Neighbors are such a crap shoot, I swear.

Honestly, you’re lucky if they just leave you alone and don’t cause trouble.

OP had a neighbor who abandoned his house and planned to let it go back to the bank.

Background: This happened awhile ago when we lived on a city block of semi-detached houses with tiny front yards.

At one point the older guy who lived next door (there was an alley with sidewalks and grass separating our house from his, which had another house attached to it) passed away and a flipper got hold of the house.

They basically did a cosmetic pass and sold it for tons more than they paid.

New neighbor seemed nice but immediately began having tons of problems with the house and a couple years later had moved across the country and abandoned the property.

He started mowing so it didn’t look bad.

I had their number and called to ask if they minded me cutting the grass in front because it was really long.

They were super apologetic, and explained they just couldn’t afford to keep up with the repairs and the mortgage, the house was going to be foreclosed on, and even tried to pay me for cutting the grass which I refused.

It only took about 5 minutes extra (these are city yards we’re talking about) and kept it from looking like there was a vacant house on the block.

His other neighbor was mad about the clippings.

One day I had just gotten done cutting the grass and went back inside when there was some knocking at the door. I look out and it’s the neighbor two houses down, with the vacant in between us attached to their house.

They were sort of urgently/angrily demanding that I “come look at something”. Thinking there was something consequential going on I came out and walked with them to the front of their house.

Neighbor, looking at their yard in irritation: Do you see what’s going on here?

Me, looking around, having not a clue: uhhhh….?

So it turns out that each time I cut the grass I was inadvertently blowing grass clippings onto the neighbors landscape pavers and they were really not pleased with this.

I tried to explain how I was just trying to help keep the block look nice by cutting the grass and that as soon as a mild breeze came by the grass clippings would vanish from the pavers.

Well, they weren’t too happy with that and demanded that I keep the clippings off their pavers or sweep them off whenever I cut the grass.

So, he stopped mowing.

At that point I was pretty annoyed but just said in my nicest neighbor voice “no problem at all, I’ll take care of it, you won’t have any more issues”.

Went to get a push broom, swept their pavers off real nice, and then proceeded to comply with the request.

I made darn sure ZERO grass clippings got on their pavers by not ever cutting the grass in front of the abandoned house (attached to their house, remember) again.

It looked atrocious until it dawned on them it was now their responsibility and ended up having to pay someone to keep cutting it until the house went through foreclosure.

The top comment says some neighbors are worse than others.

You could just get rid of your grass altogether.

It’s a tradeoff, for real.

What are they complaining about, for real?

Simple solutions are the best kind.

Problem solved, I guess.

Hopefully the foreclosure didn’t take too long.