Imagine owning a home next to a vacant lot, and then someone buys the lot. If the new owner ignored the property lines and built their driveway on your property, would you ignore the situation, take them to court, or come up with a more creative solution?

This exact situation happened to a sweet old couple, and they weren’t sure what to do. Thankfully, a friend had the perfect idea for revenge.

Let’s read the whole story.

Build a driveway across someone else’s property without permission? Pay the price.

I was visiting my friend at his dad’s house in an area where the land is so steep all the driveways have to switchback up from the main road to the houses – a straight driveway is not an option because it would be steeper than the building code allows.

A few doors down the road there lived a nice old couple who until recently had had a vacant lot next door to them, but the lot had sold and the new owner had started construction on a new house.

Unfortunately the lot was so steep that the new owner built his driveway partly on the old couple’s land (it was carved out of the hillside with an excavator).

This probably wouldn’t have been a big deal if the new owner had approached the old couple first and asked nicely, but did he? Would I be telling this story if he had?

At first, the couple assumed it was an honest mistake.

In fact, the old couple had no idea what was happening until they came home one day to see a huge scar in the hillside snaking up from the road in from of their house, across the corner of their property, and winding upwards to where an excavator was working to prepare the land for their new neighbor’s house.

They were pretty upset, but being nice, reasonable people, they figured it was an honest mistake, so they went over to talk to the machine operator.

He didn’t know anything useful, but he was happy to give them the phone number of the new property owner.

The new owner was completely unreasonable.

The old guy gave him a call and politely explained the situation.

But his new neighbor, whom he’d never even met, was having none of it. He flat out denied that the driveway crossed the property line, and he was rude enough that the old guy was pretty upset.

At this point the old couple weren’t sure what to do.

They double checked the property pins to make sure they were right, and of course they were, but after further conversations with the new owner it was clear he was an unreasonable guy who wasn’t going to come to the negotiating table willingly.

The couple wanted to do something but weren’t sure what they could do.

The old couple didn’t want to take legal action because that would have been expensive and, frankly, the damage to their yard was already done.

At the same time, they couldn’t just let someone walk all over them like that, especially if they were going to be living next door for the foreseeable future.

So the situation stewed for a while as construction continued on the new house, until one day when my friend’s dad saw the old couple in the neighbourhood and they started chatting.

Of course they told him the story about the horrible new neighbor.

The friend’s dad had an idea.

Now, my friend’s dad really likes the old couple, who don’t have a mean bone in their bodies, so he was pretty mad about the situation, and when he went home he couldn’t get it out of his head.

That evening, after a few beers, he had a brilliant idea.

He called up the old couple, explained his plan, and asked for their permission to carry it out.

They chuckled and gave him the go-ahead, so he hopped into the rusty old full-size pickup he kept as a second vehicle and drove it over to the old couple’s place, where he parked it across the encroaching driveway, making sure it was entirely on their property.

The revenge was effective!

The next morning the work crew arrived bright and early to find that they couldn’t drive to the house they were building because some jerk had parked an old F-150 across the driveway.

They saw the note in the window with my friend’s dad’s phone number on it, so they called him to ask what was going on.

He explained that he had permission from the owners to park there and that, no, he would not move his truck so they could get to work. Furthermore, if anyone attempted to tow the truck they would be charged with trespassing and theft.

There was no way the construction guys were going to haul all their tools up the hill by hand, and they didn’t want to get in the middle of a legal battle, so they just called the new owner to let him know they’d be taking the day off and that they’d continue to take days off until the property boundary dispute was resolved.

Here’s how it worked out…

The new owner called the old couple in a fury.

But the old couple told them the same thing my friend’s dad told the construction workers – basically, the vehicle was parked on their own property, so if he had a problem with that he could go **** himself.

To make an already long story shorter, the new neighbor ranted a while, but eventually he wanted his house to be built, so the nice old couple ended up with a significant sum of money in exchange for an easement allowing the driveway to pass across the corner of their property, and my friend’s dad got several thank-you cases of beer and the satisfaction that comes from putting a jerk in his place.

It’s horrible that the neighbor was acting so entitled. I’m glad the friend’s dad put him in his place.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks there was another option.

This would bother me too.

Another person would’ve handled it differently.

This is a good question.

These neighbors didn’t get off to a very good start.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.