Moved house because of neighbours?

Coopsy85

Not moved because of neighbours, but didn't buy because of them - went to view a lovely house which had it been in a different site would probably have put in an offer for it, but the neighbours house put us off - had all the stereotypical signs of bad neighbours down to the mattress in the very overgrown front garden, the back garden was a jungle and the vendors wouldn't allow any evening viewings! 

last_mile

@Tippytoes and everyone else that has related their stories, you have no idea how much i needed to read you silver lining stories.
I have owned and lived in my ground floor flat for 6.5 years and for the last 1.5 years of that its been living hell.
Its gotten so bad that between the blasting music you would swear was coming from within the room it is so loud and the trouble they bring to the building, I am attempting to move.
it makes me sad because like you @Tippytoes i LOVE my flat and the location etc i just hate half the resident of this building and desperate want them out but alas the council have no care once someone is housed.
i am struggling to sell it due to their actions both with noise and destruction to the building so i am stuck waiting to see if the council wish to buy it off me.
The stories here just give me hope that this is the right move.

Mrcsmrs

We’ve moved in the past due to rude and obnoxious neighbours. We’d been in a lovely semi in a quiet village and new people moved next door to the house that wasn’t connected to ours. Instantly decided they didn’t like our dogs and started complaining about them to anyone who would listen. Our dogs are large but very gentle Setters and hadn’t ever caused an issue for anyone in the past. Neighbour hated them on sight, decided that their poop in our garden was attracting the flies in summer when he wanted to have a BBQ and called out the local dog warden, then the RSPCA on us. Both checked and agreed there was no issue, garden was cleared daily anyway, but he still wouldn’t stop making complaints. We eventually moved to get away from the stress of it all because I really hate confrontation and he would always complain to me every time I went in or out of the house. We are still good friends with the neighbour our house was connected to and she mentioned a couple of years later that his garden still gets lots of flies despite there not being any dogs next door now so I can only assume there was a plant attracting them 🤷‍♀️ we’re glad to be away from him though! 

Horrible that one person can make the biggest investment you ever make an absolute nightmare for you and it’s completely out of your control most of the time. 

FinallyStoppedLurking

We didn't move because of horrible neighbors however we were very relieved to get away from them. We basically ruled out semi detached houses with our new search (I realise we are in a lucky position to be able to do this).

Greymug

We've been in both situations (being annoyed by the loud neighbours and being the loud neighbours) in the same flat.

We've been in my current flat for almost 5 years. Problems started at the beginning of the year when new tenants moved into the flat beside us. Our bedroom shares a wall with the neighbours' bedroom and even if it's an old tenement building with thick walls, we could hear a lot of noise, specifically this new polish hippy guy playing bongos at 2am in the morning or hammering and sawing who knows what in his bedroom. Confronted him a couple of times, the situation would get better for a couple of weeks, then noise would start increasing again so I would have to bang at their door to give him a wee reminder.

Spoke to the landlord, who said because of pandemic he couldn't kick him out; spoke to anti social behaviour team at the council, which proved itself to be completely useless.

So, after 3 months of stress, we just swapped rooms: fortunately the bedroom and living room in my flat are pretty much the same size, so we spent a whole weekend moving furniture from one room to the other. Now our bedroom doesn't share a wall with anyone and we've been sleeping like a baby. And when I'm in the living room and I know the guy is in the bedroom, I crank up the volume of the TV or my stereo and give the sucker a bit of payback so he knows what it feels like. Maybe a bit petty? Yes. Do I care about it? Not at all

Tippytoes

I almost feel guilty being so happy in my current home, particularly after reading some of the comments here.  To all of you who are still suffering, I genuinely wish you contentment and peace for the future.

lookstraightahead

I'm in my fifties and can honestly say I have never had a problem with neighbours. I'm quite scared of dogs so wouldn't choose to live by people with large dogs, or dogs that I might be frightened by. My biggest issue is road noise. I have lived on a main road in the past and that made me ill, with the noise of lorries etc. 

Swash

Currently in the process of moving, partly due to neighbours. We also ruled out anything other than a detached house, so have had to move further away from family as there are hardly any detached houses in this area. It began to feel like I was walking on egg shells whilst living here, because they complain about everything! Never again will I feel like I can't have friends stay over because of worrying about what the neighbours will complain about this time. I really can't wait.

lillypoo

This should probably be asked in a new thread but its kind of on topic, 
has anyone ever asked their council to initiate a section 215 notice against their neighbours?

Slinky

Coopsy85 said:

Not moved because of neighbours, but didn't buy because of them - went to view a lovely house which had it been in a different site would probably have put in an offer for it, but the neighbours house put us off - had all the stereotypical signs of bad neighbours down to the mattress in the very overgrown front garden, the back garden was a jungle and the vendors wouldn't allow any evening viewings! 

Similar, we didn't buy a property because of the neighbour, who was also the vendor. The vendor was building a new home in the garden of the one we were buying. Very late on in the process it turned out the vendor was trying to retain a right of access up 'our' drive and wanted to retain ownership of the passage down the side of the garage which was the access route from front to back garden. We would not be allowed to store our bins there, despite that being the place the vendor stored his bins whilst he lived in the old house. He showed all the signs of being a control freak, and we didn't like the way he belittled his wife in front of us. So we pulled out.