NIghtmare Neighbour

benmeg

Hello,

Me and my partner just moved into our first rented property together and we are really struggling with our neighbour. She is an older lady around 60ish who lives nextdoor to us. When we moved in we were told by our other neighbour that she has a tendency to shout horrible comments at number 4 (we are number 2 and she is number 1), she would also put bird feed, chillpowder and corn flakes outside his car and have signs up in her car directed at him - he has decided not to do anything about it but we have lived here for two weeks and its already testing my anxiety.

We had our first run in with her on Saturday - we were parked along our garage like some of the other properties as our allocated parking space was taken - and she came in with her hand continuously on her horn with her music really loud. My partner decided to see what was going on and the neighbour then called me a 'b*tch'. My partner tried to explain to her why we had parked our car there and she responded by with 'if you come any closer ill call the police' so we left her to it. She then started to shout insults directed at us - accusing us of being disrespectful and she wish she had other tenants and she wants to call our landlord. WE then decided to put our car in the garage but as we thought our car is too big to go in the garage which then led to us damaging our car trying to get it in just to try and get her to stop shouting. our car is now parked on the road.
Later that evening I went out for a fag and she was moaning about us again whilst i was sat there. She then slammed her door 5 times within about 10 seconds at bloody midnight!

Since our first personal incident with her she has continued to get worse - still shouting the retorts towards number 4, but now also shouting about how disrespectful we are. Her behaviour has also changed as she is now in a habit of chucking buckets of water outside her window when i am having a fag, not directly on our property but enough for it to hit me. She has black sacks full of rubbish just accumulating outside her house.

I work in a primary school so am now off for 6 weeks with a lot of time on my hands and i am constantly on edge. I suffer from anxiety as it is and have for years but its been just over two weeks living her and i cant cope with being here without my partner.

We really are not sure how to deal with this as we are new tenants in this property but she owns her house and has for 20 odd years so i feel like we are at a loss.

Any advice or ideas would be welcome!

LawAbiding

Do you if she is renting too?

Are the other neighbours renting?

All you all with same landlord?

If so, complain to landlord, but I guess it's not that straight forward....

benmeg

She owns her house whereas the other 4 of us in the block are renting. I dont think we have the same landlord - all our issues go through loveitts instead of our landlord.

We are just so worried that if we complain its going to get worse

Crumble2018

She clearly has mental issues, so I doubt there's much you can do. I'm afraid I'd be looking to move as soon as you are free from your tenancy.

benmeg

Our agreement is 12 months and we've been here 18 days - so we dont have much choice

m0bov

I think you really need to go in hard on this one. I have had to deal with similar situations like this. Given you work in schools with eCRB then you really don't want someone accusing you of something.

I would suggest:
Call 101 NOW and report what's happened, get a crime number and ask for a local PCSO or SNO to come round and have a word with her.

Speak with your LL, get him to contact the freeholder, she has a lease and they could take action against her for breaking covenants. However its between the LL and the Feeeholder. Try to make the point that anyone else renting would have the same issues.

Video anything that happens, by a cheap action cam and keep it to hand.

Do you have any legal cover or advice line? Unison? Try them for legal advice.

benmeg

Thats what we plan to do - we are only young. im 20 and my boyfriend is 23 - we just want a straight forward easy life in our new home and just feel like we cant get that. We have legal cover in our home insurance so that could help - thank you for your advice!

ska_lover

This is the problem when we move somewhere new, we don't REALLY know what our immediate neighbours are going to be like, do we.

We worked so hard to own our own house - loved this place, and on moving in day - in the middle of the afternoon, queue Bob - next brand door neighbour - introducing himself by screaming at us that we were 'moving in too loudly' screaming and swearing

Bob was in his late 60s or older - we didn't really know how to handle it. I had always been brought up to respect my elders (but now think it is incorrect to offer respect based purely on someones age- that's another thread)

There is only the two of us here, no kids these days, no pets, we don't have parties, and we just wanted a quiet life. We certainly didn't want to be arguing over silly nonsense during our downtime with an elderly guy and we rarely responded to him and always civilly, even though I wanted to tell him to F off, I never did

But Bob didn't seem to want to let us get on with living our lives......it got to the stage where everything we did, Bob was at our door. Wallpaper stripping on a Saturday afternoon? Oh Bob was very verbally aggressive about that. Bob clearly wanted to assert his dominance having lived on the street for 40+ years

He was constantly complaining about noise, we had not even set a stereo up - things like the TV at normal volume, our jet-wash in the garden was a noise, even our boiler (brand new) firing up - was a cause of him knocking the door going bezerk

It really started doing our heads in, completely took the shine off of new home ownership and we started thinking about selling up and going back to renting. We were completely devastated

One day I got home from work to find Bob standing on my doorstep (hubby was in the house watching a film) - Bob was ready to rant again. He said ''Your TV is too loud'' - to which I responded, that I would love to hear how loud it actually sounds from his side of the wall.

Bob took me into his home and turned down his own TV, then took an an empty glass from his cabinet and pressed it against the adjoining wall to listen - then went to pass the glass to me ''here...listen''

I could not believe what I was hearing or seeing. But I was glad I went in to see things from his point of view

I sat down with Bob for a good half hour, and explained to him that what he was doing, was an invasion of our privacy, we were just making normal day to day living noises, and if he is living in silence in his own home, with a glass to the wall - then yes, he will hear low level noise, because he is listening for them. He needed to let us live in peace, as that is what we wanted for us, and also for him

I explained to him how he had made our lives difficult for months and we were planning to leave, and to that end, he was horrified - he said we had been the best neighbours he had ever had

Anyway, turns out that Bob had previously had several sets of nightmare neighbours himself and I believe he was expecting more of the same.

After that convo, Bob never complained about anything again. Yes he was a difficult man initially. But I am glad we got to understand each other.

Bob and us were never best pals, but we used to take in parcels, swap xmas cards, and I always used to take him a small hamper round at xmas as he didn't seem to have any family. Maybe that is why he was such a tough goat

The point of my long ramble
I do not know if there is anyway you could speak to this woman, to find out what makes her tick. It might not make a difference at all, I do not know if what I am saying would help at all in your case - but I think eventually this is going to have to come to a head

There is nothing worse than arguing with neighbours - and for me personally (in our case) - I wasn't interested in the rights or wrongs, I just wanted it to stop

This is how I found to strength to speak with Bob that day - and ended up empathising that in reality, reading between the lines, he was a lonely old guy - who was scared. He was scared of being the victim, so he went on the offensive. He was wrong to do that, but that was his viewpoint. Bob did not have mental health issues, Bob was scared - scared of the prospect of new unknown neighbours

If it were me, I would make one last ditch attempt with this woman. Something like take a box of chocolates round and say 'Sorry if we got off on the wrong foot....'

and if that didn't help, I would be moving as soon as possible.

It may well be that nothing you do makes a difference, and that is not on you - you sound like decent people - unfortunately there are some batsh1t pple in the world, who think they own their slice of it

m0bov

benmeg wrote: »

Our agreement is 12 months and we've been here 18 days - so we dont have much choice

Do you have a break clause?

m0bov

benmeg wrote: »

Thats what we plan to do - we are only young. im 20 and my boyfriend is 23 - we just want a straight forward easy life in our new home and just feel like we cant get that. We have legal cover in our home insurance so that could help - thank you for your advice!

Let us know what insurance say, also what your safer neighboured say.

Afraid this could happen to anyone.

ska_lover

elsimsy wrote: »

She clearly has mental issues, so I doubt there's much you can do. I'm afraid I'd be looking to move as soon as you are free from your tenancy.

She possibly has mental issues
She possibly has something else going on
She possibly is just a hag - some people are just vile - no other explanation