Nosy Neighbor Keeps Calling The City On Everybody Around Him, So Homeowners Decide Not To Fix His Retaining Wall Before They Move Out
by Laura Ornella
Unpredictable circumstances will undoubtedly arise during homeownership, but some people like to make mountains out of molehills.
Take Devin, for example, a neighbor with an eye on everything.
Let’s read this Reddit post below to find out Devin’s deal.
I Lived Next To The Guy That Called the City On All His Neighbors Weekly. I Bet He Remembers This.
My wife (22F at the time) and I (26M at the time) shopped for a home in 2016 before things got too crazy, and we found a small place in a working-class neighborhood.
We were working on getting the property approved for the FHA loan, and in the meantime, the seller allowed us to stay there so we could start fixing up the place.
It was quite the fixer-upper, but we were young, and the prospect of sweat equity was exciting.
This seller seemed to be ready to move out. Wonder why…
We were surprised that the house was so inexpensive, until we got to know our next-door neighbor.
Devin was somewhat famous in the neighborhood for finding reasons to call the city over infractions.
For example, he would go out at night and measure the distance tires were from the curb.
What kind of Beautiful Mind moment is this?
He filled noise complaints all the time and would intimidate folks on the street with threatening letters.
Seriously? Is this a hobby?
Most memorably, Devin would actually regularly heckle the previous Black tenants of the property we were buying from the safety of his elevated backyard.
It was on a bit of a hill.
Oh, ok, sounds like Devin is just a terrible person.
What made the property we were buying was difficult to qualify for the FHA loan was that the detached garage in the backyard had a sloping roof.
The structure was at least 70 years old and was in disrepair.
The seller paid to have it torn down, however, this only revealed that one of the walls of the structure was the retaining wall for a huge section of Devin’s backyard.
Interesting…
The 8-foot retaining wall was in bad shape.
It leaned in towards my side by nearly 18 inches at the top from the bottom. It looked like it wouldn’t take much to fall over and presented itself as a hazard.
With permission from the seller, I tore down the retaining wall with the intent of replacing it myself, at my own cost.
This opened us up to a barrage of creepy, threatening, cryptic letters from Devin.
The man needs a television show.
He was going to sue, so we had to have an engineer approve of everything, etc, etc.
He called the city almost every day.
He insisted that we pay for everything, despite the fact that it was the roots on his side that were pushing into my property. The code enforcement worker privately agreed with my assessment but seemed cowed by Devin’s daily calls.
Anyway, I decided that I was done dealing with Devin. It was too stressful. I didn’t even own the place. I was the buyer, and the loan wouldn’t get approved anyway, due to the issue.
Neither the seller nor Devin were willing to pay for a new wall, and I knew that anything I built wouldn’t be good enough for Devin anyway.
Get out while you can.
Before my wife and I gave up and moved out, I hacked a bit at the roots that were the last thing holding Devin’s yard in from falling 8 feet down.
They were overhanging my side of the property, after all, so I would’ve had to cut them down before building a replacement retaining wall.
My guess is that Devin ended up losing about a fourth of his backyard and his fence over the next couple of months to erosion.
Homeownership is serious stuff, but some people can certainly get obsessive, like Devin.
However, does Reddit agree with this petty revenge?
Right out the gate, a Redditor reveled in just how satisfying this story was.
Others echoed that sentiment…
Other users were curious about how Devin’s yard ended up.
And finally, one Redditor thought the one calling the city should’ve been the poster.
It sounds like Devin finally got a taste of his own karma.
Thankfully, this new homeowner got out while he could.
If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.
Categories: STORIES
Tags: · bad home, bad neighbor, buyer beware, fha, legal drama, loans, neighbor drama, neighbors, petty revenge, picture, reddit, top
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