, we heard Frank might stir some trouble, but we didn’t have a terrible experience with the guy until a couple years later. Around this time, he picked up the hobby of flying drones. Actually, it was more like flying drones over people’s houses and looking at them with the drone’s camera.
Specifically, he liked to fly them over houses with teenage girls living there. It actually got to the point where he was put on the news, and he defended his actions in a pretty idiotic way. One of these girls that had been spied on by him talked about his desire to peep on her when she was in her pool to the news as well. While it did attract attention from the news, he was never faced with charges.
He basically got off scot-free. You’ll notice that this becomes a theme as the story goes on. Even with this attention on him with his perverted tactics, he still flew his drone every day, though he seemingly quit flying it over houses. He had a much stupider idea. Instead, he tried following people with it. This failed on his very first attempt.
On this attempt, he was following my sister and her friend (who were about eight at the time) when the drone crashed into a tree they were under. The drone lost power and dropped right in front of them. The drone fell with some force to it, to the point where if it had hit one of the girls, it might’ve done some actual damage considering how young they were and all.
My father confronted him about this, but all Frank did was scream and curse at him for daring to talk to him in such a manner. Although my dad ended the confrontation quickly due to not wanting to waste his time with a screamer, Frank decided he needed payback. You know, for something that was his fault. Remember when I wrote that he loved riding his motorcycle in the middle of the night?
For the next few days, he would wait till 1 or 2 am to rev his engine in front of our driveway and screech past our house at crazy speeds. Because we never went up to him and got mad, he grew bored from not being confronted. Not much happened other than his occasional late-night motorbike rides until about a year after the drone incident.
Something I didn’t mention at the start was that he has a love for owning an excessive amount of cars, motorcycles, and boats. Obviously, this takes up a large amount of space, more than a usual driveway and garage can hold. So, he began parking all of his cars and boats along the street. It got to the point where despite his house being about four down from ours, the vehicles were just about blocking our driveway.
He had them parked overnight, which our HOA does not allow. He got several violations for this, and even to the point where he got into a trial for excessive problems. Now, this started in late 2018. To this day, this court battle continues. This is due to extreme luck on his part as well as delay tactics. These tactics are appalling. Basically, he keeps writing letters to switch judges.
He does this by saying that the current one assigned to his case will be biased toward him, even if he and the judge have never spoken. They keep allowing him new judges to gather more evidence on him, but for now, he believes he’s winning. Once again, he gets off without any immediate punishment. The boat/car situation has been the main problem with him for these past few years.
But he’s done one other thing very recently (two days ago) which inspired me to share the story of Frank. Basically, about a month ago, Frank decided instead of wasting his valuable time walking his dogs and allowing them to use the bathroom, he would instead open his door and allow them to run free around the neighborhood until he saw fit.
These dogs aren’t regular-sized dogs though. They’re big dogs, and while I don’t know the exact breeds, I can tell they have Rottweiler features. He did this a few times before my dad decided to record him doing this, as it’s against the law. Frank did not like this. So after having a raging tantrum at my father, he began parking his large car right in front of our driveway.
It’s actually OK for him to do this, as it doesn’t completely block us from backing out of the driveway. It’s still very annoying, but knowing how much he loves to be confronted, we have not said a word to him. In the end, we were the ones getting revenge. It’s almost comical when we’re outside and we watch him park his car right in front of our house, and then he proceeds to make the LONG walk to his house.
Since it’s the summer and very hot outside where we live, we thought he’d stop by now. However, he’s continued for weeks. About a week ago, he attached a trailer to the already large car, making it more difficult for us to exit our driveway. But still, above board. At least, until he used a piece of cardboard to replace his license plate on his trailer.
We sent an email to code enforcement, but we didn’t call in since we knew they were already dealing with other Frank-caused problems. Two days ago, code enforcement knocked on our door. He said someone called in the car with the trailer and assumed it was ours because it was obviously parked right in front of our house.
We told him it was not ours, and it was Frank’s instead, and that we had video proof to back that up. As soon as we told him that, he had a surprised look on his face. He then revealed that Frank was the one who had called the vehicle in. That’s right: he called in his own parked trailer to get us in trouble. My mother wanted to walk the code enforcer to Frank’s house to have him dealt with.
The man said he was told by the higher-ups not to have any contact with him. Apparently, no one can contact him directly, since they don’t want him to have a harsh reaction. So for now, he gets off without a hitch. His karma will come soon. Frank has claimed several times throughout the years that he will move, yet never has. My parents have told me that I cannot speak to him as long as he’s living here.
Ever since then, I’ve been waiting to tell him my thoughts on him right before he leaves his house for a new one. I was in second grade when we moved here, and in fifth grade when we started having problems with him. Now, as I begin to move into junior year of high school, I doubt I will still live in this house the day he finally leaves.
Though I plan to come back home to celebrate the day he leaves if I’m in college when that happens.
92. Peeking Through The Trees
A few years ago, we lived in a suburb in eastern Pennsylvania. It was a pretty well-off community, with big houses and large plots of land. We'd moved in about a year earlier. Now, my parents like to do things themselves. They fix up the house and paint it themselves unless the job needs tall ladders, electrical work, or a professional.
This also extends to growing their own vegetables. Before this house, we lived on a six-acre farm in the same area and had a nice-sized garden where Mom could grow veggies and fruit. In this house, Mom wanted to grow food again. Because the soil sucked for growing plants, she had my dad make raised beds that she filled with good soil.
Our land was open on three sides, so my parents planted a "fence" of mini pine trees rather than an actual fence, which they weren't allowed to build in this neighborhood. Somebody complained that they could see the raised beds through the trees. Through. The. Trees. Because what my parents did in their own backyard was so important to them, they took it to the HOA.
The HOA said that people in this neighborhood didn't need to plant their own food and told my parents to get rid of it. Eventually my parents talked them out of it, because they said that it was healthier and boosted the image of the neighborhood as a friendly and healthy place to raise kids.
But still, getting rid of organically grown plants because someone could see the wooden raised beds through trees? That's a bit of a "What the heck’ moment.
93. A Disaster Of Dogs
The HOA president lives one street down from me. One day I was in my driveway changing the oil in my car. My dogs were sunbathing in the grass of my front yard. The HOA president was walking down the street and walked over to me, where she yelled at me for having my dogs off-leash.
I politely told her that I was on my property, the dogs weren't in the street, and were allowed to be off leash on my own lawn. She continued to yell at me and say she would report me to my landlord. But I had her there. I told her that I am the landlord, and she got even more angry.
Finally, she wandered off, but the next day I had an envelope in my mailbox full of all the dog laws in my town. Really?!
94. Treehouse Troubles
We had this one strange guy in our neighborhood who liked to build strange things in his house. Well, one day he decided to take his hobby outside and build a tree house in his backyard. Our HOA president was a city councilman at the time, and he was not happy in the slightest. The president's plan was deranged.
This turned into a two-year dispute where the HOA kept asking him to add "safety measures" to the structure in hopes that he would eventually give up and dismantle the tree house. Eventually, the HOA told him that he would have to have the plans signed and stamped by a qualified engineer saying that the structure was safe. But there was one thing they didn't know.
At the next meeting, he handed in the blueprints, signed and stamped...by none other than himself. That was a great meeting. It turns out that this guy had a PhD in civil engineering!
95. Don’t Stop Me Now
My old house's backyard bordered an HOA community. Our house was built 30 years before the community was built so we weren't part of it. We used to get notices about violations and threats of fines if we didn't correct them. Never did correct them. They finally sent legislative papers to repossess our house—but they had no idea who they were messing with.
We went to court with a tax map that showed our property was NOT part of the HOA community. The judge dismissed their suit against us and found them guilty of harassment. We didn't get awarded much, but I made sure to break every rule of theirs that I could until we moved.
96. Leave It Well Enough Alone
For the past few months, I've suspected that my upstairs neighbor has been taking some of my mail. I buy a lot of things online like books and craft supplies and every now and then there's been small things that were meant to arrive on a certain day that never did. One day, I caught her wandering around my front door. When I asked her what she was doing she said "Oh, I was looking for something I think I dropped into your yard”.
I got surveillance cameras installed a while ago, which were not noticeable to my neighbors. The camera that's pointed at my front door isn't visible from the driveway. So here comes the trap. I purchased a few postage boxes to set up for her. The first one was a glitter bomb. I set up the box to make sure she would get glitter to the face as soon as she opened it.
I packed it to make it look like a postage parcel, then sat it at my front door. 20 minutes later I saw her walking to my front door. She looked around then picked up the box and walked away. My only regret is that I didn't get to see her reaction when she got a face full of glitter. I haven't noticed any other mail going missing after that, but she will regret it if she does it again.
97. Your Term Is Up!
I had one neighbor who was the self-appointed mayor of the block. He would tell me all the time what I was doing wrong, from having my sprinklers on at the wrong time to not properly sorting my recyclables. I took his suggestions under advisement and even read the four-page typed note he wrote to me about the correct timing of the crabgrass preventer.
One evening, when I was cleaning off my deck, he walked up and began telling me about the latest landscaping issues. My niece, who was 13 at the time, was showering off after being in the pool. She walked out in a robe from the shower area and slung her suit over the fence to dry. I thanked him for his vast landscaping knowledge and told him we were off to dinner and shooed her inside.
I closed the slider and remembered I left the hose on, so I slipped the door back open and I saw her suit slid over the fence. I took two steps to the edge of the deck expecting to see her bathing suit on my grass. That’s when I spotted him—and it was the most disturbing sight of my entire life. The mayor was on his hands and knees in my grass, sniffing the suit crotch. We had a long talk about how he was going to come with me to the station.
98. Slow Your Roll
I rented a house in an HOA. It wasn’t too bad, just normal stuff, but every now and then some board members would tool around and hand out fines for dirty driveways and such. I wouldn’t have cared if the President and a board member didn’t live on the same street as me, and their driveways were in massive disrepair.
The board member’s son did some work on his truck and there was a massive oil spill, partly covered with a red towel, that sat there for eight months...while a few “rust-colored” streaks on our concrete was worthy of a fine.
The funniest was when the HOA decided to install very aggressive speed bumps. The ones that were there previously were fine, graded to not be too jarring but required you to slow down. The only accident that occurred while we were there was when the spouse of an HOA board member was driving after drinking. They plowed into a tree.
Still, there were always notices and mailings for people to slow down as “this is not a racetrack”. I guess they felt adding in a couple of literal asphalt “curbs” in the middle of the street would “show people” who dared to drive over 10 mph on the main road.
The only way over these things without feeling like you were going to break something on your car was to ease up the first side. Come to a complete stop. Then slowly ease down the drop. Once for the front wheels, another for the rear. Some people had just taken to driving on the grass around them, so they put up concrete barriers there.
After a few weeks, one of our neighbors, Jimmy, decided to pour diesel fuel on the speed bumps the day before the garbage trucks did their rounds. The speed bumps got completely destroyed. But it wasn’t over yet. The HOA reinstalled the bumps, and somehow made them even more aggressive...and a week later, Jimmy struck again.
They yanked them out again, and just paved over the holes. It was beautiful.
They did end up installing speed bumps a few months later, but they went with the stock plastic ones that bolt to the street. Which was much more preferable to the man-made Cliffs of Dover that were there previously.
99. HOA Karen
This happened over a year ago. I'm 29-year-old man and am a homeowner. I bought a house in 2019 from my uncle because he was well set and wanted to retire to his second home by a lake. Before buying the house, my uncle warned me that the neighborhood has an HOA, but it only affects those who joined it and my uncle thankfully did not.
Besides that, the price my uncle was offering was half the home's value. I couldn't pass up the offer. So I bought a house in an HOA neighborhood that wasn't a part of the HOA. I thought I was okay. I was so, so wrong. Right after I moved in, I got a knock at the door. When I opened it, I was greeted by an older woman with short greying blonde hair and a face covered in thick makeup.
She was holding a welcome to the neighborhood gift basket. She introduced herself as the president of the HOA and asked to come in so she could help me fill out some forms. I knew what she was trying to do because my uncle warned me she did this to every new homeowner in the area who wasn't a part of the HOA. I quickly and bluntly stated I was not going to join her HOA. The change was frightening.
Her smile quickly disappeared and she started saying that I did not have a choice as all new homeowners are mandated to join. I told her I knew in advance that was a total lie, and that I will not be paying any dues or fines. I said will be ready to call a lawyer if I have to. She called me a thorn to the neighborhood at that point and said she'd be back.
We did not speak to each other for some time. I expected her to start sending me fines in the mail, but the most I usually got were letters stating that my grass was getting too tall, or my driveway needed sweeping. Those never bothered me because they are normal home chores and need to be done regularly anyway. But several neighbors that were on the HOA's side made it clear they didn't like me because I didn't join, just like my uncle.
I said that was fine. We're neighbors, but we don't have to be friends. They said that was fine too because I'm an outsider and they'll never accept me until I join the HOA. Later in early 2020, I got word from a friend that people were starting to buy a lot of disinfectant, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer in mass. I decided the best option was to order these things online.
I got eight big 12-packs of toilet paper, a case of 20 bottles of hand sanitizer, three boxes of disposable latex gloves, a couple of boxes of disposable face masks, and a case of 20 large cans of name-brand disinfectant spray. I set for the delivery to be signed for only me as I did not trust anyone not to take my packages if they were just left on my porch.
When the packages were delivered, several neighbors saw me getting lots of toilet paper and some other packages that contained the other stuff. And just because I'm a paranoid guy, I still bought more of the same stuff when I saw it in stores. Like those small cheap four-packs of toilet paper, or off-brand disinfectant sprays. I bought them because I had a feeling some friends or family might need some soon.
And I was right. As expected, toilet paper, disinfectant, and sanitizer pretty much disappeared from store shelves for miles around. And people were fighting over hoarding it. Meanwhile, I've got a very generous supply that I still haven't come close to using up. However, word of my supply got around fast when people started needing some.
A friend of mine ran out of toilet paper and had no hand sanitizer. So I gave him a couple of the generic four-packs of TP and a bottle of sanitizer at my door. A few family members ran out too, and I shared with them as well. They were all extremely grateful. But then came the downside. I ended up with several neighbors knocking on my door and asking to buy my supply or wanting handouts.
I refused and said I only gave some of what I had away to friends and family. They made it pretty clear to me before that we'd never be friends since I refused to join the HOA. Moreover, if I were to give some to one neighbor, they'd all want my supplies, and then I'd run out really fast. They didn't like this and harassed me several times from the sidewalk.
I just ignored them. Later the HOA Karen showed up at my door and told me several neighbors had run out of all the items that this post is about. It got ridiculous fast. She then said she wasn't asking, but demanding I share my stock with my neighbors to set a good example. I told her to buzz off because that had nothing to do with me. I may be a jerk, but I'm a well-prepared jerk.
Also, I've read her HOA bylaws online. So even if I was a member of her HOA, which I was not, I wouldn't have to give up my stock either way. She left while yelling at me that one day I'd regret not being a good neighbor or being a part of her HOA. Well, I did regret it. The next time I went to work I was notified around noon by the cameras I had at my house that there was a thief breaking into my home.
I could see video of them on my smartphone and it looked like a woman in a spandex suit with her face covered by a hockey mask. I called the authorities immediately and was allowed to clock out at work so I could rush home. Right around the time I got there, officers were walking HOA Karen out in handcuffs to a cruiser. She'd broken into my home by using a crowbar to force open the back door.
When they caught her, she was tossing all of my toilet paper and any other supplies she could grab out into my backyard, where her kids were picking it up and bagging it. I pressed charges and HOA Karen got six months in the slammer and probation. HOA Karen's husband called me to apologize for his wife and told me that he had been planning a divorce for a while because this isn't the first time she's been in trouble with the law.
CPS got involved too because she was using her kids to help pilfer me. So he was going to file for full custody in the divorce. HOA Karen didn't return and someone new was elected HOA president in her place. Her husband didn't move and I see him from time to time. There's no hard feelings between us. And yes, he did get full custody of his kids because his wife had a darker history with the law than I thought.
We're sort of friends now too as we've occasionally had a drink together and he helped me replace my back door that his ex broke. I'm making this post more than a year later because I just saw HOA Karen again. I was visiting some friends in another city and saw her working at the local supermarket there, bagging groceries. As soon as we saw each other she obviously recognized me because she scowled and refused to look at me again the entire time I was there. Karma is a real witch, isn’t it Karen!
100. No Shame
One of my neighbors was expecting their first baby. The wife had passed out and went unresponsive at home while an elderly relative was visiting. The baby was born at the hospital, and the wife's condition rapidly deteriorated. Only the baby came home. The husband was understandably overwhelmed when all this happened. The poor guy didn’t leave the hospital until his wife passed a few days later.
Their townhome only had two parking spots. Our HOA had recently changed the rules for our overflow parking. Residents had been allowed to park no more than four days a month in those spaces. Then it went to 90 minutes a month which became effective two days after the wife went to the hospital. The wife's car was in the overflow parking lot when the elderly relative was there visiting.
The wife's mom came to care for the baby and help with funeral arrangements. She flew in, took a taxi to her daughter's home, and got the extra car keys from the house. She went to the overflow parking, and her daughter's car was gone. The HOA towed it. The husband came home with the baby and got all the mail that had accumulated in his absence. What he found was truly awful.
There were multiple fines from the HOA, from the towed car to trash cans being out past 4:30 PM and on non-trash days, to some weeds that had sprouted in the driveway. There was also a bill from the HOA president, who "impounded" the trash cans and recycling bins with a $30/day "storage fee" per item. The HOA president lived on their street.
He was aware that an ambulance had come and that no one had been at the house for days. He would not dismiss the fines because the husband was still physically capable of going back to the house. The situation ended up on the news, but, unfortunately, you just can't shame some people. But it wasn't all bad. One of our other neighbors realized there was nothing in the HOA rulebook about needing HOA permits for rummage sales.
So, they organized a giant neighborhood rummage sale to raise money for the fines. The look on the HOA president's face was priceless when he tried to shut it down, and multiple people came out with our 300-page by-laws book to show it was within the rules. The rummage sale was also reported as an update on the news.
We were able to raise a few thousand to help our neighbor out. I eventually moved away and will never buy another property with an HOA because of the petty nonsense HOAs bring out. The husband ended up moving back to where their families were from, partly due to not wanting to deal with the HOA.
