Nothing says “welcome home” like a neighbor with a camera and way too much free time.

So when one homeowner added chickens to his backyard and thought he was in the clear, the local busybody neighbor reported him to the HOA and triggered a bylaw battle.

But by the end of the story, the fine print that came for the homeowner’s coop eventually came for the neighbor’s privacy fence.

Keep reading for the full story.

Neighbor used HOA against me. Two can play that game.

Roughly six years ago, my wife and I decided to move (pre-COVID times when everything was still cheap).

Long story short, we couldn’t find any pre-existing houses that we really liked, but we did find the neighborhood where we currently live and built a house with the developer.

As people do, we drove by every so often to look at the progress they were making on the house.

One night, we stopped and went out to look at the hole in the ground, as they had just gotten ready to pour the concrete for the basement walls.

That’s when they were greeted by a nosy neighbor.

Here comes SS, acting like a concerned neighbor because “materials have been getting stolen.”

We explained that we’d be the new neighbors and had a brief conversation where he commented that he and another neighbor are the “unofficial neighborhood watch.”

Missed that red flag at that moment, but we left feeling warm and fuzzy because the neighbors looked after each other.

But unfortunately, the truth was much different.

Unbeknownst to us, SS is really just an overactive Nosy Nelly and really just looking for ways to screw with people.

He’s also a scavenger and scrapper, so who’s really stealing those materials, Steve…

One day, I decided that I wanted to start being a bit more self-sufficient and picked up some chickens to raise for eggs.

As far as he could tell, this fit perfectly into the neighborhood’s existing culture.

Now, I’m really not that guy who wants to be annoying to my neighbors, but even then, the area that we live in is surrounded by farms and is “farm themed.”

Everything seemed to be on the up-and-up with other rules too.

I did my due diligence and checked town ordinances and the HOA guidelines that we were given and found no rules or ordinances against having chickens or poultry on your property.

Backtracking slightly, when we signed our contract and went to settlement, we only received a one-page flyer that went over some basic items restricted by the HOA.

They outlawed some things.

No grilling in the front yard, no permanent basketball hoops in the street, no boats or RVs on a permanent basis, etc.

There was no mention of anything about the types of animals you can or cannot have.

So, working on the idea that I am in the clear, I buy some chicks and begin raising them.

He begins to make preparations for the animals’ home.

I decided that, since I had a kennel at my old house (we rented from my in-laws for a couple of years until we were ready to move), I’d go pick that up and set it up around my coop for the chickens to have some free-roaming space.

The kennel had four fence pieces that I could move on my own, but they were heavy, so I backed my truck up to my fence where the kennel was going to go in the backyard and started heaving them over.

That’s when the neighbor decides to start meddling again.

SS sees me doing this and offers to lend a hand with getting them over the fence, so sure, why not?

He asks why I need a dog kennel if I have a fence, to which I inform him it’s not for my dogs and is for the chickens.

I should have known that he was going to cause issues from here, because the next thing he asks is, “Your HOA allows chickens?”

It was phrased that way because he had lived there when the first developer of that neighborhood owned it, but they went bankrupt, and my developer took over.

It’s the same HOA, but we didn’t know that at the time.

So the homeowner informed the neighbor it was, in fact, allowed.

Anyway, I told him that I didn’t see anything in the paperwork provided to me regarding chickens, and that was that.

Until the next day…

SS comes over with a loaf of bread from his mother’s bakery that he occasionally helps at and is making small talk when he brings up the chickens again.

This time, he’s only talking to my wife about it, but he again brings up that his HOA doesn’t allow it and that he was bummed about that.

That’s where the story should have ended.

But unfortunately, the drama didn’t end there.

Maybe about a week later or so, I got a letter from the HOA.

“It has come to our attention that you have chickens on your property. Per bylaw ‘X,’ that is not allowed, and you have 30 days to remove them from your property.”

I was perplexed.

This didn’t compute to this homeowner.

How on earth did they find out about them, and why was I not provided with a copy of the HOA bylaws when I signed the contract for my house?

The day after receiving the letter, my wife and I were on our way home from some errands when another neighbor that we’re friendly with flagged us down and told us, “I don’t know if you know, but SS went up to your fence and was taking pictures of your backyard.”

That’s when it became crystal clear who was behind this.

For context, there was an empty lot between SS’s house and ours, but that finally clicked for us.

SS freaking reported us to the HOA!

Me being me, I’m not going to take this sitting down.

This homeowner doesn’t see why other people should get to control what he does or doesn’t do on his property.

I’m going to fight this.

Some HOA (which is the developer’s “maintenance corporation”) isn’t going to tell me what I can or can’t do on my property!

(Spoiler alert, they did indeed tell me what I couldn’t do.)

So the homeowner decides to take a closer look at the rules himself.

Through a bunch of back and forth with the HOA, I get a copy of the bylaws and I start picking through them with a fine-tooth comb.

I found out that someone had sent in seven pages’ worth of pictures of all the infractions of the HOA rules, including the picture of my coop.

This wasn’t their first run-in with the HOA.

I should also mention that I was in hot water with the HOA when I had our fence installed because it wasn’t a split-rail fence with chicken wire, so it didn’t match the aesthetic the “developer wanted for the neighborhood.”

They never said another thing about it, though, and I ended up being the catalyst for everyone else doing whatever they wanted with fences.

Also, since I’m being petty, literally any fence that is white vinyl is technically against the HOA bylaws, as it states that they can only be split rail, a maximum of five feet, and made of wood.

So this ended up being the leverage this homeowner needed.

But here’s finally where the petty revenge comes in.

You see, SS has an area of his backyard that is blocked off by some wood privacy fencing that is NOT split rail and much taller than the five-foot maximum.

There are a few other problems too.

Oh, and there’s some unsightly plant growth that is outside the HOA guidelines regarding the plants you can have on your property?

So why should this neighbor get off scot-free?

Well, I think it’s high time the HOA hears about these gross infractions of their bylaws, seeing as how we’re all trying to do the right thing and follow the rules.

So, I snapped a couple of pictures of the privacy fence, the eyesore plants, and the static line he has for his dog in the front yard.

The dog is a whole ‘nother story.

I felt a little bad for the dog initially, but he’d leave her out for hours and she’d run into the street at cars driving by, since the static line was long enough for her to get her whole body past the curb.

I can’t tell you how many almost heart attacks I had because I thought I was about to run over a dog.

Eventually, this neighbor got his just desserts.

Well, I can tell you that probably about a week or so later, SS got his nastygram from the HOA informing him that he needed to move the static line and remove the privacy fence.

I watched with absolute glee as he removed his privacy fence.

Karma finally came for this awful neighbor — and just in time!

What did Reddit think?

The whole idea of HOAs is just plain wacky to this reader.

You know what they say: Good fences make good neighbors!

For some buyers, an HOA is a total dealbreaker.

Nightmare stories like these make some homeowners even more grateful for where they are.

If you’re going to police the whole neighborhood, you better make sure your own backyard is clean.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.