When you purchase a home, one of the most important documents to get sight of, understand, and agree to is the property boundaries. Showing exactly how much of the land you own – including shared walls, fences, and the garden – is crucial, not only in the legal process of purchasing the property, but down the line if it comes to interacting with your neighbours too.

Because it’s all too common to hear stories of neighbouring fences creeping into your land as they attempt to make their outdoor space a little bigger, or disputes about who owns which fences when they need replacing. Having legal documents in place clears this up quick and painlessly, once and for all.

But for the guy in this story, things were made significantly more complicated by a neighbour who couldn’t get his head around which areas of land he did and didn’t own. And despite what the documents said, he was laying claim to an area that wasn’t his. So he called the city, but his plan to assert dominance over his neighbour well and truly backfired.

Read on to find out what happened.

Neighbour self owns by calling Code Enforcement on himself

We bought our house four years ago. During the showing, inspections, appraisal and approval by the city, no one said anything about the neighbours fence that spanned from the front right corner of his house (if looking at them from the street) across his driveway with a gate, to the front left corner of my house.

This effectively blocked me from accessing a 30’Lx4’W strip of my own property, which was all grass that he mowed.

Later that year in November, I noticed a tiny bit of water seeping into the basement on that side of the house. We had just gotten through our third historic, once in a hundred years, rainfall of the year.

A quick ocular pat down of that side of the house showed a slight slope towards my house. I planned to hire someone in the spring to slope it away and install a French drain so I didn’t flood his driveway, like a good neighbor.

Let’s see what happened when the drain was installed.

The next spring I hired the crew, and they went over and started working.

The neighbour, a sixty-ish year old who looks eighty according to my wife, came out all hot screaming at these guys wondering what they were doing on his property.

Mind you, I had never had issue with a siding repair who accessed that same side or the cable guy or a plumber who all accessed that side many time before.

He gave him a hard time for a few minutes. They blew it off and thought he had been day drinking. They sloped, tilled, mulched and left a nice flower bed for future use.

But next time work was done on the area, things got even worse.

The next year, last year, I planted some roses in the bed and hired out a company to do a whole yard clean out.

They got to that side to pull weeds and lay fresh mulch and the old man came screaming out of his house telling them to get off his property. He even took a punch/swipe at one of the guys, calling them all dirty Mexicans. These guys were white so that made no sense.

I came out and he started yelling at me, saying they were messing up his yard and he wanted me to pay to resod. I said no way. He called me a ***** over and over again. I told them to ignore that side.

I spoke with my wife and we both agreed, if he wants to be a ****, we’ll just be petty and let that overgrow so he can look at it. You can’t really see it from the street, so I didn’t care. Weeds were 4′ tall by the end of the summer.

But of course, the guy didn’t like that either.

This spring was wet, so the weeds were knee high by the start of May. I was outside mowing when he came over the fence, got in my face and asked ” when are you gonna clean this **** up?” I said “when I have assurances you won’t harass me or workers, then I will clean it up.”

This upset him. He started calling me a ***** over and over again, and even threw in the word “lazy” for good measure. I said “Call the city” and ignored him. He turned his attention to the other neighbours and started raising holy hell with them.

My house, while older, is well maintained and carefully landscaped. His house has aluminium siding from the eighties. He doesn’t edge any of the walks or driveway and he has old aluminium awnings that are filthy.

His back patio has tall weeds between the pavers. I say nothing about it. It’s not mine and honestly, he’s keeping values down enough that the tax man didn’t raise my rates. So I just don’t care.

But then there was a knock at this guy’s front door.

The next day, code enforcement knocks on my door. He’d called.

The guy said “I’m not sure why I am here. I see no weeds, you have a nice home. Can you show me where he thinks these weeds are?”

So we went to the side of the house. Code enforcement saw his fence blocking my access. “Well, nothing I can do to you but he has ten days to remove that fence. He also needs to weed his patio, and edge the sidewalk.”

The next morning his wife came over and asked if I would split the cost of removing the fence. I said “sorry, but us ******* are out of charity money this week.”

Read on to find out what happened next.

Now there’s an old man sweating in the heat removing the fence, and I can hear him calling his kids to come help because their old man couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

He could at least tolerate someone in his grass to make it look nice but no.

Tomorrow, now that I have access, I’m removing those roses and putting them somewhere I can enjoy them. The mulch will be removed, I’ll lay down some landscaping plastic and cover the whole thing in pea gravel.

You want to be a ****? Fine, look at the ****** side of my house.

That neighbour has some nerve thinking that he can treat his neighbour like that.

And the racist language and attacks on the workers?

He’s a really nasty piece of work.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who got creative with his parking after his neighbors started using his extra spot without asking.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought the neighbour has bought all this drama on himself.

While others had faced similar situations.

Meanwhile, this Redditor came up with the perfect way to get revenge.

The aggression from this neighbour is off the charts. First of all, he shouldn’t have used fencing to claim land that wasn’t his own, but getting irate about situations that were actually designed to make things nicer without even asking what was going on is completely unacceptable. It’s like he jumps straight to the worst conclusions rather than realising, ‘oh, my neighbour is installing a flooding prevention measure that is actually designed to help me.’ Because of course he wouldn’t think that – in his mind, everyone is out to get him.

It’s beautiful that in trying to get this guy in trouble, his neighbour actually ended up in trouble himself. It’s a wonderful example of the world righting itself, and this guy sweating in the heat while moving his fence getting the karma he deserves. Because in the end, he’s a nasty guy – a racist and a bad neighbour – and this is exactly what he deserves.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a homeowner who responded to an HOA violation letter by investigating the bylaws and having the whole board removed.