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Every neighbor is going to do something that you don’t like, but that is just a part of living near other people.
What would you do if your neighbors did things like using their grill (which let smoke into your apartment), moved their back gate, and did other things that drove you crazy?
That is what happened to the couple in this story, and while the neighbors did make adjustments when asked, they didn’t fix the problems entirely. So, this couple escalated the issue to their landlord, which has so far only made things worse.
While I understand the frustrations they are feeling, I honestly feel like this is just poor communication from both parties. Read through the full story below and see if you agree.
AITAH for reporting our neighbours fence to our landlord?
Everyone we’ve talked to about this is saying that we did nothing wrong and that our neighbors are crazy.
It is good to get an outside perspective.
But they are all friends and family and are obviously biased. I would really appreciate an unbiased opinion on this.
My husband (29 years old) and I (27 years old) moved into this neighborhood when we were expecting our daughter (17 months)
It’s a great area and a good place for families with smaller kids.
Ok, this seems like a good setup.
All the houses are rented out by the same company. We share a wall and a small hedge with the neighbors, and the garden is very small. We can hear everything going on in our neighbors gardens on either side.
It’s a little hard to explain, but it’s important, so I’m gonna try. At the end of the gardens, there is a small hill, to separate the gardens from the bike path behind it.
Not a lot of privacy, but that’s ok.
So, we have two smaller hedges that seperates the gardens from eachother, and then there is a small gap from the end of the hedges to the hill, so there is a small path where you can walk to and from your garden from the outside. This path is the only way to get to each of the gardens from outside the apartments.
We would be able to look directly into our neighbors garden as we are not allowed to put up permanent fencing. Although we don’t actually look as that would be a really rude.
The path is there to be used when it is needed.
We use this path for stuff like the lawnmower, stroller, or any gardening trash we don’t won’t to take through the apartment. We try to use this pathway as little as possible, but we do use it quite a bit and wouldn’t be able to bring the lawnmower to the garden if it wasn’t for this path (there is no way to store the machine in the garden)
We also use the path to bring the stroller to and from the garden, as it’s the only place with proper shade and keep an eye on her at the same time. Although this is just on the weekends when our child is not in daycare.
Let’s get into the heart of this story.
Okay now I explained that, here’s the issue.
Our problem is with the couple who live nextdoor. They live at the end of the row and therefore, we would pass their garden to get to ours.
Not every neighbor is perfect.
They moved in about 7 or 8 months ago I believe. And they’ve always been keeping to themselves (which is totally fine. My husband and I are also introverts, so we don’t make the habbit of starting up unnessesary conversations)
They already start being annoying from the very beginning. They smoke in front of their house (this is a smoke free area, and they are not allowed to smoke anywhere. Not even in their own garden) but we don’t say anything because we can live with a little smoke.
You can’t let people have smoke from their grill go into your home.
They also have two cars parked all the time and a third parked sometimes (they are only allowed to have one car parked in the area) but it’s nothing that bothered us as we don’t own a car, and don’t really need the space anyway.
Then when it became warmer in the summer, they start using their coal grill (which is something they are also not allowed to do.
Because of how the wind moves through the gardens and the hill, the smoke will almost always go directly into the neighbours windows) this is something we are not okay with because it was hot and we wanted to be able to have our windows open.
You should never be aggressive on the first approach.
Three days in a row they have their grill going. The first two days we couldn’t get in contact with them. On the third day we see them in the garden and my husband decide to approach them from the garden.
And I will admit, we were pretty angry at all the failed attempts, and my husband was pretty aggressive as he explained to them that it was written in the contract, that they signed, that they are not allowed to use a coal grill.
They seem willing to adjust things to keep the peace.
This is where I think their hate for us startet. Which is why I wanted to explain this part. To be fair, they did say they didn’t know, and after the confrontation they haven’t used the grill since.
About a week or two later they move their little fence, so it now blocks that little path behind the gardens. Now we have no access to our garden. We can’t mow the grass we can’t get our baby in shadow on the weekends and we would have to go through the entire appartment to get rid of garden trash (luckily we don’t get much trash from the small space)
Great, these neighbors seem nice.
A little over a week goes by and the fence is still there. It’s getting hotter and hotter and the grass starts getting pretty tall. So I decide to go ring their doorbell.
The husband opens the door and I tell them about the situation as it is. I ask them if they wouldn’t mind moving the fence back to where it stood before, so we would be able to mow our lawn and get the stroller in shadow. He says, yes of course, and closes the door.
So, did they not move the fence?
I feel pretty good about myself because I’m terrible at confrontation. Which is also why I waited that long to do it.
Another week goes by without anything happening and I see they now put up an inflatable pool right up against the fence.
It really seems like they don’t fully understand the problem.
So, I ring their doorbell once again. They both open the door this time, and I ask again if they could move the fence (mind you I was being very polite about it, because I was still feeling a little bad about how my husband reacted about the grill) they say “even if we move the fence, you wouldn’t be able to pass because of the pool.”
I say “would you consider moving the pool a bit then” she says “there is 1000 liters in it” now I’m starting to feel my blood boil, so I say “you know this means we can’t tend to our garden” they just look at me without responding so I walk away.
Maybe it is best to let the landlord handle it.
This is where we contact the landlord, we basically write a complaint talking about the situation with the fence and we ask them to find us another way to get to our garden because we can no longer maintain it.
(It’s also in the contract that we have to keep our own garden clean and nice looking, so they had to know that we could no longer do that). We then take a picture of the small fence, were you could also see the pool and we send it off to the landlord.
This is weird.
In the almost two weeks it took us to get an answer, something weird happens that we are not a hundred percent sure are them, but I really don’t know who else it could be. We have the family over for dinner and they got here by driving.
They park their car in front of our neighbors (another car was in front of us. But this is usually not a problem since there are no dedicated parking spaces) one of our guests goes out for a smoke during the visit (he smokes on the bike path behind the hill) and he spots a big rock right In front of their car.
And our neighbors car (the one they almost never use) inches away from the back of their car, so they couldn’t get out without moving the rock.
This had to be intentional.
They were sandwiched by the car and the rock. If they hadn’t spotted the rock before they got in the car, they couldn’t have seen it from the inside of the car.
This would have led them to drive over the rock (because they couldn’t go back) and potentially destroy the car.
It is reasonable to think that it is the neighbors.
Now we don’t actually know for sure if it was our neighbors who placed the rock, but it was their car that parked behind our family’s, and they didn’t need to be that close. It also had to be an adult who placed the rock, as it was too big and heavy for a child to move.
Then we finally get an answer back from the landlord, and it wasn’t exactly what we expected.
Wow, that fence really is dangerous.
They thanked us for notifying them and explained that the small path is actually a fire lane/path/trail type of thing and it’s very illegal to block it off.
They didn’t tell us anything else, but the same day we see the neighbour empty their pool, they still leave their fence up for another week. But during that time something else happens.
Is something wrong with taking a picture of a mailbox?
I catch the husband taking a picture of our mailbox with our names on it. I then yell at him (I was standing a bit away as I was outside playing with my child) and asked him what he needs with that picture.
He gets startled (probably didn’t see I was there) and starts saying “I just saw you didn’t have all your names on your mailbox, so I wanted to see if you wanted help with that” while he comically backs into his appartment and closes the door before I can answer.
I don’t believe him one bit.
Maybe he was trying to help. And the names on the mailbox are public information.
(Its kinda a law that you have to have at least your household last name on the mailbox. At least in the country we live in) When I get back I can see that two of our names has faded away so I add the initials and last names, and then I write a letter to them thanking them for notifying me about it, and that I’ve taken care of it now.
I then put the letter in their mailbox. Even if I don’t believe him, he still kinda accidentally helped. It scares me a little to know that they have access to our full names.
Weird, but it isn’t illegal to watch out from their yard.
Then they move the fence (just enough, making it hard for us to pass, but doable). After this they start getting really aggressive.
I can finally mow the grass. So, the very next day thats one of the first things I do. And the whole time I’m cutting it they sit in their garden keeping watch, making me scared to pull the lawnmower back. So, I leave it there for a while and my husband moves it when they aren’t home.
Nice weather is a great time to be outdoors.
Then the next day its weekend and sunny, so we can finally get the stroller into the garden and have our baby sleep in the shade.
So, my husband walks with her and when she is finally asleep he walks past the neighbours to put her in the shade in our garden.
Maybe the neighbor has a concern.
As he walks past the woman is standing in their garden hanging up laundry, about 2 meters away, and starts trying to get in an argument with him while he has our SLEEPING BABY in the stroller (thankfully she didn’t wake up).
My husband continues to ignore her, so she starts calling for her husband to come and take pictures of my man walking past again to get back to the front door.
Well, they did try to talk to them.
He comes inside and tells me what just happened. Then we go and ring their doorbell. Both of them opens the door. And then this conversation happens.
Me “You are angry with us”
Woman “yes you reported us. You could just have talked to us!”
It could be that this is just an example of poor communication skills.
Me “we already tried talking to you multiple times”
Woman “no you didn’t”
Me “yeah we asked you multiple times if you were willing to move your fence”
This is why it is a bad idea to have conflict with the neighbors. Things always get escalated.
Woman “you asked us to move 1000 liters pool away!”
Me “what else could we do, you made it clear you wouldn’t help”
Her “and by the way we have escalated this way more then you have!! And we have emails proving that you can’t use that path for anything other then the lawnmower!!”
Honestly, they have every right to strike up a conversation while he is walking outside with their daughter.
Woman’s husband looking at her saying “Shut up” then he looks at us “We have emails if you want to see”
Me “you have no right trying to start a fight while my husband is walking with our sleeping daughter”
To me, it seems like the husband is trying to keep things calm.
Woman “yes Its understandable with your baby. BUT I WILL NOT HAVE YOU WALKING IN FRONT OF OUR GARDEN ANYMORE!!” (She wasn’t exactly yelling, but she had raised her voice quite a bit and were talking very fast)
Her husband looks angrily at her and shuts the door on us while she was still talking (we never saw any email).
It really seems like both parties want to work things out, but are poor communicators.
I tried my best to stay calm while talking to them, but I was about to cry multiple times, and the woman looked like someone who had already been crying. It could also just be because she was that angry.
When we got back inside I absolutely broke down while my husband immediately started looking for a new appartment (we can’t live next to someone who hates us that much) so now we have to move.
So, the neighbors were wrong. No big deal.
I’m now scared to be outside my own home. We looked it up, and there are no law that says we can’t use those paths for passage.
We even contacted the landlord again to make sure, and they also told us we are allowed to use it the way we have. As long as we don’t block it in any way.
They just want to live their life.
We also talked to them a little bit about what the neighbours been doing, and the person we were talking too told us that that neighbour has multiple cases open and going (presumably about us, but the person didn’t confirm that)
We didn’t actually want them to get fined, we just wanted access the the garden. Everyone we talked to are on our side. And I do feel like we did nothing wrong.
I really don’t get this impression from the story.
But they are acting like what we did is equal to kicking their dog and stealing all their favorite spoons while we are at it.
AITA?
Honestly, yes. I think both parties are in the wrong here. To me, it seems like the neighbors were being reasonable (at least at first) but didn’t fully understand what was needed. This couple seems to assume the worst of intentions from their neighbors, even when that wasn’t necessary.
Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about the situation.
Documentation and video evidence is essential.
This commenter says to call the fire marshal.
The landlord does need to take a more active role in this.
Calling the fire marshal makes sense.
If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a frustrated tenant whose landlord says she can only move out with her roommate.
Blocking that path is unacceptable.
The neighbors were out of line, but this couple handled things poorly. It is always best to try to get along with the neighbors when you can.
Assuming ill intent is not the way to do this. There are several examples in this story that seem to be just miscommunication or assuming the worst in people.