Someone bought the house next door.

seadoug

seadoug

Well-known Member
Location
Texas
Big deal, right? Not necessarily. I live in a neighborhood where very few houses come up for sale. When one does go on the market it is usually well cared-for or the new owner sinks a boatload of money into upgrading it. The previous owner never took care of his house. At one point, his gutter was hanging to the ground on my side and I had to go next door and tell him. He said he knew but he took his sweet time repairing it. The reason it was important to me is that his side wall encloses my courtyard per the attached picture. There is just a little walking space between the two houses.

Being nosy, I looked at the pics on the realtor's site. The house had a bad floor plan and everything needed work. We couldn't believe what they asked originally, but the price was substantially lowered 3 times before the house sold.

Apparently, the new owners are renovating it because I woke this morning to hammering and saw guys putting on a new roof. I opened the gate for them so they could access my side. No one even gave me a head's up so I could unlock the gate. Without doing that, they would have been unable to clean up the debris and old shingles in my courtyard. With a house this close in proximity, you can see how most renovations would be intrusive, but in the end I'm just happy to see the new owners are sprucing it up.

I plan on introducing myself when they move in and letting them know they can have access to my side of their house anytime they need it.

patio.jpg
 
seadoug said:
Big deal, right? Not necessarily. I live in a neighborhood where very few houses come up for sale. When one does go on the market it is usually well cared-for or the new owner sinks a boatload of money into upgrading it. The previous owner never took care of his house. At one point, his gutter was hanging to the ground on my side and I had to go next door and tell him. He said he knew but he took his sweet time repairing it. The reason it was important to me is that his side wall encloses my courtyard per the attached picture. There is just a little walking space between the two houses.

Being nosy, I looked at the pics on the realtor's site. The house had a bad floor plan and everything needed work. We couldn't believe what they asked originally, but the price was substantially lowered 3 times before the house sold.

Apparently, the new owners are renovating it because I woke this morning to hammering and saw guys putting on a new roof. I opened the gate for them so they could access my side. No one even gave me a head's up so I could unlock the gate. Without doing that, they would have been unable to clean up the debris and old shingles in my courtyard. With a house this close in proximity, you can see how most renovations would be intrusive, but in the end I'm just happy to see the new owners are sprucing it up.

I plan on introducing myself when they move in and letting them know they can have access to my side of their house anytime they need it.

View attachment 489628
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That was thoughtful of you Doug. On the other hand, had you not unlocked and opened that gate, you might have had to do the cleaning up yourself. Looks great, though.
 
seadoug said:
Big deal, right? Not necessarily. I live in a neighborhood where very few houses come up for sale. When one does go on the market it is usually well cared-for or the new owner sinks a boatload of money into upgrading it. The previous owner never took care of his house. At one point, his gutter was hanging to the ground on my side and I had to go next door and tell him. He said he knew but he took his sweet time repairing it. The reason it was important to me is that his side wall encloses my courtyard per the attached picture. There is just a little walking space between the two houses.

Being nosy, I looked at the pics on the realtor's site. The house had a bad floor plan and everything needed work. We couldn't believe what they asked originally, but the price was substantially lowered 3 times before the house sold.

Apparently, the new owners are renovating it because I woke this morning to hammering and saw guys putting on a new roof. I opened the gate for them so they could access my side. No one even gave me a head's up so I could unlock the gate. Without doing that, they would have been unable to clean up the debris and old shingles in my courtyard. With a house this close in proximity, you can see how most renovations would be intrusive, but in the end I'm just happy to see the new owners are sprucing it up.

I plan on introducing myself when they move in and letting them know they can have access to my side of their house anytime they need it.

View attachment 489628
Click to expand...
is that two separate houses with a court yard garden seperating?
 
Rakaia said:
+1.
I too would qualify how you plan to give them access, maybe for renovation purposes. Alternatively you could let them know that if they need access to let you know.
What is the population density in your area?
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There are 136 homes between our neighborhood and the one next door. I'm guessing ours has 60 homes.
 
I hope all goes well.
Within the last two years had new neighbors move in some it was an improvement, some not.
At first, I let neighbor stage things on my lawn while working on their place. Homes are very close together also, but now they think they can do whatever in my yard.... I do not yet find a nice way to tell them I was being polite at first but now stay in your lane.
 
seadoug said:
I plan on introducing myself when they move in and letting them know they can have access to my side of their house anytime they need it.
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I think that an introduction is fine but I wouldn’t rush over with a pie or volunteer anything until I had a bit of time to size them up and see how compatible we are going to be as neighbors.

Hopefully they will love their home as much as you and hubs love yours.

“Good fences make good neighbors.”
- Robert Frost
 
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They say "good fences make good neighbors". I had a neighbor once who put a gate into the fence between our yards (it was his fence) so that our daughters could come-and-go easily without having to go out and in the front doors. Mine was over at their house half the time and theirs was at our house the rest of the time.

They also had a pool which we were free to use at any time.

Greatest neighbors I ever had.
 
seadoug said:
I plan on introducing myself when they move in and letting them know they can have access to my side of their house anytime they need it.
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Best wishes going forward with new neighbors. As I was reading the OP, the above sentence got my attention, even before I read other posts expressing caution, such as post # 4, 5, 9, and 10 (might be others).
 
You roll the dice with neighbors. The 70+ year-old lady on the other side is one of the best neighbors we could hope for. She is Mexican American and made us some of the best tortillas we've ever had the first Christmas we were in our house. Her home was beautiful and she still did a complete inside/outside renovation a couple of years ago. She even had the brick painted.

It was touch-and-go during her renovation because the painters poured white paint into my area of the gutter and many times blocked my driveway with trucks so I couldn't get out. I lost it one day and went into her house while she was there and yelled at them to get their truck out of my way. She made things right, I apologized and we have remained friends. I'd do anything for her. I frequently take the leaf blower and blow the acorns off her driveway if I'm doing mine.

A continuation of the earlier story... I woke up this morning and the gutter was off the house on our side. Turns out it was "gutter replacement day", and since no one came to our door and asked us if we'd unlock the gate the guys had to climb on the roof from the other side with a ladder to get into the courtyard! I did unlock the gate when I saw that, they replaced the gutters and went their way. The previous neighbors didn't have leaf guards and there was brick-sized black crap that came out of the old gutters. The new owners have them, so now I won't see crap on the sides of the gutters. Things are looking up!
 
smiley said:
I'm a little confused - like midget size!! - do you have an adjoining fence between your properties or just a garden strip?
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It's almost impossible to describe. Imagine you are looking at the two houses from the front. Between the two houses is a tall, narrow wrought iron fence with a gate. If you go through the gate, it accesses our side of the house and there is a narrow flagstone walkway that continues back to our courtyard. The 2 A/C units and fusebox are located there. I've attached a pic I found online with a similar setup (not our house). See that gate between the two houses?

gate.jpg
 
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