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Imagine moving into an HOA neighborhood where you have to pay a certain amount every month in exchange for certain amenities, and by amenities, I mean annoying rules you have to follow.

I’m partly joking, but if you find that funny, it’s a situation where it’s only funny because it’s true.

Now, imagine living in an HOA and your neighbors clearly did something that had to break some sort of rule, but the HOA doesn’t want to do anything about it. Would you push to have the HOA enforce the rules with the neighbors, drop it, or talk to the neighbors yourself?

In this story, one man is in this situation. He tried talking to the neighbors, but wasn’t able to catch them at home right away. Instead of waiting until he saw them, he decided to go straight to the HOA. His wife thinks that was the wrong thing to do. Keep reading to see if you agree.

AITA for going to my HOA before talking to my neighbor.

My wife (30F) and myself (27M) just purchased our new house last October. Its part of an HOA that nobody seems to know much about. Like what we pay for or how to submit issues.

We are in the cul-de-sac at the end with a small wooded area behind us. We have gotten along with all the neighbors so far.

One side of us is another young couple who seem nice when we have talked to them but just kinda give off annoying feel to me. They have loud cars and the first thing that ever caught my eye was a giant flag in there garage that says “no pansies” or something along that line.

Whatever didn’t really bother me just gave off a feel I wasn’t a fan of.

But these neighbors don’t seem to be much of a problem.

They have been nice so far from what my wife says.

I rarely see them do to how much I work and what they work.

They have two beautiful pitfalls that my son loves to play with. They let him go in there backyard with my wife and play with them everyonce in a while. But it’s been atleast 2 months or so sense that’s happened.

Now we get to the problem.

Anyways about a few weeks ago I noticed they had someone digging between our houses when I was on my way out to work. I didn’t think much of it thought it was for cable or something didn’t really pay much attention.

Fast forward to this week. My wife has someone come out to give us a quote for putting our own fence up. They have one already that’s a non privacy and I wanted to put up a privacy.

Everything is going good until the contractor gets to where they were digging. He explained to my wife that the neighbor actually hooked up a drainage pipe from his gutters and led it directly into our back yard stopping the pipe just before it entered our property but facing it toward ours outside of his already made fence.

When I got home from work I checked it out an sure enough all of his gutter water would drain into my back yard. My yard has a down soap toward the woods but a small hill before it so all the water stays in my yard already.

They were understandably upset.

My wife was mad and so was I.

I said several times that that was an awful move for not even telling us about it.

She agreed and asked what we were going to do.

After researching some stuff on this and calling some people it was obvious this wasnt okay so i went to talk to them.

He decided to go to the HOA.

Unfortunately they wernt home so I wasn’t able to discuss it.

I tried catching them several times this week but with no luck.

Today I message my HOA asking if there was anything that could be done.

At first they said it was my problem thinking it was done by the builders.

But he didn’t take no for an answer.

After me getting irritated and asking what I pay for and explaining they just did this and sending pictures.

They said they would address it.

I told my wife about it and now she said I’m a jerk for not talking to them first and ruining the relationship. So am I a jerk?

Reporting the neighbor to the HOA is kind of a big deal. Should this homeowner have made even more of an effort to talk to the neighbors before going to the HOA?

This person places blame on the neighbor.

Might as well make the HOA earn its money!

Another person thinks the neighbors are the ones who messed up.

Everyone is on his side.

His instincts about the neighbors were right. They seem kind of shady. They didn’t talk to him first about the drainage pipe situation. They’ll probably be upset when the HOA contacts them, but they shouldn’t be too surprised about it either.

The fence contractor was a great guy for pointing out this problem. Thank goodness they had him come out, or who knows how long it would’ve been before they discovered the problem.