Pray they sell their house!! LOL!!

I am in the same situation with neighbors on either side whose homes are not great. One is a rental, the other are owners and they just don't seem to car, but they are sweet people so we haven't said anything. Finally the rental home has new tentants which is the landlord's sister and hubby so they have really neatened the place up. Before this we put up a chicken wire fence and wooden posts with confederate Jasmine (we're in FL) and it is starting to fill in and it's 6' tall so it covers a lot. You have to bear with the first 2 years of patchy growth, then it takes off and the neighbors become virtually invisible. In terms of resale-that's a whole other problem.

God, resale!  That's the chestnut.  

I live in a flat in a house with a common entrance. The new first floor tenants have decided to turn it into their own personal front hall. THIS IS ANNOYING. They even erected some sort of shelving unit to store their stinky, disgusting shoes! I'm a fairly easy going person, but I hate this situation. I'm torn between leaving a slightly passive aggressive note or calling the landlord. I have to live here, so I don't want to cause any trouble, but really this is just pushing the envelope. I fear to think about what area will be like in the dog days of summer! Will I be forced to pull a Michael Scofield and jump off the deck to street level?!

My neighbors are constantly leaving a pile of junk in the front yard and have sheets hanging from the windows. It drives me CRAZY. My way of dealing with it is making sure my yard always looks IMMACULATE. I take the time to add extra special touches to the yards in my home to hopefully distract a viewers eye from the eyesore next door. At least it helps me feel better.

lyndsxo-glamourmoms.blogspot.com/

My neighbors are constantly leaving a pile of junk in the front yard and have sheets hanging from the windows. It drives me CRAZY. My way of dealing with it is making sure my yard always looks IMMACULATE. I take the time to add extra special touches to the yards in my home to hopefully distract a viewers eye from the eyesore next door. At least it helps me feel better.

lyndsxo-glamourmoms.blogspot.com/

Call the Landlord and then if there is no satisfaction call the City.  I would take note of everything "notable" before you call the landlord and let him/her know how much their house is not going to be worth when they sell it.  But I would also inform them of your next course of action if they don't do something about it.  I also had a horrible neighbor...I got the kids from their house with my kids to clean up thier yard.  I shamed them into cleaning up the place!!!!

My home is on a relatively large lot as so are the other neighbours so we have considerably large backyards.  We put up a beautiful fence last summer which 'we' entirely paid for and did extensive landscaping; however since then our neighbour's yard has become 'Tent City' and they extended their two car laneway right along side the fence.  (Looks like a

Drag Strip.)   So, to block off the view in the Fall we planted an Evergreen Hedge.   If I had known, I wudn't have put up the bloody da*n fence since our landscaping didn't include any 'Money Trees'.  I keep telling myself, "it could be worse'.  

Praying for lots of rain and quick maturity of the Hedges.    -mrsben-

We have an awful house - an eyesore really - with inconsiderate and rude neighbours on the west side of our house. Not only do they have front porch parties all summer, but their backyard is a pigsty and their garbage routinely spills out on our property. To make things wose, the woman appears to be feeding the neighbourhood racoons from the closed-in walk-out in the back of the house. If this continues much longer, my husband and I are going to have to call the city and complain. What would you suggest we do?  

we ARE the messy house next door!

I live in a town-house complex where there are fairly strict rules about what you can and can't do on the "shared" property, which includes our front stoop (shared with two other units). I'm huge on curb appeal and am the only one of the three units that makes an effort out front by regularly  sweeping, washing the railings and doors and maintaining a planter with flowers during the appropriate seasons.

My neighbours repay my attempts at keeping our shared space looking nice by attaching their rusty shopping cart to the railing (against the rules), leaving their nasty doormat (actually a bathmat in reality) out front for three years without changing it or cleaning it, and leaving not one but TWO tall salsa jars filled with cigarrette butts on the stoop for all to see.

My blood pressure actually rises every single time I come home.

Hi,

Suggestion, take some photos and keep emailing, faxing the city EVERY DAY, do you think there is a health hazard here? Broken glass, needles any sort of hazards materials you might think could cause an illness etc, Contact the health department. Contact the environment offices in Toronto. I’m rather sure if the city is contacted they can and will make them clean it up.  I saw something like this before on Silverman Helps on City TV.

toronto.ca/health/index.htm

toronto.ca/city_directory/

Start with these 2 links, ask for their advice and help in this matter, I understand just how much it SUCKS to live with a messy neighbor. If you rag on the city enough they will do something.

Cheers!

Mike Oakley  

when I was in art school in Montreal I had a nasty landlord who wanted to raise our rent..I reported the building to the health authorities, certain that they would find something...They did alright! the house was demolished within a few months. Works everytime!

We live in a new development and our neighbors right beside us are horrible. We don't have fences up yet, so the mounds of garbage they have in their backyard fly into everyone else's when it's windy. On top of that, they've built this horrible looking sundeck that just doesn't match anything in the neighborhood. They don't recycle and, once after the holidays, but a bag of  their garbage on a few of our other neighbors (including ours!) piles. They have several large pickup trucks that they park very illegally in the alley or in the front, one with pulling a trailer. The only way to teach them is play by the rules, I called bylaw services and they had to move their vehicle. Maybe one day they'll learn.

I owned a house on a street in Victoria that will remain unnamed (Verrider) that had nice houses all the way up one side of the street, whereas on the other (the one ours was on) was nice from midway up.  Starting at the house after ours down the hill were a bunch of run down shacks owned by one slumlord.  The house next to us had a collection of lowlifes who, I'm sure, couldn't find housing with anyone else.   The first rents we dealt with had two nasty pit bulls.  After the bit bull owners left a group of about twenty Marxists moved in and proceeded to trash the place, literally.  After them came the late teen hip-hop girls who'd party to the wee hours.  Then came the bikers with their rottweilers.  They put up a wire fence and let the dogs rip up the grass in the front yard creating a dust bowl.  After that, we finally found a great fool and left.  

Ah, yes, the very tender and not sensual rub on the nerves that is neighbourly disharmony; a sensitive, prickly issue indeed. Neighbour disagreements can build into a nasty feud in no time; like feeding greasy food to a bad case of acne, eruption is inevitable...

Try honey, honey, and entice the landlord to sweeten the appearance of the house using the finest of wiles; that may prompt the response you are looking for and boost your curb appeal as well.

I think Lyndsay has the right idea.  It's a small world and you never know if that messy neighbour just might happen to know someone that you also know, or even better, you may have some kind of business encounter with them in the future!  I think it's best to be friendly and polite and soon that messy neighbour I'm sure will start to feel a little embarrassed and start taking better care of his property, especially if  yours is looking immaculate all the time.  If it's a rental property, it would probably help to befriend the owner.  I just think confronting your neighbour will have a negative effect and probably make them want to do things that will make you more annoyed.

I am the messy house on the blck by my leaves only . The neighbour gets mad because I dont clean them right away. Due to an illness that I can not control ( sometimes good somtimes not good ). What do I do ?

I have a neighbor who never cuts the lawn in summer and lets the dandelions grow two feet tall.  I just go over and pull the dandelions while I'm gardening and once my husband cut the grass and got a lecture about why our neighbour likes to keep the grass long....excuses excuses

Plants things accordingly like a crab apple tree if you don't want parking near your home!

My next door neighbour doesn't like to moe his lawn - so since he is otherwise a great neighbour, I simply say it's time to moe and he does so within a few days.  Our other neighbours - a couple are rentals pile up so much garbage and junk every week, I have no idea where they get it from.  When it gets too bad over a few weeks I call the city and they immediately take care of it.

We have just started dumping their junk under their front porch...seemingly they don't notice it or care and we can't see it from our home either...not sure what we will do when that area fills up but for the time being its an easy solution

I believe that Toronto does have a bylaw in place (such as my hometown) that forces the tenant to clean up or the city comes in and cleans it up and charges it back to the tenant/property owner. In our town, we have only had to post notice several times and word gets around.

Well my neighbours really had either no time to make thier yards look good or they really didn't bother. When we moved into our place we really put a lot of work into the yard and it really looks nice, we even dug up the curb and put an herb garden in it. In a few months time we are noticing the neighbours are working on their yards and I wonder if we may have had some influence.  The neighbourhood is really taking pride in their outdoor spaces.  What ever the reason for their decision to put work into it...it just looks great.

We live on a wonderful lake with a most beautiful view....The house next door has seen a steady stream of renters over the last 10 years; average a new renter every year. Only one or two out of the 10 have taken any pride in the way the yard looks...This is especially frustrating in the summer as there overgrown weed garden spreads across into our yard. Besides this, it is quite an eyesore...We take a lot of pride in the way our yard looks but unfortunately unlike the above person, we have not had any influence on the neighbours keeping up their yard.

We live in a rented tip.  The current owner of this decrepit triplex inherited the building from his mother after she passed, and he stores all manner of things in the junkyard in the rear of the building, including wooden wagons that you can hitch onto vehicles, an old porcelain sink, bits of lumber -- what an eyesore.

The lawn was mowed twice last season!  We're in Montreal, and I have called our borough about this slumlord but so far nothing has improved.

We'll be moving soon, anyway, but I do feel sorry for the neighbour next door and those who live across the street, because the presence of this dump de-values their properties.

We have a variety of neighbours on our suburban street...some take great pride in keeping their homes nice, some don't. I don't believe it's a matter of money: it doesn't cost you anything to pull weeds and make sure your garbage doesn't get blown all over the street.

We had neighbours for years who rented out their house to various groups; one set was a very elderly couple and the landlord added a charge to their rent to provide a lawn mowing service then had a bunch of excuses why the lawn was never mowed. The renters were very embarrassed and apologized to the neighbours; eventually, the landlord was forced by the city to have the lawn mowed after complaints from several homeowners on the street. This was a ridiculous situation, and very frustrating. Other renters included a group of about-20-year-olds, some with babies, who never, ever used garbage cans...they just left junk in the carport, not even in bags. The guys sat in the back of a pick-up truck in the driveway one day and then threw their empty beer cans into the ditch in front of their own house. Who does that???? I can only imagine what the inside of the house looked like! Finally, the house was sold a couple of months ago and a family has now moved in who are putting in an effort - mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges and planting flowers. Again, none of those things cost much money, but it is so nice after all this time to look across the street and not see a mess. Yahoo!

I guess there isn't really any advice in here except I believe almost every town and city has "unsightly premises" bylaws - check your town's website. If there is a possible health concern (try "I think there are rats in there" - it worked for my Mom!) you get their attention. Good luck.