I’ve been pretty lucky where I live most of my life and grew up around two good neighbours either side of my house, both old couples, but sadly in a short space of time they’ve passed away and I’ve ended up with not just one but two families who aren’t short of a few problems. Both adult couples will be on the drink most days and have groups of people around/hanging outside our houses drinking, the occasional fights and screaming matches which can go on to ungodly hours of the morning, screaming bairnes, dogs that constantly bark when I go out in to my garden and shit all over their own garden with the owners not cleaning it up or taking forever to do so meaning it stinks like shit around our area. There’s other stuff as well but instead of turning this in to a rant I’d like to hear other peoples stories.
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I had one who would play loud music all day, the same song over and over. It was “UGLY you aint got no alibibi you ugly” for _months_
He’d chuck water at my cat, open my post, yell at birds in his garden, bang on his ceiling (my floor) when I watched TV, would bang on my door when I had a shower and would loudly tell the neighbours that I had the audacity to put the washing machine on when I went out.
He was a fucking nightmare and really loud and annoying. I tried to ask him to keep the noise down a few times (he couldnt here me knocking because of the music), had to resort to reporting him to the council which took _months_ because he was a council tenant and they ‘dont do council v council problems’ despite me being a private tenant. Anyway he reported me for being loud and I got in more trouble than he did. He moved out on christmas eve it was so good.
Kid next door threw a kitchen knife through my window (I was a kid in 1980s) It was an accident but the father beat the kid black and blue. He repaired the window and weeks later got drunk and hurled abuse over wall. Took a swipe at my father when we tried to calm him down. Police were called. They relocated weeks later.
Just browse /new on here and you’ll see about 20 a day
I was in a tiny London flat overlooking the downstairs neighbour’s garden. Last summer their teenaged son had finished his A levels and decided to celebrate by partying in the garden into the early morning on weekdays.
I wouldn’t have minded the odd party at the weekend, but it was constant – 4am on like a Tuesday morning and they’d still be shouting and listening to music.
It was summer and boiling hot so we wanted the window open, but even with it closed there was still noise as it was single-paned.
We had to move our mattress into the living room more than once so we could sleep.
We kept asking the parents to crack down on it but they clearly didn’t give a shit. They went away one week and invited over house sitters who were somehow even nosier.
And one time even the parents were up at like 3am on a Thursday making noise with their friends in the garden and I had to yell at them.
Mine’s a little different, because I’m in no way saying this person was a dick, she just affected our life somewhat negatively.
Nextdoor to us there was a very nice elderly south asian lady who I think was getting a bit bored in her old age, so semi-regularly she’d make batches of snacks for the street. Samosa, pakora, I hate to sound stereotypical but that’s largely what they were. Not going to lie, it was some of the best home cooking I’ve ever tasted.
The problems, as they so often do, set in at the same time as the dementia. She began to make this sort of thing at increasingly high rates and get quite rude and aggressive when people politely turned her down. Even more inconvenient was the fact she had very odd ideas about what time was cooking time and what time was sleeping time; there were a number of times I’ve woken up at 4 AM thinking it was the police with the noise of the banging.
I think she moved out to live with her daughter; it got quite stressful in the end but I absolutely wish her well.
ex teachers, it was him the problem not his late ex wife, allowed their son to hold band practice after all his mates were not allowed band practice and their houses neighbours complained
Both of them were head of departments
It got worst as he got himself a new bed partner and we could hear them at it through the walls.
Hard to believe at one stage we got on well with these neighbours, it was only when me and their son went to secondary school things changed
I’m not sure if it was Covid related or just a coincidence, however loads of older residents moved away from our street in the last couple of years.
For some reason, all their houses have been bought by people with multiple trade vans and multiple cars.
What once was a quiet street now feels cramped due to dumped vehicles (on pavements / around corners, etc), has someone tuning a motorbike on their drive from 9:30 until 22:30 every day, and dogs that are left outside to bark all day.
I used to like living here – I really wish we could move. The constant engine revving and barking is like long-term water torture.
There’s this 50 year old bald bloke who lives next door, he’s always listening to Sleaford Mods in his car, windows down, tinny radio turned up to 11, singing along. We’ve asked him to turn it down a bit when he’s parking but he just shouts “TOTAL CONTROL RACING” at me and walks off.
Had one guy live opposite us. He was disabled but also didn’t really have much to do with us as neighbours. And sometimes we’d see the police coming to visit.
But one day we noticed he’d installed a camera on his house. At first we thought “guys disabled, just protecting his house why not?”
Then realised he could control it from a computer and it had moved towards the kids playing out next door.
My parents called the police. Due to GDPR they told us he was known to the police, but couldn’t tell us why. But their faces said it all. And they made him take the camera down.
A few months later we saw him being whisked away in a police van. But never found out what happened
My neighbours from hell are probably junkies. Burning plastic and solvent smells are apparently signs of drug use? The fumes are strong enough to do permanent heart and lung damage.I’m used to stoners and alcoholics.I miss them now ,even when the plants were flowering it was bearable.
Yeah I was living in an old Edwardian house that had been split up into flats but in terms of noise it was like living with the flat on the second floor. Didn’t have any real issues for about a year as it was just a regular young family living upstairs.
Then two recent uni grads working in hospitality moved in and started having parties regularly especially on Sunday/Monday nights that would start at 11 and go on until 5/6 in the morning. Had to deal with music, footsteps and loud conversations from plummy hipster dickheads.
I started asking nicely, explaining that I had work the next day and needed to sleep and that my flatmates were in the same boat. I told them that if they wanted to be partying like that they should be going to a club. They didn’t see it that way and were straight up condescending and arrogant about it.
Well I do not respond well to sleep deprivation or people thinking they can walk all over me. So eventually I went round there as a bunch of them were smoking on the front door step and basically said ‘If you keep this up you’ll wish you hadn’t’. Wound up almost coming to blows with one of their guests.
The parties stopped for about a fortnight until I found out they’d reported me to property management. The temerity. When I spoke to them it was clear they were trying to finesse me by playing the victim.
In the end I moved out because I think I likely would’ve done something very bad.
Right outside my bedroom window in my maisonette was the garage roof of the house next door. This house was further up a slope so their garden was level with their garage roof.
About 6 months before I sold the property a new owner moved in and she let her dog shit on the garage so she didn’t have to clean it up.
So while people were viewing the property they would look out the window and see/smell dozens of turds.
I asked her to clean it up and you would think I asked she reluctantly did it once.
It carried on and the second time I asked she just shut the door in my face.
Thirty odd years ago in my 20s I had this couple move next door with their awful brat who was about 15. He’d have heavy metal ….which I can’t stand…blaring out full blast at all hours, including late night/early hours. I tried to talk to them and the brat politely, explaining that if he wants metal than can he please keep it down? I explained I really don’t like it blaring out at full volume, I was working and needed my sleep! I was polite and tried to be reasonable but they took no notice. They’d usually leave their washing on the line over night so one day I bought packs of itching powder, waited until they’d all gone out that night then saturated their clothing, including undies, with the powder! Next day they came to me itching and scratching away furiously asking if I had it as there ”must have been some sort of insect bite” in their clothing! Of course I knew nothing about it….! They moved out less than a month later!
Up until about a year ago now, we had a neighbour that would absolutely blast extremely bassy music (with subwoofers) at the absolute worst hours of the morning. We’re talking 3,4,5, even 6am. This would go on for hours as well, several nights a week when we’d have to be up in the morning.
We spoke to him multiple times about it but it just kept happening. The first time was after he moved in. He apologised and gave us a bottle of prosecco so thought fair enough, start over. But it just kept happening.
Initially we went to the council with it. That stopped him for a while once he received a letter from them. But then it started up again, so we had to restart the process with the council.
We eventually said fuck it and found the details of his landlord. Told her all about what he was doing and sent her recordings of the insane levels of noise and the insane times of the morning. After doing this a couple times she kicks him out and now they’re having renovations done on the entire flat. The last year or so has been absolute bliss.
Two doors down I have this older guy who listens to reggae music in the summer but I mean he has huge speakers in his garden and he BLASTS it out from about 1-5 (and I wfh) and it echoes down the street. Which is infuriating, especially as I want the windows open when it’s super warm.
We had a bit of music war over the summer, someone was having a baby shower in the garden and was playing some Pop music quietly… Then the reggae gets turned on full blast. They retaliate by turning their pop music up really loud, so the reggae is turned up louder. Pop music was turned up louder. And this went on for about two hours until they both turned their music off. But then the reggae went on again in the evening 😅
We had a warning about our neighbour “Diane” when we moved in. Diane loved to trespass onto everyone’s property and take pictures of things to complain about, like the siding of the old converted garages which were made circa 1850.
She had complained relentlessly about a tree so we took it down shortly after moving in, then she complained about the gap where the tree was.
She would try to speak to my mum whilst she was gardening in our backyard, and when mum could politely get away and relocate to the front garden Diane would then walk around the block to keep talking to her. She always called mum “Heather” but that’s not her name. We never corrected her.
When my sister’s cat went missing we put up posters around town and Diane called not once but twice to tell her “oh your missing cat? I’ve not seen him”. Who the fuck in their right mind does that?
I got threatened by the alcoholic next door wielding a screwdriver when I asked him to turn down the Mariah Carey album he had playing full volume.
When I was away for a weekend, my friend that lived in the flat opposite messaged me to tell me that the bloke was running up and down the corridor naked and screaming at 3am.
I moved out not long after!
Old man next door. Lived next to him for years then I don’t know what happened.
He decided he needed his TV blaring full volume all day, every day. Tried to talk to him about it but he either wouldn’t answer the door or would scream abuse at me so I ended up having to phone the police at 2am one morning coz I’d had enough.
All out war from him after that. He kept me awake late at night then set an alarm to get up at 4am and whack his radiator with a spanner (?) then run it right along so it sounded like a train. He knew I was up at 6am for work and must’ve slept during the day so he could torment me at night.
Ended up with him getting an ASBO but shortly after that he fell off a bar stool in the local pub, ended up in hospital and never recovered properly. He died after about 3 months.
Not going to lie, that first night he was away, I sobbed with relief to get a good night’s sleep. I’ll never take good neighbours for granted again.
So I had a fantastic neighbour on the ground floor but sadly as his kids were growing quick and could no longer share a room they had to move out.
To replace them came Bill and Ann. An older pair who were supposedly brother and sister but it seemed well dodge to me. Things seemed ok. They kept themselves to themselves. They enjoyed seeing our dogs on the way out for a walk. It started to go a bit squiffy when they started making comments about the middle neighbour being noisy. Fair enough two young boys, one with autism. Bill was of the opinion that he believe in autism and he was just noisy and naughty. They spoke to each other and seemed to have sorted it out.
My neighbours are from Bangladesh, I only mention this cause it’s important later.
Bill became frustrated at the noise from the middle flat. I think he’d never lived below someone before. He started increasing the volume of his radio gradually. This was annoying but he shut it off exactly at 11pm per noise ordinance orders. Despite the noise from the boys stopping at 9pm when they went to bed. We talked to our middle neighbours and were logging all the noise complaints. To support them.
The radio was no longer enough after a couple of weeks and he borrowed a drum from his nephew and would beat it at the slightest noise. Even a sneeze. We had the community safety team officer out to take our logs and listen first hand. He managed to hear “go home you black bastard”.
Well that was the nail in their coffin and they gone in 3 weeks.
Good riddance, they destroyed my mental health there was never a quiet moment.
We unknowingly moved into a red light district in Glasgow, years ago. We had a dealer living in our block and his customers used to shoot up in front of our door – there was bloody sprayed up the walls and we had to call an ambulance a couple of times for someone ODd outside our flat.
The last straw was when one of these delightful customers had crapped in the stairwell, and I slipped over on it, breaking a bottle of wine I was carrying and stabbing myself pretty badly in the leg. We moved to the more civilised leafy west end after that.
Not really a neighbour from hell, just your standard busybody, but we did have a neighbour who popped round once to inform us that a plant we had growing in the garden was a weed that was poisonous to horses. My dad said words to the effect of ‘Thanks for letting us know, we’ll bare that in mind if we ever have horses in the garden!’.
She also kicked up a stink about my parents not signing a petition to block a rehabilitation house being set up at the end of the terrace in front of our house. My mum responded by writing to the council to say they supported the application!
Upstairs neighbours would get into physical fights and scream horrible things at the top of their lungs (literally stuff like “you’re a registered paedophile and a rapist” and then bring kids round the next day) and throw shit at their toddler and then scream that the toddler was bleeding. I had to phone the police on them a few times. Eventually the girlfriend moved out and the guy seems to be illegally subletting the flat now, but at least it’s quiet now.
This will be a therapy for me!
7 years ago a married couple moved next door. Our relationship started off ok but i was very wary of the husband who I found really intimidating. It turned sour when they built a new house where the garage was and completely gutted and expanded the house adjoining ours. No respect for social hours/weekend noise. Just building works for months, 7 days a week. The Albanian builders were very loud and obnoxious. My kids were young and often my son was reduced to tears with noise that sounded like our house was going to cave in.
Numerous calls to the council and eventually someone came to inspect but went to the wrong house. They would have walked past the bombsite on their way down the road. Unreal.
The Albanian wife who is much younger than husband is so ridiculously loud. Before the building started I asked her politely over the fence if she could please be quieter as was shouting into her phone which she put on speaker and left to one side while sunbathing in her garden every day the sun happened to appear. Id put up with it for two summers. She just gave me a death stare and promptly started up her leaf blower. Relationship over! And lesson learned to nip a problem in the bud.
Even tho they live one house away now, which I am grateful for, I get very anxious when summer arrives as I know she’ll be out in her garden the whole time shouting. She has a young child now so the tirade is constant. Headphones don’t block her out! And I won’t play loud music as would be selfish for the young families either side. Lucky me to have a garden to enjoy I realise, but I no longer enjoy being outside when the weather is good. I suffer with chronic psoriasis and need to be in the sun when it appears.
And to add insult to injury they put speakers up on the wall of their extended kitchen and have a penchant for Abba and Whitney played loud on sunny weekends 😠
I send my best of wishes to anyone living with selfish neighbours in the UK. It makes life more difficult than it should be and can send you over the edge.
Councils are pretty hopeless in dealing with complaints. And there are too many stories of complete injustices I’m reading on this sub.
Growing up, we had neighbours tell us to fuck off back to Ireland, we were terrorists, etc. They even attacked my mum. We also had a neighbour who kept threatening to kill me because of an argument his little sister had with my little brother, (they were 6 at the time), he went on to smash the eyeballs out of someone’s head with a baseball bat. As an adult, we had neighbours that would have loud music on from 6pm Friday to late Sunday night. He teenage sons would try and attack the house, they would have drug deals going on too. All this because we kept asking her to stop her kids from lobbing rocks at the house for fun, and because we were just trying to keep a low profile and get on with our lives. She was a teaching assistant at the local primary school, when the head decided to pop round and offer us a place for our son, we told them that we know the kind of people who work there, so no. We had the last laugh, we ended up moving back to London, and the family we swapped houses with were even worse than the neighbours. They were having to leave London after being chased out by the local community
I was 17 and I’d just got out of the shower, I was fully covered in a towel and I went in to my room because I remembered I’d left the windows open. I reached up to close them and my towel slipped and I accidentally flashed my chest for less than a second. That was all it took for the lady at the back to march round to our house and proceed to berate my ex and I for ‘acting inappropriately’. She also harassed him when he was picking his 6y/o brother up from school and started telling the mums on the playground that we were exhibitionists and regularly had sex with the windows and blinds open. Absolute nutter.
I get woken up at about 7:30am every weekday by my trashy neighbour screaming at her kid for various reasons. Some of the things she screams at that kid are disgusting. She’s literally called the kid a cunt and a piece of shit before now.
She also used to have a boyfriend living with her and they got into actual physical fights from the sounds I heard. I haven’t heard anything like that for a couple of months now though, so presumably they split up and he moved out. But she still shouts and screams at the kid all the time. Absolute scumbag of a person.
Worst neighbour I had broke into my house, broke into my shed, stole from almost everyone in the street.
He was loud, violent and obnoxious.
Eventually things came to blows and the cheek of it he called the police and said I’d beaten him up.
Thank fuck for CCTV.
He went to prison for a bit, between all the thefts and assaulting me and all the other shenanigans he was getting up to.
My neighbor weighs about 115kg. I’m not weight shaming just setting the abuse scene. Her husband is about 45kg soaking wet. They fight 24/7. Now he’s a drunk and I’m sure not easy to live with. But all I can hear is her screaming ‘You Bastard! You cunt!’ Fine whatever. We deal with the noise and their 2 dogs that bark 24/7. But one day my husband is smoking out our window watching as she throws her husband to the ground, kneels on his neck. Then smashed a glass and cuts his face on both cheeks. She also locks him outside in the snow with no boots, makes him eat dog food. The list goes on. I’ve called the police. He says nothings happening. I’ve called the mens abuse hotline, they have come out to him. He’s still there.
Oh boy, when I was 5/6 we moved into a rental house, little did we know everyone in that cul-de-sac was the one family and apparently they wanted their family member to get that house. We didn’t know, we just saw a home for rent.
They made our lives a living hell until that 1 year lease was up, banging on walls, making up noise complaints, threatening us with letters, verbally, property damage etc.
The scariest experience for me personally is one of the younger ones, he would have been about 14 at the time and I would have been 6 at this point, started hitting me in the street up against a kerb, broke the end of a glass bottle and tried to slit my throat.
His friend stopped him at the last second, I may not be here today if they didn’t.
Needless to say we didn’t stay there any longer than we had to.
Whole family of absolute scum lived in that street, worst part was it wasn’t a run down area or anything, it looked really nice if you drove by.
I bought an almost derelict flat in a small mansion block in a posh part of London. Been there about a month.
Neighbours were as follows: cranky old American man, always had an issue with common areas and refused to pay service charge. Rude. Young couple, parents had bought them the flat, furnished and decorated it and cleaned it for them weekly (!). Gay couple, snooty interior designers, wealthy. Rented flat, 3 yuppy types, changed hands a lot. And me, female professional, middle class/good income, working long hours.
In short, the yuppy flat caught fire one night. I was about to go to bed, my cat was acting weirdly. Then I heard an explosion and the sound of shattered glass. The heat had exploded the windows of the flat out. The flat was directly above mine on the first floor.
Imagine my surprise when I opened my door, went outside the block to see ALL my neighbours (bar the yuppies who were away) outside in the street waiting for the fire crew.
They had ALL walked past my door (lights on) and not one had bothered to knock to tell me there was a major fire.
Nice neighbours.
My little girl has epilepsy, and when she had her first seizure, as you might imagine, all hell broke loose.
Anyway, as I was on speakerphone to 999 whilst the dude guided me thru how to perform CPR on my 5 year old, my next door neighbour, 70 year old single lady, leans thru our front window (it was summer, so was open) and shouts “will you keep that bloody racket down!”
She’s not been on my Xmas card list since
More housemate than neighbour. I lived in a hmo for professionals a few years ago. Lovely house everyone in there was lovely. It was a 5 bed and there was 3 of us. Me who worked in media another who was a policeman and the other a chef. The landlord loved us as we always paid on time kept the house tidy, but the letting agents were a bit off. They wanted the other 2 rooms filled and didn’t want to comply with the landlords employed only rule (I understand it like, I’m not saying those on the dole shouldn’t have lived there, but I understand the landlords logic and he was open to benefit receivers if we already knew the new tenant).
The letting agents got this guy in who was clearly mentally ill. He seemed fine at first then one night we all had a drink together and the real him started to creep out.
It started with him posting notes under our door complaining about the policeman. Saying that he was undercover to find dirt on him.
We told the landlord but we didn’t want to take the piss out the lad. He was clearly unwell, landlord understood and tried figuring out ways we could get someone involved to help. Letting agents were useless in this time none of us had any idea on the next steps.
One night I had enough of the notes as me and the policeman were good friends, I had a bad day in work which led to me probably speaking a little more harshly than I should have. I asked him to stop. I didn’t name call but I definitely had a tone. And silly old me for the first time ever, didn’t lock my bedroom door when I went to sleep.
I woke up with the mental guy in my room with a knife crying that I was one of them… I don’t know what them was. He was getting more and more irate. I didn’t know if anyone else was in the house so I tried to calm everything down while subtly yet frantically search for my phone.
The chef was asleep but he woke up to the cries and must have realized something was off. Snuck down the stairs and signalled me from the door. He text the policeman who was on duty to send someone round. And probably because we went directly to a policeman. Police arrived quickly.
As soon as the lights were visible he dropped the knife. Cried and cried. Apologising profusely. Then an ambulance came for him and he was sectioned. I didn’t press charges.
I say from hell because of that one night he wasn’t a bad man. He was just unwell.
Letting agents got sacked after that.