Buying a house can be a difficult process, especially when the home in question is a big fixer-upper.

What would you do if you were renting a house and doing a major repair so you could get approved for a loan to buy it, but the neighbors kept filing complaints and making it impossible to get the work done?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, so finally he got tired of it and decided to move out, but not before getting revenge on the annoying neighbor.

Let’s read all about it.

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.

Bad neighbors can really cause problems.

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. He filled noise complaints all the time and would intimidate folks on the street with threatening letters.

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.

This would complicate things.

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.

A new retaining wall is needed for sure.

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.

You would think Devin would be happy at the new retaining wall.

This opened us up to a barrage of creepy, threatening, cryptic letters from Devin. He was going to sue, 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 city should follow the codes, regardless of what they are.

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.

There is no pleasing some people.

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.

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.

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That’s what he gets for refusing to work with people and always making their lives difficult.

Let’s take a look at what some of the top commenters on Reddit has to say about this story.

I was wondering this same thing.

You can always find something to report them for.

I would have followed up as well.

This isn’t a bad idea.

This commenter recommends suing the neighbor.

If you’re going to be a terrible neighbor, expect revenge.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a carpenter who was shocked to find the police waiting for him after his last day of work.