Living in a college town can be difficult with the overwhelmingly large student population.

In today’s story, one family moves to a college town and tries to prevent their neighborhood from becoming overrun with student housing.

However, they eventually move away, and now they don’t care as much about what happens to the neighborhood. This is making their former neighbors furious.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

WIBTA for selling land to a fraternity after failing to organize neighbors to take measure to prevent “studentification” of our neighborhood?

A few years back, I and my family moved to a college town.

We were warned by people we knew who had lived there that we needed to be careful to pick a neighborhood that was not likely to be “studentified.”

The college in town has gone through periodic expansions in enrollment, but has never seemed interested in using its own land or resources to build sufficient student housing.

OP shares what often happens as a result of the student housing issue.

The result was that student housing developers would come into a neighborhoods accessible to campus and engage in “blockbusting”.

Like lowball the saddest house on the street, submit plans to build student housing and then the realtors swarm in scaring the other owners that the street is going to be the next frat row.

And the fact is that students and families do have problems mixing as neighbors.

This was enough of a problem that the local zoning for some neighborhoods that would have otherwise been vulnerable had some restrictions that would make student housing impractical, but leave things otherwise unrestricted (largely limits on number of unrelated individuals living in a housing unit).

The rules are changing, so OP bought a vacant lot.

A year after moving in, we learned the city was doing a zoning overhaul – much needed. But as part of the simplification, the university’s persuasion managed to sneak in a provision getting rid of these limits.

When we learned of this, we figured maybe we could agree with our nearest neighbors to put in covenants/reciprocal easements that had same provisions being stripped out of zoning.

I was also most worried about vacant land. There was one large parcel a block away, and I managed to buy it before the zoning change went through, so it was still relatively cheap.

OP couldn’t get a consensus from the neighbors.

To sweeten the deal for neighbors I was asking to sign covenants, I offered to keep the parcel vacant forever.

Unfortunately, I could not get a critical mass of people to agree – largely because many work for the college and seemed afraid of blowback if the school found out.

Honestly, my kids and I never loved the town.

They decided to move.

My wife wanted to be near her mom and sister.

MIL died last year and sister then said she was moving away.

That was enough and we sold our house and left.

I did not manage to sell the empty lot, but put it on the market.

OP is considering selling the vacant lot to a fraternity.

Lo and behold, I was approached by a buyer.

Turns out, this buyer is a fraternal organization, and they want the land to be their new chapter house.

They may subdivide and sell the resulting new plot to another frat or sorority. They are willing to pay up.

I warned the neighbors this could happen and tried to protect the neighborhood, but they weren’t motivated enough to go through with it. And we don’t live there anymore.

But some former neighbors have heard this may be happening and now they are reaching out via email/text and complaining and moaning.

WIBTA if I said, “match the buyer’s price, or they get the land and can do as the please”?

It seems like the neighbors had their chance to prevent the vacant lot from being sold to someone who would build student housing.

I wouldn’t blame OP if he sold to the highest bidder.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader thinks OP should sell it to the fraternity.

This reader thinks OP doesn’t need to protect the ex-neighbors.

Here’s a snarky idea of now to respond to the neighbors.

This person would only focus on the profit.

Another reader would focus on the family.

The neighbors had their chance. Pay up or don’t complain.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.