It can be really annoying when people are hypocritical. For example, imagine having a neighbor who builds something in their backyard that is not compliant with local laws, but they complain about something you’re building in your backyard that is compliant with local laws. What would you do?

In this story, one homeowner is in this situation, but there are actually two different neighbors who have complained. Both neighbors have non-compliant structures in their own backyards.

The homeowner isn’t sure what to do about the situation. Personally, I’d just ignore the neighbors or retaliate by reporting their non-compliant issues.

Let’s read all about it.

Neighbours expose their own non-compliance to complain about compliant construction

I am building one of those sheds that you can use for a home office in my back yard.

It is 100% meticulously compliant, to the level of the special bushfire (wildfire) rules that we have here in my Australian town.

But the neighbors are upset about the shed.

Two neighbours have complained.

One of them has a non-compliant straight-up illegal and unsafe pool fence that is collapsing into my property and no stormwater drains so water flows into my property during big rain.

He also used to drain his standing water into my property using hoses until I started shoving them back through the fence. 🤣

Here’s the deal with the other neighbor.

The other neighbour has a pool that was constructed without council approval (in the 1970s) and relies on a Besser-block retaining wall that is in the process of collapsing into my property.

She also has a fence that is over the council’s 3m limit because she had it built right on top of the Besser blocks (which is also non-compliant).

The council rang me and when I described my shed the guy said “geez, I’m a very busy man, I was going to come out and have a look but I think I’ll take your word for it!”

Honestly… what would you do now?

It sounds like a non-issue. The council doesn’t seem concerned about the shed. Who cares what the neighbors think?

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person offers a suggestion.

Here’s a similar idea.

This person explains how to phrase it.

But this person thinks there was a missed opportunity.

Seriously, if the neighbors are going to complain about a problem that isn’t a problem, OP should make sure the neighbors have to fix the actual problems they created. I think OP should call the guy back and insist that he needs to double check that everything is compliant. It won’t be a waste of his time, and it would be very satisfying to put the neighbors in their place.