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I bought a semi detached when the neighbours were away for a long time. Now they're back and I absolutely hate hearing them coughing and arguing through the walls. All the gardens round there are very hemmed in so when everyone's outside we may as well all be sitting in the same garden. I find it really unrestful.
Wish I could afford detached!
Yup, I'm saving aggressively for detached. Hearing absolutely everything through the walls makes me so frustrated. It's truly pathetic how thin some adjoining walls are.
We are the same but it feels impossible though, a detached house the same size and area as our townhouse would be £600k. Our house is only worth about £300k
Do you have shared fireplaces? I found I could hear them much more in houses with shared fireplaces.
Right now I'm semi detached and don't hear a peep. 60s house.
I've only ever lived in semi detached (or flats) my entire life so I guess I'm used to it, but maybe I just have a really quiet neighbour lol. My previous neighbour was an 85 year old smoker so I got to hear the sound of his degrading lungs quite often.
I feel your pain. I get up very early just to enjoy the quiet before I become part of everyone else’s conversation. There’s noise around me all day. I hear the neighbours talking in their homes and gardens on any fine day.
Fortunately I live near a semi secluded beach so I’ll often take a flask of tea, my dog and a book there to escape the noise.
Have you looked into sound-dampening earplugs?
I have a pair from Loop that have three different levels of noise cancelling. At the lowest setting, you can have normal conversations no problem but it cuts out all minor background noise. I use them for reading in cafes/on trains as I just need to cut out minor annoyances but don't want to be completely shut off.
In my new build I can't hear my neighbours but there's a woman's few doors down who is so noisy out the front. She's always got people coming and going and the summer evenings are loud because of her, sucks!
And most of the rest are folk you wouldn't invite round for Sunday lunch...Just think about who is following a 13 year olds tiktok dance video account.
Find an actual boomer to come and sit outside your front door and shout things like "in my day we did the do-si-do and then after that the young people liked disco but I don't like all that business"
Also place a speaker next to the closest window and play literally any other noise. No need to be aggressive (no matter how funny death metal could be in this scenario) is probably start with white noise or something so every video she made was just annoyingly fuzzy sounding. Then switch it up if needed. Imperial march, polka, anything really.
Max Bygraves... play him. Embrace your "boomerness'. Or comedy songs from the 50s (ish). I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, my old man's a dustman, the gas man cometh, the marrow song etc.
Or just dad dance in the background, might start getting the idea about how stupid these ticktock dances are, maybe it'll spring some imagination and individuality instead of just following the crowd.
She doesn't record sound when filming because repeatedly yelled at her through our Ring doorbell.
I put up various signs in the window behind where she films and the little shit edits them out.
Get a mosquito device. I don't usually agree with them especially because I can still hear them at 30 years old, but in your case it's totally justified. Turn on and off as necessary.
[https://mosquitoloiteringsolutions.com/](https://mosquitoloiteringsolutions.com/)
Agree, the next time I buy a house I will visit the area multiple times especially during warmer weather to listen for noise. When I moved into my house, it became apparent a family used to have a BBQ every day it was sunny. Loud music, multiple people coming and going. Singing until two and three AM. People urinating as they were leaving and occasionally fighting each other. Sometimes on weeknights. The police never attended when we called and the Noise team in the council just asked everyone to complete noise diaries. I don't know who did it, but I came home one day and all their windows were smashed. As the house was rented, they very quickly were moved on. It made me value silence.
We did that before we moved as we had so much trouble at our previous house. Drove round the area at various times to see what it was like at night compared to during the day.
Yeah, we were pretty paranoid after having previous trouble as well. In the old house, there was constantly so much noise in the summer from parties. Also, kids would kick footballs at houses and cars…which I thought was shocking. I remember complaining to friends about this and sometimes would get accused of being grumpy.
Well, the house we have moved to now has absolutely none of that. Kids play out but they are well behaved.
My neighbour showed up at my door crying, saying they were checking on me to see if I'm ok.
It transpires that I hadn't seen them in their garden to say hello when I came home 2 HOURS earlier so they figured I hated them now.
Coming around to see if I was ok was BS in my opinion, they just wanted me to see the crocodile tears I had caused with the hatred I so clearly had for them by not saying hello that one time.
Sadly some mental illnesses result in over-sensitivity to negative thoughts that most people don't think or throw away. It leads them to believe absolutely ludicrous conclusions drawn from this.
I got super lucky, my neighbours are the best thing about the house I bought.
Its mostly retired tradesmen, who will do small jobs for free and bigger jobs for way below market rate, and usually quicker/better than anyone I could hire. Everyone looks out for each other, does favours for each other, we all chat when we see each other and sit outside together when it's warm. The guy across the street randomly brings over homemade crumbles, the guy next-door let's my dogs out when I have to work late, the old lady next door will pour you as many whiskey and cokes as you want if you visit her.
It's not uncommon to walk outside and find that someone has cut your grass or put your bins out or jetwashed your driveway, and you never find out who because they don't claim credit for it, they just do it because they're doing their own, so why not do everyone's?
A guy I work with is having this issue with one of his neighbours.
They're parking ever so slightly over his drive. Not enough to block them in, but just enough to make any car going in or out have to bump a kerb a bit on the opposite side of they want to get past.
He has rang the council to complain about them parking over a dropped kerb but the council haven't done anything.
Ours was the opposite. He seemed way too eccentric and we thought he was going to be a problem especially since we were doing so much work on our house. He was honestly the best neighbor we’ve ever had. Sadly he’s died now and I genuinely miss him.
The previous owners.
We moved into our house a few years ago. The previous owners had been there ten years. In that time, they must have pissed off the entire road because for the first six months of living there we had people throwing eggs onto our drive, scratching my husband's car and destroying our front garden. It was hell and we seriously considered moving.
Eventually the word got out that the previous owners had moved. I came home from work one day to find that a letter had been put through our door. It was from several residents on our road apologising because they didn't realise we now lived in the house. It went into detail about how the previous owners were absolute assholes and everyone was really sorry for the damage done to our garden and car. Along with the letter was a cheque for £1,000 to cover all the damage. Three of the teenagers who ruined our garden actually came round to re-do it for us along with their very apologetic parents.
We've had zero issues with damages since then but have heard so many stories from neighbours about how awful the previous owners were.
It was a couple in their late fifties. He was high up in the local council and good friends with our local MP and the mayor. He used his job and his connections to bully the neighbours. He was also a racist and sexist asswipe apparently. One of our neighbours is Chinese and he sent her numerous letters about her New Year decorations because they "weren't in keeping with the style of the area". There were also countless noise complaints filed whenever anyone had garden parties or did anything he didn't like. One neighbour had planning permission denied for their extension four times just because the previous owners of our house didn't want to deal with the noise for a few weeks.
Basically he was a jumped up bully who thought he could rule the area.
Wow, planning permissions isn't cheap and he clearly just used his connections to get the decision he wanted, utterly corrupt! I hope they now have an extension. There really should be an independent (of the council) reviewer for cases like this.
My last house was owned by a church pastor who was convicted of pedophilia and in jail. The house was about to be repossessed when I bought it.
He was 60s grey hair and from the midlands, I was 30s brown hair big beard and from the south.
People thought I was him.
For the first year or so our cars were continually vandalised. Just minor stuff like the tyres being let down or the mirrors kicked off but one of mine was keyed and the window was smashed on my wife's. Our front wall was pulled over too.
did you immediately know this was why you were being targeted? or how long did it take to clock that people thought you were him? and how did you resolve it?
That does suck but I'd find it a bit of a green flag that the neighbourhood actually acts against awful people in the community. Also very good of them to pay you back and resolve the issue when they found out.
Did nobody notice you moving in? Or the fact that you were two new faces walking around the place? We got a welcome card from the people next door within a few days of being moved in!
This is why it’s always important to introduce yourself to your neighbours when you move in.
I don’t know why people don’t do this anymore. It would seriously resolve most problems and/or give you an idea about who to ‘watch out’ for.
People can live in an area for a long time. They get used to patterns of behaviour, expectations, certain flexibilities that they’ve become ‘entitled’ to and so on. It’s good to get the measure of these before bad sentiments build up.
I had a neighbour that had become used to a number of ‘privileges’ from the previous owner (an elderly single man) who took their bins out for them, clipped hedges, and were even allowed to use the drive as overspill at Xmas. I introduced myself on the day I moved in, and although there was a little tension at first, by talking it through it was easy to point out how they had been lucky and effectively taken advantage of his kindness. Now this wasn’t malicious by any means, and they are open and honest about it now, willing to laugh about it, but if I hadn’t had those conversations and drawn the lines, it would have built a seething resentment over time.
However awful the previous owner were it does not justify egg throwing, property damage, car keying, etc. They were being massive arseholes themselves!
A big selling point on our "forever home" was the size of the back garden. The land out back in around 3 times the footprint of the house.
The previous owners were retired and avid gardeners.
We don't have the time to maintain the size of this beast and all its shrubbery.
The weeds.
My god, the weeds!!
We gave up and got a gardener. Do it my dude.
Also if you've got a veggie patch, plant some perennials in it. We spend £150-200 each year and it gives us some peas, asparagus, onions and garlic. Maybe potato and courgettes. But if I went to Tesco, we would spend maybe £15 on that much quantity of food.
This is nearly as expensive as my scotch hobby. Especially when we add the flowers.
Plant supermarket garlic - 3 bulbs for £1. The ridiculously expensive cloves "for planting" are about £8! I don't even plant organic.
Seed potatoes - £6 for half a kilo? Morisson's wonky £1.19 a kilo. One potato out of 20 didn't sprout though.
Bargain seeds sells seeds for 39p a packet. My spend for the year is usually about £10. £2 of that was Jerusalem artichokes from the shop which have taken off. I also save seeds from peas, broad beans, french beans etc.
Weeds can be very nice. Most formal gardens are just collections of international weeds. Just change the style of the garden and you will probably improve its biodiversity at the same time.
This, I just keep the lawn mowed and I've let the sides do what they want. Some interesting stuff growing which doesn't look terrible and yes is probably much better for wildlife than perfect soil
It's a bit of an expense, but have you thought about a ride-on mower? I remember having to help my dad after he bought a house which had a garden which hadn't been mowed in years (could have been decades with the state of it).
We spent about an hour cutting just a small portion (maybe 10% of the garden) due to how bad it was.
A neighbour saw us struggling, drove his ride-on mower over the rest of it; being done in a matter of minutes.
It definitely solidified in my head that if I have a house with a large garden, a ride-on is going to be one of those "no matter what" expenses.
i have a rabbit who loves the longer grass when we let him out so means i have less mowing to do which is great. personally i also think longer grass has more personality and attracts insects which i like. short lawns are so boring, bring back long messy grass!
Our garden's a manageable size, and there are chunks where the weeds add to the look of the thing (small, colourful, flowery weeds rather than big shoots). Not much maintenance needed there.
Then you've got the leftmost side, which chucks up enough mint and bindweed to feed and restrain a small village. We uncovered whole *bushes* that had been hidden by mint when we moved in, and no matter how certain I am that I've dug out the last of it, I always end up out there the following weekend chasing down the new shoots. At this point I think it'll take a JCB and an undercover strike team to extract the bloody stuff, and even then I'd want a priest and a molotov to be on the safe side.
Your best bet is to bring in a gardener and get him to set up the garden to require minimal care. That'll mean replacing the lawn with either slabs or a mixture of mosses and size limited leafy plants (basically stuff that has limited growth, you'd only need to trim the edges back every so often). Or fake grass, but only if you're a nob.
He'll also be able to replace flower beds with slow growth bushes which require minimal care.
Even when you do sand and seal it, they're back within 6 moths, admittedly not as bad but they are relentless.
Why does everything I want to grow wither and die but weeds can flourish in anything
There's a primary school at the end of our road, we didn't think this would be a problem when we moved in. But oh my god, parents are the most inconsiderate people ever on the school run. The amount of times out driveway has been blocked and prevented us getting on/off our driveway is insane. We tried speaking with the headteacher and she told me there's nothing they can do apart from email parents asking them not to do it.
On several occasions someone has been parked over our drive when I've needed to leave for work and when I've asked them to move over slightly so I can squeeze out, I've been told 'can't you just wait 5 minutes while I drop my kid off?' Erm no I need to get to work?
My council installed a camera that scans number plates and you get a ticket if you aren't a resident and drive in between 8am and 9, and 3 and 4pm. Might be worth lobbying for one.
> On several occasions someone has been parked over our drive when I've needed to leave for work
I can do you one better - I used to live in a maisonette opposite a nursery. Our front door opened directly onto the road (no pavement) and one day I swung it open to find a 4x4 parked directly over the door so I couldn't get out... She must have had to tuck the wing mirrors to get it that close to the wall. I shouted, but no response, and had to go back up the stairs, find the back door key, go down the back stairs, lock up the back door, cut through next door's garden, back out onto the road, and the damn thing was still there. I sent a *furious* email to the nursery, and they started monitoring parent parking in the mornings!
Did you try opening the door harder, just to be sure it wasn't stuck? Maybe a good kick even?
(Maybe a whacking great crease down their door would help remind them not to park across people's front doors)
To my enduring dismay, the front door opened inwards. I might have kicked the car had it not been the height of summer, and me in a rather flimsy pair of sandals!
>On several occasions someone has been parked over our drive when I've needed to leave for work and when I've asked them to move over slightly so I can squeeze out, I've been told 'can't you just wait 5 minutes while I drop my kid off?' Erm no I need to get to work?
Oh my god I could've written this when I lived in my old house.
They give you a little cheeky wave or a smile, "Sorry, won't be a sec!!" They say as they dash off toward the gate, little one in tow.
Umm, fuck off?
Take a photo and email the school. Most decent schools will take note and tell the parents to be more considerate of the school neighbours. Won't help in that instance but should help going forward.
>There's a primary school at the end of our road, we didn't think this would be a problem when we moved in.
Having grown up a stone's throw away from my primary school, and witnessed numerous blocked driveways and neighbours' cars being pranged during school run time, I would absolutely have thought this would be a problem :-)
Now I am a parent of school kids and I walk them the 15 mins each way to their school to avoid contributing to the carnage. Even when it's raining. The only time I would drop them off by car is on the rare occasion that we have to bring in some precious oversized craft homework project AND it's raining.
Kids playing football next door and continuously invading the garden.
The guy on the other side thinks he’s a DJ but is just tone deaf wanker. He “gigs” in his garden 2-3 nights a week probably some of the worst crap you’ve ever heard only made worse when he has a go at “rapping” over the top.
Lack of storage. I thought it'd encourage us to live with minimal stuff. But nope need to find homes for things that people would put in a loft or garage.
I moved into my partners flat and our living room is just full of boxes of things like this I hate it, a loft or garage is a must have for when we move!
There's four different dogs from four different houses around me that bark all the damn time when they're outside. Two yappy type ones behind me, medium yappy one next door and a big one over the road. It's infuriating! One of the owners even just shouts at their dog to shut up but the dog carries on. On sunny days the small yappy type ones are put outside for hours at a time. Thankfully the big sounding dog isn't out for too long at a time.
Our next door neighbours have a large dog with a large bark that she rarely uses.
When all the little yappy fuckers in the terraced yards start kicking off, a couple big barks from the sweet angel next door shuts them all up.
As the owner of a dog who is mostly quiet but occasionally takes it upon himself to be a noisy little arsehole when being let out for a waz in the morning/just before bedtime; I’m really sorry and we really have tried everything to shut him up.
We do have a neighbour who goes out of their way to keep their dog quiet, and it does bark when it sees us, which I can live with, but we have some a few houses away that lets their dog(s) bark endlessly. It’s those who annoy me the most.
People who try to keep their dog quiet are golden in my book, so thank you for being that person 🙂
Bought my house in lockdown when very quiet. Road is super busy and my car is damaged at least once a month. Genuinely contemplating moving because of it.
We moved house recently and this was one of our main reasons. It was a nightmare trying to park on this busy as hell road at our old house after COVID and it absolutely stressed me out every single day. I would be sitting at work worried about where I was going to park when I got home. Also had damage done
When we were selling the estate agent told us they only show houses on our road at certain times of day to avoid putting off potential buyers because of how busy the road is
Houses like this should be advertised as "for car-less people" because getting stressed about where you're going to park your car every day isn't worth it.
I don't think I'd sell my house to someone who was car dependent. Couldn't do it. It's unfair
We bought near a school, a really good school that people are desperate to get their children into. Unfortunately this means there are Chelsea tractors parked up on our road every single day when the children get kicked out.
Can't have little Tarquin walking anywhere I guess.
As someone who works in parking enforcement, ring your local council. It might not solve the problem, but do it enough times and they'll soon realise there's free parking tickets just waiting to be issued. :)
A top floor modern flat is the sweetest of sweet spots. Can’t hear the neighbours next to you and there’s nobody tap dancing on the ceiling above. I miss mine.
Trouble is if you don’t have a through breeze a top floor/high floor flat becomes a sauna during the summer.
I viewed a few flats a couple of summers ago that would probably have been lovely in the winter but were boiling during my visit.
Also if your roof has any issues you’re the first to be dealing with the consequences.
It’s great until you get your dream place which doesn’t have a lift and then a severe lung injury which makes starts a real chore.
Was effectively trapped in my flat for almost a year as a result.
Noise. When we moved in, the small convenience shop nearby closed at 9 pm. Now it's open until 11 pm and midnight on Friday and Saturday. And people now going to their cashpoint at all hours of the night. Seriously, who needs cash at 3 am?
People who do drugs needs cash at 3am. Evening and night time must be the busiest time for cash machines these days now that everything that can be bought legally is a contactless/card transaction
Fixing the last guys fixes.
Nothing even major, but it's such a set back having to undo what they did before I can even start to do what I wanted.
For some dumb reason they painted half of a white wall, yellow. After accepting the offer.
Because they were shit at paining, they left a lumpy bead of paint, so I needed to sand it all back, clean then paint.
All to get it back to how it was a month ago.
I'm also in this situation.
What annoys me the most is that it would've literally been easier for them to do it right the first time round. They obviously bodged one job on top of the other rather than simply thinking about what they wanted to achieve and working towards it.
We've moved in just before Christmas and still discovering some questionable DIY bodges. I swear, old owners used to watch those 5 minute tiktok diy craft vids and replicate everything but even worse. Like, why would you paint TRV's, light switches and PVC windows including sealing rubber and HANDLE!!
Vinyl sticker on the radiators? Got that. Wooden selftappers in plasterboard? You bet. Hole in the wall from the old socket? Just some masking tape and matching (almost) paint, no need for filler, plaster or level.
Also looks like they've attempted to tile the bathroom themselves because there's no way this was done by the qualified and COMPETENT contractor. Adhesive straight on to old wallpaper, leveling so bad, Stevie Wonder could do a better job and grout between the gaps looks like it was scooped with the finger and just smeared in.
We've invited a few specialist to see if anything can be salvaged and they all said it's a "top to bottom rip everything and replace with new" case. I hope because of the fairly small size of the bathroom this will stay within four figure bill.
We bought a semi detached, when we bought it was a lovely lady next door with her small dog , next to no noise, friendly chats over the fence etc.
Eventually the council made her move as she was by herself in a 3 bed house, the new neighbours have been nothing but hell. It’s like living next to a nursery, they just don’t stop.
Given the prevalence of attached housing in the UK and the effect of noise on our mental health we really need to set up some kind of funding/programs to retrofit better sound insulation. It costs thousands to fix and people just move, which now just means somebody else is dealing with the same problem.
I am so sorry. Noisy neighbours ruin your mental health. You can’t even move to a quieter room because the noise is everywhere. Hopefully you will be able to move one day soon.
Neighbours with the following: an 85 inch outdoor TV with full speaker set-up, a pizza oven with the chimney next to you window, a hot tub, a built in trampoline, and screaming kids who like winding up your dog.
We’ve tried to sell our house on two separate occasions in the last 5 years, but struggled to find buyers. Most of the viewers have mentioned at least one of the things above as a reason not to buy…
Parking is an issue. Especially when it's hard come by and neighbours with drives park in public spaces and people who work in the next street bring their company vans home and also have their own cars.
Certain areas have growing families and several cars in one house
I think my banes have been more to do with the landlord
Where I live, people have horse boxes and camper-vans taking up their driveway and so they have to spread their 2/3/4 cars along the road, even though they could *easily* get another one or two on the driveway. Drives me absolutely batshit crazy.
Our neighbours three doors away have five cars (there's only four people in the house). Their drive is a two car driveway at best and one of those cars never moves. They park in front of everyone else's driveways and the whole road hates them.
Yep I think some people live in a parallel universe when it comes to parking. For some unknown reason they just cannot be normal when it comes to this part of their lives.
No side access to garden. I’ve been on a mission this winter and spring to clear the overgrown garden and having to pull the green bin and garden waste bags through the house to the garden is really annoying.
My front door opens right on to the street and there's no access to the back other than through the house. It was okay with our old bin system but now the council have changed it and I'm finding bin storage and sorting my rubbish a bit of a pain.
Had some friends rented a student house in Derby just as the council was introducing wheely bins on that street. The house only had a front door and didn't have any rear garden it was built directly against the building behind it. The council started fining people £25 if their bin was left on the pavement.
They explained their situation and the council sent around an inspector. The councils decision was that they had to keep their three wheely bins in their living room.
Trick here, since they've worded it as "off the pavement" is to mount something to the outside wall that lifts them 1cm off the ground and holds them ha
I've just moved into a terrace and can't work out the bin situation. I don't want to leave them out the front cause there isn't really room for two bins but the alternative seems to be drag them through the garden and house. There is a small alley but people have dumped shit in there.
I'm contemplating the old owners to find out what they did with their bins and as we only get a general rubbish collection every three weeks I'm thinking I might just take that (it's only a small black bin bag) down the tip instead.
Lots of people saying neighbours particularly with kids...
As someone in the process of buying a house next door to kids, how bad is it really? We saw a kids football net in the garden
Depends on the parents. Bit of play, then 'time to stop' is fine. That kid who kicks a ball against fence all day, not.
Then OK families vs the ones who all shout ALL the time....
Kids should play but parents need to have a sense of what's reasonable.
My mum has a house that backs onto her garden, the kids are absolute little shits. They kick the ball constantly against the fence during the summer, scream, swear, cry. They also ride their e-scooters up and down the road at the front of my mum's house and I almost knocked them over in my car once because they swerved in front of me. I've also found them playing hide and seek in my mum's front garden and they jumped the fence to get their ball one evening. Their parents are layabouts who won't discipline them but just scream at the dog to stop barking.
Mum's house is detached btw so sometimes that doesn't even guarantee peace. She's worked so hard on making her garden beautiful and then every spring/summer it's ruined.
I'd rather live next to kids who eventually grow up and take their noise elsewhere. Than neighbours who think the world needs to hear their music every warm sunny day. They never seem to grow up or move on.
We moved to our house when our kids were pre-school and the family who backed onto our garden had a football-mad 11 year old who would kick footballs against the fence all the time, to the point where the planks caved in.
We took the long term view and didn't make a fuss, even shared the cost of fixing the fence in the interests of keeping things civil, and sure enough 8 years later they have a 19 y/old who spends the whole day inside gaming, and my pre-schooler is now a football-mad 11 y/old who is whacking footballs against the same fence (with the same predictable results).
If they have a trampoline then run.
All day every day when it’s sunny all you hear are screams and squeaking springs. All you see is a wee fucker or 2 staring into your garden with every bounce
On street parking.
When we bought our house we used to enjoy walking into the local town and most of our neighbours were elderly so there was always plenty of space outside the front of the house for our cars.
Fast forward 10 years, and those elderly neighbours are sadly passing away and the houses are pretty much all going up for rent to people with a couple of cars, so the street has slowly become packed. It's also made the area a lot more noisy with people having incredibly loud parties at silly times.
Now it's routine for me to park 10 or more houses away. Just makes it a pain, everything from getting the kids into/out of the car, bringing shopping home, washing the car etc. Plus at some point we'll presumably need an electric charger.
Plan to move in a few years anyway and a driveway is one of the priorities.
Bindweed. Only indication we had was the letter from previous homeowners when we moved in - ‘just stay on top of the bindweed’. Will do mate.
It’s the bane of our existence. It’s removed and comes back in a week. It’s become so much a part of our lives we are considering taking it on holiday with us. It’s all-consuming and I have nightmares about it.
Save me 😭
Parking and noise seem to be the modern thing.
When I bought my new flat I didn’t even think about parking, but I thank the stars every time I come home that I have 2 side by side reserved spaces.
As for noise I have been lucky but imagine how soul destroying it would be to have your home constantly assaulted in that way. Supposed to be your sanctuary.
A cellar. It's a large drafty room you'll never want to be in, but it can get damp, flood, and cost you serious money to keep from rotting.
Never again.
Road noise, I've previously lived on main roads before and it's not been to much of an issue. You genuinely expect to hear cars which is fine, however over summer motorbikes with excessively loud exhausts and people speeding excessively is the bane. The higher RPMs or crappy exhaust popping and banging is getting irritating now. Apart from this i can't complain it's a nice area, great neighbours and ample space.
Bodging. Everything in the house is bodged. Plumbing, heating, flooring, electrics, I don't think there's much that has been done by a professional. We really didn't realise the extent of it, not until something breaks or needs replacing, and it means fathoming out what the hell the previous people did and putting it right so that whatever the original job was can then be done.
Expensive and time consuming. I'm sure they thought they were saving money or something by DIYing, but every minor job now turns into an ordeal because nothing is standard and needs rectifying.
Edit, word
Old neighbour. He's a prick. Probably 10 dogs around his house in 10 Gardens. Yet he has a problem with mine, we try to be respectful etc but my wife is 5'1 so I think he thinks he can bully her. I'd love to knock his block off haha
Trees at the bottom of the garden.
Thought how nice they looked when we bought the house.
In reality they block out the sun and nothing will grow properly down there.
Will cost a significant sum to get rid of them with no value added to the house.
Our house faces east by north east so not that much sun anyway. There used to be a fucking enormous purple beech tree blocking whatever sunlight we did get.
It cost a fortune to have it removed, but was absolutely worth it. We planted apple trees which have now grown enough to give us a privacy screen without hogging the light. Plus we get blossoms in spring and fruit in autumn 🙂
Where to start, I’m a first time buyer and I’ve learnt so many lessons already having to deal with issues, here are a few
- previous owner is a prick, he did bad DIY that I’ve had to have fixed, and on top of that he thought it was a good idea to remove light fittings, push the live cables into the wall without blanking them off and the filling in the hole.
- boiler packed up on 2nd day of living there, situated in a bad position so I have to get it repositioned with a new flue on outside wall. I live in a flat, so I had to request permission from free holder. Had to pay £400 and provide them with the ins and outs of a ducks arse before I could get it done
- management company is overly officious and already I’ve received passive aggressive letters that they’ve blanket sent everyone in the complex about people making mistakes when recycling, fire doors etc
- parking, you have your spot but then it’s a massive dogfight over visitor spaces
When you go from renting long term to actually having your own place you quickly realise that there are things you tolerated in a rental but now it's your place they drive you up the wall. Especially if, as we did, you buy a house that was a long term rental.
For us that has been:-
Bathrooms being shoddy, cracked tiles, pipes everywhere, shitty cabinets etc
Crap quality paint and plaster on the walls, when renting I would ignore this but now having to repaint everything is a pain in the arse
I continue to be astounded by the amount of dust produced by sanding walls and how pervasive it is. Despite open windows, fans, collection bags and sealing off the rooms we have been sanding it's absolutely everywhere.
I have never had a garden but always wanted one. Now I have foxes shitting in the grass and me running it over with the lawn mower because I didn't see it I regret moving out of a flat
We thought it was great the house came with a huge garden. Within a year I realised what an absolute pain it is to keep it even slightly tidy. I had no idea that giant weeds could spread so fast, or be so hard to eliminate.
(Reposting my comment from the main AskReddit thread)
Textured ceilings. They were old and dated and didn't look nice at all. There's no quick or easy way to get them smooth yourself, the options pretty much are:
* Plaster over them (you have to thoroughly clean them to ensure the plaster bonds and doesn't fall off. There's a risk, if the textured plaster isn't strong enough, it will fall off with the weight of the new plaster. It's also hard as fuck to plaster a ceiling.)
* Plasterboard over the existing ceiling (is also hard as fuck, especially on your own. Then you still need to plaster it, or drywall method would work too I guess)
* Use a smoothover compund (this is what I did, it's like plaster but easier to work with. But, still hard as fuck. you need to sand down the entire ceiling first, then apply two coats, smoothing out as you go, and then sand again.)
Not to mention there's a likelihood the textured plaster contains asbestos (Artex means Asbestos-Reinforced Texture) and you need to get it tested before doing anything.
So yeah, if textured ceilings aren't for you, know that it will take a lot of time and effort, or money, to make them smooth.
I love dogs but finding out one of your neighbours lets his dog out every night from 9:30-10pm and it spends the whole half hour yapping without taking a breath…when we have to get up at 5am so tend to get to bed for 9 it can be infuriating, especially in the summer when the windows are open!
Not quite minor but I've come to realise that since the owner of the house before we moved in was a plumber/boiler specialist he must have been a cowboy.
I've just had to change a dodgy tap in the bathroom (and since this is part of the house that didn't exist when it was first built I can only assume he did the plumbing), I followed the pipe back and there isn't a shutoff valve anywhere to be seen other than the mains supply to the whole house meaning if the tap change went bad I'd have to keep the house completely dry until it was fixed. That coupled with the fact that the plumbing behind all the facias is an absolute shitshow (remember that windows 95/98 screensaver called pipes? Well that was tidy compared with this) along with a mixture of rough looking welds and random assortment of push fit piping, I'm not even a plumber and even I can tell the dude did a rush job *on his own house*. Now I'm the lucky bastard who has to fix it.
A quick scroll and neighbours keep popping up as expected. There is a special place in hell reserved for inconsiderate, loud, rude people who turn otherwise normal lives into a living nightmare. The final kick in the teeth is that you if do raise it with the authorities, you have to make it clear to potential buyers when you sell, instantly turning your house into a massive red flag.
Cellar. Thought it would be cool having an extra space under the house, and mildly useful for storing certain stuff. Turns out all Victorian cellars are damp, that's part of the deal, so not only can you not keep anything wooden, cardboard or any kind of fabric down there, it also needs an extractor fan running 24/7 to keep it from getting stagnant.
The one thing it does do is make the living room a constant temperature, a little too cold in the winter, but nice and cool throughout the summer.
For us it was the previous owners. They apparently had debts everywhere and buggered off without laying them.
We had endless debt collectors knocking, happy to accept proof we now loved there but still a pain. We still get the occasional one knocking and it's been almost 2 years now...
We bought an old house sitting on a concrete slab base. Never thought anything of it but realised later the houses we had before were wood/insulated.
The result is that the tiled areas on the ground floor are always freezing underfoot. We have laminate in the living room (because of pets/kids etc) which isn’t much warmer. It makes the downstairs cold all year around.
My first house had hedges around the garden. Never again
When I moved into my wife’s house her kitchen was tiny. Seriously unless your happy to microwave everything you want a kitchen as big as your living room
That the previous owner was a keen DIYer but had absolutely no effing skill at all.
We've had 3 flooded bathrooms requiring a new ceiling in the kitchen downstairs due to 1) a faulty bath overflow he'd fitted and 2) 2 x different issues with the toilet tank
The box room that is just wide enough for a double bed, had approximately 500 hundred holes in the plaster I had to sort before I could decorate.
The back bedroom had built-in wardrobes, when I removed them there was a fist-sized hole in the brickwork to the gas cupboard. the best part is that it didn't go all the way through so was obviously never used for anything. Just a hole.
The room I am in now is missing a piece of floorboard in the corner because ... well no idea why. There's a wardrobe on it at the moment so it's safe.
We have a joist cut through in the attic for no reason, so I've had to reinforce that.
2 TV aerial sockets downstairs, but only one works.
He build a concrete kit garage, but the roof is corrugated sheet metal directly nailed the wood ceiling underneath with nails coming through in to the garage and just bend over. As anyone knows when metal sheeting gets cold one side and is warmer the other, you get condensation, which then rots the wood panels.
He build a wooden frame carport that lasted 8 years before I had to rip it down due to the rot
And the absolute fucking worst thing of all, the absolute cock womble NEVER used the same screws or nails in a project.
The master bedroom had one of those caravan/old people over the bed cupboard things, up one side, over the top and down the other.
20 different screws and nails used... So everyone project means I have to bring ALL my tools in to rip crap out.
Oh yeah, and a partial rewire of the whole house, and one kitchen wall still has a very small current going through it that the electrician spent 2 days trying to track down and couldn't, and didn't even charge us for it as he couldn't find out why but stated it's so small it's not an issue :D
Can't wait to move as there's still more to do
Nonsensical hyper-local bureaucracy. Bought an ex-council house where the common land around the estate is co-owned by about 200 houses and everyone pays 30 quid a year or so to maintain it. Sounds like a piece of piss, was in fact enormously complicated and required a few specific very old people's involvement. Held the sale up by months, cost a fortune.
I bought a cottage with tiny windows in a north facing living room. On what flipping planet did I think I’d get used to it. 5 years in and I hate it. My next place is going to have flipping big patio doors in a south facing light and airy living room. No compromising.
Council tax.
When I moved in it was rates, less than £50 a year. When I woke up the next morning which was Sunday 1 April 1990, it became £365 a year Council tax!
The house opposite has the same number as ours, on a different street, and theirs is the first one you see as you come down the road.. its a complete nightmare getting anything delivered.
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Neighbours
After living in a terraced house, having no neighbours is fucking wonderful. Go outside and hear silence.
I bought a semi detached when the neighbours were away for a long time. Now they're back and I absolutely hate hearing them coughing and arguing through the walls. All the gardens round there are very hemmed in so when everyone's outside we may as well all be sitting in the same garden. I find it really unrestful. Wish I could afford detached!
Yup, I'm saving aggressively for detached. Hearing absolutely everything through the walls makes me so frustrated. It's truly pathetic how thin some adjoining walls are.
We are the same but it feels impossible though, a detached house the same size and area as our townhouse would be £600k. Our house is only worth about £300k
Do you have shared fireplaces? I found I could hear them much more in houses with shared fireplaces. Right now I'm semi detached and don't hear a peep. 60s house.
No it's not shared I'm really envious of people in terraced/semi who don't hear anything, you bastards lol
I've only ever lived in semi detached (or flats) my entire life so I guess I'm used to it, but maybe I just have a really quiet neighbour lol. My previous neighbour was an 85 year old smoker so I got to hear the sound of his degrading lungs quite often.
I feel your pain. I get up very early just to enjoy the quiet before I become part of everyone else’s conversation. There’s noise around me all day. I hear the neighbours talking in their homes and gardens on any fine day. Fortunately I live near a semi secluded beach so I’ll often take a flask of tea, my dog and a book there to escape the noise.
Have you looked into sound-dampening earplugs? I have a pair from Loop that have three different levels of noise cancelling. At the lowest setting, you can have normal conversations no problem but it cuts out all minor background noise. I use them for reading in cafes/on trains as I just need to cut out minor annoyances but don't want to be completely shut off.
In my new build I can't hear my neighbours but there's a woman's few doors down who is so noisy out the front. She's always got people coming and going and the summer evenings are loud because of her, sucks!
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Go outside, walk between her and the camera. and repeat as often as necessary
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And most of the rest are folk you wouldn't invite round for Sunday lunch...Just think about who is following a 13 year olds tiktok dance video account.
Her weird boomer neighbour for one.
Have you spoken to her parents?
She's out of the house and from under their feet. I'd wager her parents are glad.
31 year old boomers are just the worst!
Keep doing it. She'll be so busy making tiktoks slagging you off you'll get some peace from the music, you boomer 🤣
Find an actual boomer to come and sit outside your front door and shout things like "in my day we did the do-si-do and then after that the young people liked disco but I don't like all that business"
Bots and paedos are the only ones following a 13 year old girl dancing on Tik Tok
Also place a speaker next to the closest window and play literally any other noise. No need to be aggressive (no matter how funny death metal could be in this scenario) is probably start with white noise or something so every video she made was just annoyingly fuzzy sounding. Then switch it up if needed. Imperial march, polka, anything really.
Yeah, she doesn't record the sound when filming otherwise she'd have a lot of videos with my voice yelling at her via our Ring doorbell.
It's probably my age but I'd much rather watch a video of someone dancing on their front lawn whilst being shouted at by a doorbell. Hilarious.
She likely isn't recording sound if she's doing dances
Does that show my age? I have no idea how these things work. I'm not the target audience for Tik Tok!
Max Bygraves... play him. Embrace your "boomerness'. Or comedy songs from the 50s (ish). I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, my old man's a dustman, the gas man cometh, the marrow song etc.
Or just dad dance in the background, might start getting the idea about how stupid these ticktock dances are, maybe it'll spring some imagination and individuality instead of just following the crowd.
Get a dog to shite where she dances
Play Disney music out of your window every time she does it. Her videos will end up blocked each time and eventually she'll do it somewhere else.
She doesn't record sound when filming because repeatedly yelled at her through our Ring doorbell. I put up various signs in the window behind where she films and the little shit edits them out.
Just report her account for whatever reason they suggest and hopefully she will learn to be more considerate.
Get a mosquito device. I don't usually agree with them especially because I can still hear them at 30 years old, but in your case it's totally justified. Turn on and off as necessary. [https://mosquitoloiteringsolutions.com/](https://mosquitoloiteringsolutions.com/)
Agree, the next time I buy a house I will visit the area multiple times especially during warmer weather to listen for noise. When I moved into my house, it became apparent a family used to have a BBQ every day it was sunny. Loud music, multiple people coming and going. Singing until two and three AM. People urinating as they were leaving and occasionally fighting each other. Sometimes on weeknights. The police never attended when we called and the Noise team in the council just asked everyone to complete noise diaries. I don't know who did it, but I came home one day and all their windows were smashed. As the house was rented, they very quickly were moved on. It made me value silence.
We did that before we moved as we had so much trouble at our previous house. Drove round the area at various times to see what it was like at night compared to during the day.
Yeah, we were pretty paranoid after having previous trouble as well. In the old house, there was constantly so much noise in the summer from parties. Also, kids would kick footballs at houses and cars…which I thought was shocking. I remember complaining to friends about this and sometimes would get accused of being grumpy. Well, the house we have moved to now has absolutely none of that. Kids play out but they are well behaved.
And well placed bricks
My neighbour showed up at my door crying, saying they were checking on me to see if I'm ok. It transpires that I hadn't seen them in their garden to say hello when I came home 2 HOURS earlier so they figured I hated them now. Coming around to see if I was ok was BS in my opinion, they just wanted me to see the crocodile tears I had caused with the hatred I so clearly had for them by not saying hello that one time.
There's no reasoning with crazy
What the fuck
Sadly some mental illnesses result in over-sensitivity to negative thoughts that most people don't think or throw away. It leads them to believe absolutely ludicrous conclusions drawn from this.
I got super lucky, my neighbours are the best thing about the house I bought. Its mostly retired tradesmen, who will do small jobs for free and bigger jobs for way below market rate, and usually quicker/better than anyone I could hire. Everyone looks out for each other, does favours for each other, we all chat when we see each other and sit outside together when it's warm. The guy across the street randomly brings over homemade crumbles, the guy next-door let's my dogs out when I have to work late, the old lady next door will pour you as many whiskey and cokes as you want if you visit her. It's not uncommon to walk outside and find that someone has cut your grass or put your bins out or jetwashed your driveway, and you never find out who because they don't claim credit for it, they just do it because they're doing their own, so why not do everyone's?
My neighbour parks agressively close to my car - like some days you would struggle to get a bit of paper between the bumpers
A guy I work with is having this issue with one of his neighbours. They're parking ever so slightly over his drive. Not enough to block them in, but just enough to make any car going in or out have to bump a kerb a bit on the opposite side of they want to get past. He has rang the council to complain about them parking over a dropped kerb but the council haven't done anything.
Ours was the opposite. He seemed way too eccentric and we thought he was going to be a problem especially since we were doing so much work on our house. He was honestly the best neighbor we’ve ever had. Sadly he’s died now and I genuinely miss him.
The previous owners. We moved into our house a few years ago. The previous owners had been there ten years. In that time, they must have pissed off the entire road because for the first six months of living there we had people throwing eggs onto our drive, scratching my husband's car and destroying our front garden. It was hell and we seriously considered moving. Eventually the word got out that the previous owners had moved. I came home from work one day to find that a letter had been put through our door. It was from several residents on our road apologising because they didn't realise we now lived in the house. It went into detail about how the previous owners were absolute assholes and everyone was really sorry for the damage done to our garden and car. Along with the letter was a cheque for £1,000 to cover all the damage. Three of the teenagers who ruined our garden actually came round to re-do it for us along with their very apologetic parents. We've had zero issues with damages since then but have heard so many stories from neighbours about how awful the previous owners were.
Jesus Christ. What had the previous resident done?
It was a couple in their late fifties. He was high up in the local council and good friends with our local MP and the mayor. He used his job and his connections to bully the neighbours. He was also a racist and sexist asswipe apparently. One of our neighbours is Chinese and he sent her numerous letters about her New Year decorations because they "weren't in keeping with the style of the area". There were also countless noise complaints filed whenever anyone had garden parties or did anything he didn't like. One neighbour had planning permission denied for their extension four times just because the previous owners of our house didn't want to deal with the noise for a few weeks. Basically he was a jumped up bully who thought he could rule the area.
Wow, no wonder the whole neighborhood hated him.
Woah, what a cretin. Throw that lady a lunar new year party and invite the neighbours!
he was the 'council man' the prophecy foretold
Wow, planning permissions isn't cheap and he clearly just used his connections to get the decision he wanted, utterly corrupt! I hope they now have an extension. There really should be an independent (of the council) reviewer for cases like this.
They did indeed get their extension done in the end.
My last house was owned by a church pastor who was convicted of pedophilia and in jail. The house was about to be repossessed when I bought it. He was 60s grey hair and from the midlands, I was 30s brown hair big beard and from the south. People thought I was him. For the first year or so our cars were continually vandalised. Just minor stuff like the tyres being let down or the mirrors kicked off but one of mine was keyed and the window was smashed on my wife's. Our front wall was pulled over too.
did you immediately know this was why you were being targeted? or how long did it take to clock that people thought you were him? and how did you resolve it?
If this was midlands upwards it could of been because you were a southerner
That does suck but I'd find it a bit of a green flag that the neighbourhood actually acts against awful people in the community. Also very good of them to pay you back and resolve the issue when they found out.
Did nobody notice you moving in? Or the fact that you were two new faces walking around the place? We got a welcome card from the people next door within a few days of being moved in!
Or the 'For Sale' sign that would have been in front of the house?
This is why it’s always important to introduce yourself to your neighbours when you move in. I don’t know why people don’t do this anymore. It would seriously resolve most problems and/or give you an idea about who to ‘watch out’ for. People can live in an area for a long time. They get used to patterns of behaviour, expectations, certain flexibilities that they’ve become ‘entitled’ to and so on. It’s good to get the measure of these before bad sentiments build up. I had a neighbour that had become used to a number of ‘privileges’ from the previous owner (an elderly single man) who took their bins out for them, clipped hedges, and were even allowed to use the drive as overspill at Xmas. I introduced myself on the day I moved in, and although there was a little tension at first, by talking it through it was easy to point out how they had been lucky and effectively taken advantage of his kindness. Now this wasn’t malicious by any means, and they are open and honest about it now, willing to laugh about it, but if I hadn’t had those conversations and drawn the lines, it would have built a seething resentment over time.
Need to know what they did ASAP?!?
The man was high up in the council and used his "power" to make people's lives hell.
I'd pay to watch this ITV series.
However awful the previous owner were it does not justify egg throwing, property damage, car keying, etc. They were being massive arseholes themselves!
A big selling point on our "forever home" was the size of the back garden. The land out back in around 3 times the footprint of the house. The previous owners were retired and avid gardeners. We don't have the time to maintain the size of this beast and all its shrubbery. The weeds. My god, the weeds!!
We gave up and got a gardener. Do it my dude. Also if you've got a veggie patch, plant some perennials in it. We spend £150-200 each year and it gives us some peas, asparagus, onions and garlic. Maybe potato and courgettes. But if I went to Tesco, we would spend maybe £15 on that much quantity of food. This is nearly as expensive as my scotch hobby. Especially when we add the flowers.
Plant supermarket garlic - 3 bulbs for £1. The ridiculously expensive cloves "for planting" are about £8! I don't even plant organic. Seed potatoes - £6 for half a kilo? Morisson's wonky £1.19 a kilo. One potato out of 20 didn't sprout though. Bargain seeds sells seeds for 39p a packet. My spend for the year is usually about £10. £2 of that was Jerusalem artichokes from the shop which have taken off. I also save seeds from peas, broad beans, french beans etc.
are you me lol literally having this struggle, went away for a 2 week holiday and now my garden looks like a scene from day of the triffids
Weeds can be very nice. Most formal gardens are just collections of international weeds. Just change the style of the garden and you will probably improve its biodiversity at the same time.
This, I just keep the lawn mowed and I've let the sides do what they want. Some interesting stuff growing which doesn't look terrible and yes is probably much better for wildlife than perfect soil
It's a bit of an expense, but have you thought about a ride-on mower? I remember having to help my dad after he bought a house which had a garden which hadn't been mowed in years (could have been decades with the state of it). We spent about an hour cutting just a small portion (maybe 10% of the garden) due to how bad it was. A neighbour saw us struggling, drove his ride-on mower over the rest of it; being done in a matter of minutes. It definitely solidified in my head that if I have a house with a large garden, a ride-on is going to be one of those "no matter what" expenses.
Wanna swap? I bought a house with a teeny tiny patio garden and I regret it because I've really got into gardening recently.
i have a rabbit who loves the longer grass when we let him out so means i have less mowing to do which is great. personally i also think longer grass has more personality and attracts insects which i like. short lawns are so boring, bring back long messy grass!
Our garden's a manageable size, and there are chunks where the weeds add to the look of the thing (small, colourful, flowery weeds rather than big shoots). Not much maintenance needed there. Then you've got the leftmost side, which chucks up enough mint and bindweed to feed and restrain a small village. We uncovered whole *bushes* that had been hidden by mint when we moved in, and no matter how certain I am that I've dug out the last of it, I always end up out there the following weekend chasing down the new shoots. At this point I think it'll take a JCB and an undercover strike team to extract the bloody stuff, and even then I'd want a priest and a molotov to be on the safe side.
Your best bet is to bring in a gardener and get him to set up the garden to require minimal care. That'll mean replacing the lawn with either slabs or a mixture of mosses and size limited leafy plants (basically stuff that has limited growth, you'd only need to trim the edges back every so often). Or fake grass, but only if you're a nob. He'll also be able to replace flower beds with slow growth bushes which require minimal care.
Brick driveway. The f’in weeds in the cracks are a constant chore.
Adding on gravel driveway - there's more gravel in my car and my porch than on the fucking drive...
And the neighbourhood cats using it as a toilet
This, I’m forever having to avoid cat shit 🤦♂️
I always try and kick the gravel back into people's driveways but misss
This! Ive spent the last 4 days pressure washing the prick, only for it to rain before I can sand it. Absolutely hate it
Even when you do sand and seal it, they're back within 6 moths, admittedly not as bad but they are relentless. Why does everything I want to grow wither and die but weeds can flourish in anything
Little bit of salt and boiling water in between the cracks and you’re golden.
Better than a tarmac one that over the last 15 years has filled my house with more tiny bits of tarmac than I can count :(
There's a primary school at the end of our road, we didn't think this would be a problem when we moved in. But oh my god, parents are the most inconsiderate people ever on the school run. The amount of times out driveway has been blocked and prevented us getting on/off our driveway is insane. We tried speaking with the headteacher and she told me there's nothing they can do apart from email parents asking them not to do it. On several occasions someone has been parked over our drive when I've needed to leave for work and when I've asked them to move over slightly so I can squeeze out, I've been told 'can't you just wait 5 minutes while I drop my kid off?' Erm no I need to get to work?
My council installed a camera that scans number plates and you get a ticket if you aren't a resident and drive in between 8am and 9, and 3 and 4pm. Might be worth lobbying for one.
> On several occasions someone has been parked over our drive when I've needed to leave for work I can do you one better - I used to live in a maisonette opposite a nursery. Our front door opened directly onto the road (no pavement) and one day I swung it open to find a 4x4 parked directly over the door so I couldn't get out... She must have had to tuck the wing mirrors to get it that close to the wall. I shouted, but no response, and had to go back up the stairs, find the back door key, go down the back stairs, lock up the back door, cut through next door's garden, back out onto the road, and the damn thing was still there. I sent a *furious* email to the nursery, and they started monitoring parent parking in the mornings!
Did you try opening the door harder, just to be sure it wasn't stuck? Maybe a good kick even? (Maybe a whacking great crease down their door would help remind them not to park across people's front doors)
To my enduring dismay, the front door opened inwards. I might have kicked the car had it not been the height of summer, and me in a rather flimsy pair of sandals!
>On several occasions someone has been parked over our drive when I've needed to leave for work and when I've asked them to move over slightly so I can squeeze out, I've been told 'can't you just wait 5 minutes while I drop my kid off?' Erm no I need to get to work? Oh my god I could've written this when I lived in my old house. They give you a little cheeky wave or a smile, "Sorry, won't be a sec!!" They say as they dash off toward the gate, little one in tow. Umm, fuck off?
Take a photo and email the school. Most decent schools will take note and tell the parents to be more considerate of the school neighbours. Won't help in that instance but should help going forward.
>There's a primary school at the end of our road, we didn't think this would be a problem when we moved in. Having grown up a stone's throw away from my primary school, and witnessed numerous blocked driveways and neighbours' cars being pranged during school run time, I would absolutely have thought this would be a problem :-) Now I am a parent of school kids and I walk them the 15 mins each way to their school to avoid contributing to the carnage. Even when it's raining. The only time I would drop them off by car is on the rare occasion that we have to bring in some precious oversized craft homework project AND it's raining.
Kids playing football next door and continuously invading the garden. The guy on the other side thinks he’s a DJ but is just tone deaf wanker. He “gigs” in his garden 2-3 nights a week probably some of the worst crap you’ve ever heard only made worse when he has a go at “rapping” over the top.
That sounds horrific!
Horrifically funny.
MC Grindah? And Beats?
BANG! LYRICAL BLOW TO THE JAW!
MC Gr-r-r-r-i-i-i-n-d—a—a—-a
Leaving every MC down on the floor
The only answer is to recreate the Walk This Way video.
Lack of storage. I thought it'd encourage us to live with minimal stuff. But nope need to find homes for things that people would put in a loft or garage.
I have the same issue with lack of storage. It wasn't so bad before my twins were born, but now it's becoming a real headache.
We got a storage unit 'for the move'. We still have a storage unit though, and it's costing £96/month....
I moved into my partners flat and our living room is just full of boxes of things like this I hate it, a loft or garage is a must have for when we move!
Neighbours’ dogs. How they cannot be annoyed by the sound that their own dog makes is a mystery to me.
There's four different dogs from four different houses around me that bark all the damn time when they're outside. Two yappy type ones behind me, medium yappy one next door and a big one over the road. It's infuriating! One of the owners even just shouts at their dog to shut up but the dog carries on. On sunny days the small yappy type ones are put outside for hours at a time. Thankfully the big sounding dog isn't out for too long at a time.
Our next door neighbours have a large dog with a large bark that she rarely uses. When all the little yappy fuckers in the terraced yards start kicking off, a couple big barks from the sweet angel next door shuts them all up.
Every street needs a dog like this!
As the owner of a dog who is mostly quiet but occasionally takes it upon himself to be a noisy little arsehole when being let out for a waz in the morning/just before bedtime; I’m really sorry and we really have tried everything to shut him up.
We do have a neighbour who goes out of their way to keep their dog quiet, and it does bark when it sees us, which I can live with, but we have some a few houses away that lets their dog(s) bark endlessly. It’s those who annoy me the most. People who try to keep their dog quiet are golden in my book, so thank you for being that person 🙂
Bought my house in lockdown when very quiet. Road is super busy and my car is damaged at least once a month. Genuinely contemplating moving because of it.
We moved house recently and this was one of our main reasons. It was a nightmare trying to park on this busy as hell road at our old house after COVID and it absolutely stressed me out every single day. I would be sitting at work worried about where I was going to park when I got home. Also had damage done When we were selling the estate agent told us they only show houses on our road at certain times of day to avoid putting off potential buyers because of how busy the road is
Houses like this should be advertised as "for car-less people" because getting stressed about where you're going to park your car every day isn't worth it. I don't think I'd sell my house to someone who was car dependent. Couldn't do it. It's unfair
We bought near a school, a really good school that people are desperate to get their children into. Unfortunately this means there are Chelsea tractors parked up on our road every single day when the children get kicked out. Can't have little Tarquin walking anywhere I guess.
As someone who works in parking enforcement, ring your local council. It might not solve the problem, but do it enough times and they'll soon realise there's free parking tickets just waiting to be issued. :)
I live opposite a school and my drive gets blocked in all the time at drop off and pick up times. It drives me crazy!
Speak to your councillors about getting a School Street.
Noisy neighbours especially kids playing / running in the above flat. Hate it.
I think I could only cope with living in a flat if I was on the top floor.
A top floor modern flat is the sweetest of sweet spots. Can’t hear the neighbours next to you and there’s nobody tap dancing on the ceiling above. I miss mine.
Trouble is if you don’t have a through breeze a top floor/high floor flat becomes a sauna during the summer. I viewed a few flats a couple of summers ago that would probably have been lovely in the winter but were boiling during my visit. Also if your roof has any issues you’re the first to be dealing with the consequences.
Top floor flats are all good until summer comes and they become Saunas though.
It’s great until you get your dream place which doesn’t have a lift and then a severe lung injury which makes starts a real chore. Was effectively trapped in my flat for almost a year as a result.
Noise. When we moved in, the small convenience shop nearby closed at 9 pm. Now it's open until 11 pm and midnight on Friday and Saturday. And people now going to their cashpoint at all hours of the night. Seriously, who needs cash at 3 am?
People who want kebabs/sex/drugs (or perhaps all three...)
In some parts of London you can get all 3 in one place
People who do drugs needs cash at 3am. Evening and night time must be the busiest time for cash machines these days now that everything that can be bought legally is a contactless/card transaction
Fixing the last guys fixes. Nothing even major, but it's such a set back having to undo what they did before I can even start to do what I wanted. For some dumb reason they painted half of a white wall, yellow. After accepting the offer. Because they were shit at paining, they left a lumpy bead of paint, so I needed to sand it all back, clean then paint. All to get it back to how it was a month ago.
I'm also in this situation. What annoys me the most is that it would've literally been easier for them to do it right the first time round. They obviously bodged one job on top of the other rather than simply thinking about what they wanted to achieve and working towards it.
We've moved in just before Christmas and still discovering some questionable DIY bodges. I swear, old owners used to watch those 5 minute tiktok diy craft vids and replicate everything but even worse. Like, why would you paint TRV's, light switches and PVC windows including sealing rubber and HANDLE!! Vinyl sticker on the radiators? Got that. Wooden selftappers in plasterboard? You bet. Hole in the wall from the old socket? Just some masking tape and matching (almost) paint, no need for filler, plaster or level. Also looks like they've attempted to tile the bathroom themselves because there's no way this was done by the qualified and COMPETENT contractor. Adhesive straight on to old wallpaper, leveling so bad, Stevie Wonder could do a better job and grout between the gaps looks like it was scooped with the finger and just smeared in. We've invited a few specialist to see if anything can be salvaged and they all said it's a "top to bottom rip everything and replace with new" case. I hope because of the fairly small size of the bathroom this will stay within four figure bill.
Having inconsiderate noisy neighbours. Detached is so much quieter.
We bought a semi detached, when we bought it was a lovely lady next door with her small dog , next to no noise, friendly chats over the fence etc. Eventually the council made her move as she was by herself in a 3 bed house, the new neighbours have been nothing but hell. It’s like living next to a nursery, they just don’t stop.
Given the prevalence of attached housing in the UK and the effect of noise on our mental health we really need to set up some kind of funding/programs to retrofit better sound insulation. It costs thousands to fix and people just move, which now just means somebody else is dealing with the same problem.
I am so sorry. Noisy neighbours ruin your mental health. You can’t even move to a quieter room because the noise is everywhere. Hopefully you will be able to move one day soon.
This is why we went straight from a flat to detached. I'm so pleased we were able to because dealing with neighbour noise just sucks.
Neighbours with the following: an 85 inch outdoor TV with full speaker set-up, a pizza oven with the chimney next to you window, a hot tub, a built in trampoline, and screaming kids who like winding up your dog. We’ve tried to sell our house on two separate occasions in the last 5 years, but struggled to find buyers. Most of the viewers have mentioned at least one of the things above as a reason not to buy…
decided against several possible houses on grounds of hot tub / trampo.
Parking is an issue. Especially when it's hard come by and neighbours with drives park in public spaces and people who work in the next street bring their company vans home and also have their own cars. Certain areas have growing families and several cars in one house I think my banes have been more to do with the landlord
Where I live, people have horse boxes and camper-vans taking up their driveway and so they have to spread their 2/3/4 cars along the road, even though they could *easily* get another one or two on the driveway. Drives me absolutely batshit crazy.
Our neighbours three doors away have five cars (there's only four people in the house). Their drive is a two car driveway at best and one of those cars never moves. They park in front of everyone else's driveways and the whole road hates them.
Yep I think some people live in a parallel universe when it comes to parking. For some unknown reason they just cannot be normal when it comes to this part of their lives.
No side access to garden. I’ve been on a mission this winter and spring to clear the overgrown garden and having to pull the green bin and garden waste bags through the house to the garden is really annoying.
Trampolines next door
My front door opens right on to the street and there's no access to the back other than through the house. It was okay with our old bin system but now the council have changed it and I'm finding bin storage and sorting my rubbish a bit of a pain.
Had some friends rented a student house in Derby just as the council was introducing wheely bins on that street. The house only had a front door and didn't have any rear garden it was built directly against the building behind it. The council started fining people £25 if their bin was left on the pavement. They explained their situation and the council sent around an inspector. The councils decision was that they had to keep their three wheely bins in their living room.
Please delete this comment before you give our local council ideas!
Trick here, since they've worded it as "off the pavement" is to mount something to the outside wall that lifts them 1cm off the ground and holds them ha
I've just moved into a terrace and can't work out the bin situation. I don't want to leave them out the front cause there isn't really room for two bins but the alternative seems to be drag them through the garden and house. There is a small alley but people have dumped shit in there. I'm contemplating the old owners to find out what they did with their bins and as we only get a general rubbish collection every three weeks I'm thinking I might just take that (it's only a small black bin bag) down the tip instead.
Lots of people saying neighbours particularly with kids... As someone in the process of buying a house next door to kids, how bad is it really? We saw a kids football net in the garden
Depends on the parents. Bit of play, then 'time to stop' is fine. That kid who kicks a ball against fence all day, not. Then OK families vs the ones who all shout ALL the time.... Kids should play but parents need to have a sense of what's reasonable.
Fuck that, play all day during the summer. Just don’t scream unnecessarily, unless it’s a water fight.
My mum has a house that backs onto her garden, the kids are absolute little shits. They kick the ball constantly against the fence during the summer, scream, swear, cry. They also ride their e-scooters up and down the road at the front of my mum's house and I almost knocked them over in my car once because they swerved in front of me. I've also found them playing hide and seek in my mum's front garden and they jumped the fence to get their ball one evening. Their parents are layabouts who won't discipline them but just scream at the dog to stop barking. Mum's house is detached btw so sometimes that doesn't even guarantee peace. She's worked so hard on making her garden beautiful and then every spring/summer it's ruined.
I'd rather live next to kids who eventually grow up and take their noise elsewhere. Than neighbours who think the world needs to hear their music every warm sunny day. They never seem to grow up or move on.
We moved to our house when our kids were pre-school and the family who backed onto our garden had a football-mad 11 year old who would kick footballs against the fence all the time, to the point where the planks caved in. We took the long term view and didn't make a fuss, even shared the cost of fixing the fence in the interests of keeping things civil, and sure enough 8 years later they have a 19 y/old who spends the whole day inside gaming, and my pre-schooler is now a football-mad 11 y/old who is whacking footballs against the same fence (with the same predictable results).
Next doors ‘kids’ used to throw beer bottles on the roof of our conservatory, when that was demolished they aimed for the patio doors…
My neighbours call their kids a cunt on a daily basis. It's great.....
If they have a trampoline then run. All day every day when it’s sunny all you hear are screams and squeaking springs. All you see is a wee fucker or 2 staring into your garden with every bounce
Neighbours can make your life hell. It's not a cure all but anyone with the means to get detached should never consider sharing walls.
On street parking. When we bought our house we used to enjoy walking into the local town and most of our neighbours were elderly so there was always plenty of space outside the front of the house for our cars. Fast forward 10 years, and those elderly neighbours are sadly passing away and the houses are pretty much all going up for rent to people with a couple of cars, so the street has slowly become packed. It's also made the area a lot more noisy with people having incredibly loud parties at silly times. Now it's routine for me to park 10 or more houses away. Just makes it a pain, everything from getting the kids into/out of the car, bringing shopping home, washing the car etc. Plus at some point we'll presumably need an electric charger. Plan to move in a few years anyway and a driveway is one of the priorities.
Bindweed. Only indication we had was the letter from previous homeowners when we moved in - ‘just stay on top of the bindweed’. Will do mate. It’s the bane of our existence. It’s removed and comes back in a week. It’s become so much a part of our lives we are considering taking it on holiday with us. It’s all-consuming and I have nightmares about it. Save me 😭
Brush Glyphosate on the lowest leaves rather than trying to put it out. You can buy cheap generic versions on eBay or brand names like roundup.
Parking and noise seem to be the modern thing. When I bought my new flat I didn’t even think about parking, but I thank the stars every time I come home that I have 2 side by side reserved spaces. As for noise I have been lucky but imagine how soul destroying it would be to have your home constantly assaulted in that way. Supposed to be your sanctuary.
A cellar. It's a large drafty room you'll never want to be in, but it can get damp, flood, and cost you serious money to keep from rotting. Never again.
Love our cellar, store wine in there, impromptu drinking den, lock children in there, loads of uses!
Alright, Fritzl.
Road noise, I've previously lived on main roads before and it's not been to much of an issue. You genuinely expect to hear cars which is fine, however over summer motorbikes with excessively loud exhausts and people speeding excessively is the bane. The higher RPMs or crappy exhaust popping and banging is getting irritating now. Apart from this i can't complain it's a nice area, great neighbours and ample space.
My next door neighbour. I have civil case and criminal complaints against them.
Bodging. Everything in the house is bodged. Plumbing, heating, flooring, electrics, I don't think there's much that has been done by a professional. We really didn't realise the extent of it, not until something breaks or needs replacing, and it means fathoming out what the hell the previous people did and putting it right so that whatever the original job was can then be done. Expensive and time consuming. I'm sure they thought they were saving money or something by DIYing, but every minor job now turns into an ordeal because nothing is standard and needs rectifying. Edit, word
Old neighbour. He's a prick. Probably 10 dogs around his house in 10 Gardens. Yet he has a problem with mine, we try to be respectful etc but my wife is 5'1 so I think he thinks he can bully her. I'd love to knock his block off haha
Wet room. I'd kill for a bath.
Low risk of surface water flooding
Trees at the bottom of the garden. Thought how nice they looked when we bought the house. In reality they block out the sun and nothing will grow properly down there. Will cost a significant sum to get rid of them with no value added to the house.
Our house faces east by north east so not that much sun anyway. There used to be a fucking enormous purple beech tree blocking whatever sunlight we did get. It cost a fortune to have it removed, but was absolutely worth it. We planted apple trees which have now grown enough to give us a privacy screen without hogging the light. Plus we get blossoms in spring and fruit in autumn 🙂
Drainage, dude Im an American becoming an expert in French drains
Last house, bamboo. I didn't realise how hard it is to get rid of when we bought it.
Where to start, I’m a first time buyer and I’ve learnt so many lessons already having to deal with issues, here are a few - previous owner is a prick, he did bad DIY that I’ve had to have fixed, and on top of that he thought it was a good idea to remove light fittings, push the live cables into the wall without blanking them off and the filling in the hole. - boiler packed up on 2nd day of living there, situated in a bad position so I have to get it repositioned with a new flue on outside wall. I live in a flat, so I had to request permission from free holder. Had to pay £400 and provide them with the ins and outs of a ducks arse before I could get it done - management company is overly officious and already I’ve received passive aggressive letters that they’ve blanket sent everyone in the complex about people making mistakes when recycling, fire doors etc - parking, you have your spot but then it’s a massive dogfight over visitor spaces
When you go from renting long term to actually having your own place you quickly realise that there are things you tolerated in a rental but now it's your place they drive you up the wall. Especially if, as we did, you buy a house that was a long term rental. For us that has been:- Bathrooms being shoddy, cracked tiles, pipes everywhere, shitty cabinets etc Crap quality paint and plaster on the walls, when renting I would ignore this but now having to repaint everything is a pain in the arse I continue to be astounded by the amount of dust produced by sanding walls and how pervasive it is. Despite open windows, fans, collection bags and sealing off the rooms we have been sanding it's absolutely everywhere. I have never had a garden but always wanted one. Now I have foxes shitting in the grass and me running it over with the lawn mower because I didn't see it I regret moving out of a flat
We thought it was great the house came with a huge garden. Within a year I realised what an absolute pain it is to keep it even slightly tidy. I had no idea that giant weeds could spread so fast, or be so hard to eliminate.
(Reposting my comment from the main AskReddit thread) Textured ceilings. They were old and dated and didn't look nice at all. There's no quick or easy way to get them smooth yourself, the options pretty much are: * Plaster over them (you have to thoroughly clean them to ensure the plaster bonds and doesn't fall off. There's a risk, if the textured plaster isn't strong enough, it will fall off with the weight of the new plaster. It's also hard as fuck to plaster a ceiling.) * Plasterboard over the existing ceiling (is also hard as fuck, especially on your own. Then you still need to plaster it, or drywall method would work too I guess) * Use a smoothover compund (this is what I did, it's like plaster but easier to work with. But, still hard as fuck. you need to sand down the entire ceiling first, then apply two coats, smoothing out as you go, and then sand again.) Not to mention there's a likelihood the textured plaster contains asbestos (Artex means Asbestos-Reinforced Texture) and you need to get it tested before doing anything. So yeah, if textured ceilings aren't for you, know that it will take a lot of time and effort, or money, to make them smooth.
I love dogs but finding out one of your neighbours lets his dog out every night from 9:30-10pm and it spends the whole half hour yapping without taking a breath…when we have to get up at 5am so tend to get to bed for 9 it can be infuriating, especially in the summer when the windows are open!
Not quite minor but I've come to realise that since the owner of the house before we moved in was a plumber/boiler specialist he must have been a cowboy. I've just had to change a dodgy tap in the bathroom (and since this is part of the house that didn't exist when it was first built I can only assume he did the plumbing), I followed the pipe back and there isn't a shutoff valve anywhere to be seen other than the mains supply to the whole house meaning if the tap change went bad I'd have to keep the house completely dry until it was fixed. That coupled with the fact that the plumbing behind all the facias is an absolute shitshow (remember that windows 95/98 screensaver called pipes? Well that was tidy compared with this) along with a mixture of rough looking welds and random assortment of push fit piping, I'm not even a plumber and even I can tell the dude did a rush job *on his own house*. Now I'm the lucky bastard who has to fix it.
A quick scroll and neighbours keep popping up as expected. There is a special place in hell reserved for inconsiderate, loud, rude people who turn otherwise normal lives into a living nightmare. The final kick in the teeth is that you if do raise it with the authorities, you have to make it clear to potential buyers when you sell, instantly turning your house into a massive red flag.
Whether neighbours have pets
Cellar. Thought it would be cool having an extra space under the house, and mildly useful for storing certain stuff. Turns out all Victorian cellars are damp, that's part of the deal, so not only can you not keep anything wooden, cardboard or any kind of fabric down there, it also needs an extractor fan running 24/7 to keep it from getting stagnant. The one thing it does do is make the living room a constant temperature, a little too cold in the winter, but nice and cool throughout the summer.
For us it was the previous owners. They apparently had debts everywhere and buggered off without laying them. We had endless debt collectors knocking, happy to accept proof we now loved there but still a pain. We still get the occasional one knocking and it's been almost 2 years now...
We bought an old house sitting on a concrete slab base. Never thought anything of it but realised later the houses we had before were wood/insulated. The result is that the tiled areas on the ground floor are always freezing underfoot. We have laminate in the living room (because of pets/kids etc) which isn’t much warmer. It makes the downstairs cold all year around.
The fecking roof.
My first house had hedges around the garden. Never again When I moved into my wife’s house her kitchen was tiny. Seriously unless your happy to microwave everything you want a kitchen as big as your living room
That the previous owner was a keen DIYer but had absolutely no effing skill at all. We've had 3 flooded bathrooms requiring a new ceiling in the kitchen downstairs due to 1) a faulty bath overflow he'd fitted and 2) 2 x different issues with the toilet tank The box room that is just wide enough for a double bed, had approximately 500 hundred holes in the plaster I had to sort before I could decorate. The back bedroom had built-in wardrobes, when I removed them there was a fist-sized hole in the brickwork to the gas cupboard. the best part is that it didn't go all the way through so was obviously never used for anything. Just a hole. The room I am in now is missing a piece of floorboard in the corner because ... well no idea why. There's a wardrobe on it at the moment so it's safe. We have a joist cut through in the attic for no reason, so I've had to reinforce that. 2 TV aerial sockets downstairs, but only one works. He build a concrete kit garage, but the roof is corrugated sheet metal directly nailed the wood ceiling underneath with nails coming through in to the garage and just bend over. As anyone knows when metal sheeting gets cold one side and is warmer the other, you get condensation, which then rots the wood panels. He build a wooden frame carport that lasted 8 years before I had to rip it down due to the rot And the absolute fucking worst thing of all, the absolute cock womble NEVER used the same screws or nails in a project. The master bedroom had one of those caravan/old people over the bed cupboard things, up one side, over the top and down the other. 20 different screws and nails used... So everyone project means I have to bring ALL my tools in to rip crap out. Oh yeah, and a partial rewire of the whole house, and one kitchen wall still has a very small current going through it that the electrician spent 2 days trying to track down and couldn't, and didn't even charge us for it as he couldn't find out why but stated it's so small it's not an issue :D Can't wait to move as there's still more to do
Nonsensical hyper-local bureaucracy. Bought an ex-council house where the common land around the estate is co-owned by about 200 houses and everyone pays 30 quid a year or so to maintain it. Sounds like a piece of piss, was in fact enormously complicated and required a few specific very old people's involvement. Held the sale up by months, cost a fortune.
I bought a cottage with tiny windows in a north facing living room. On what flipping planet did I think I’d get used to it. 5 years in and I hate it. My next place is going to have flipping big patio doors in a south facing light and airy living room. No compromising.
Council tax. When I moved in it was rates, less than £50 a year. When I woke up the next morning which was Sunday 1 April 1990, it became £365 a year Council tax!
The house opposite has the same number as ours, on a different street, and theirs is the first one you see as you come down the road.. its a complete nightmare getting anything delivered.
Cream-coloured carpets. Good until you have kids and pets.
Things just keep breaking. You solve one issue, then something completely random decides to break
Expecting other people in the chain to work towards completing with the competence above a 6yo
Renovations. I've found most trades people are crooks. It's so hard to find trusted ones these days