In today’s story, a family has big dreams about what they want to do with land they inherited.

They are extremely surprised when they realize that the neighbors are unhappy with their plans.

Let’s see why the neighbors are unhappy…

AITA For telling new neighbors exactly what we were going to do, and then doing it

We inherited a house and land when my fil died. It is a nice house on two acres in the country.

No HOA. No neighborhood, just a neighbor to one side and to the back.

Everyone one else was further away.

We decided we would take the opportunity to use the land, put a couple of tiny houses on it for our kids and set them up. We brought this up multiple times with pretty much everyone who would listen.

We discussed legality, viability, all repercussions, everything.

We told everyone our dreams of a homestead of a semi-village where our children lived here on the land with us (albeit in tiny homes) and we had farm animals and gardens and whatever sustainable practices we could muster.

It seemed like everyone supported the idea.

Nobody poo-pooed our plans outright.

The back neighbor said we wouldn’t be able to install a septic but they were wrong.

The side neighbor said property values might go down but they weren’t planning on selling so it wouldn’t matter.

This isn’t actually an unusual idea where the OP lives.

This is a place in rural Arkansas where people have cattle, horses, goats, chickens, ducks, emus, multiple buildings on their property, including one person about a quarter mile away who has an RV set up for living in.

People have dog runs and broke down vehicles and tractors and barns and all sorts of stuff. The property in front of us has an old industrial scale chicken factory (can’t be seen front the road).

One neighbor got brutally honest.

Today the guy behind us was using an auger and I walked over and joked “are you digging for gold?”

And he went off on me about how he is installing “a shield” because our dog keeps going over there and pooping on his land and he doesn’t appreciate the eyesore of our buildings and how we are bringing property values down.

However, he has no fences to keep other dogs out, and the people behind him have two very large very hyper retrievers who regularly walk all over his land leaving huge piles (and on my land too). So it isn’t uncommon for free range dogs in this area.

I make it a point to keep our dogs inside as much as possible, or on leads, or in the fences we have been able to put up.

The neighbor claimed other neighbors are upset too.

I explained that we are trying to help our kids because life is hard nowadays.

He mentioned something about “did you ask anyone (for permission to put up buildings).”

Then he goes on to say that one of the other guys behind him “has to mow because you wont,” referring to land that isn’t ours to mow which confused the hell out of me.

Our land has weeds which come almost to the knee but we are allowing to grow a bit because there’s flowers and we are trying to allow the beehive to gather more locally and the weeds are pretty spare, just a little tall.

Actually, the neighbor claimed “everyone” is upset.

I mentioned that we are working on putting up a fence but trying to figure out what would be best.

I told him I had hoped that if he had a problem with something that he would have said something to us sooner.

He said everyone is mad.

Him. The neighbor beside us. His neighbors behind him. People in town.

Everyone.

Well… that’s one way to make everybody absolutely hate you.

Folks on Reddit agreed.

This reader completely sided with the upset neighbors in this story.

Many other people felt that two acres was not enough space for everything OP wanted to build.

This person would be bothered by the new buildings too.

But this person thinks the new buildings aren’t a problem. The dogs are the problem.

One reader thinks there’s only one thing to be annoyed about.

Dealing with neighbors and their opinions isn’t always easy, but if the law is on your side, they can’t stop you from doing what you want with your land.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.