Couple Tears Down Backyard Garage To Qualify For An FHA Loan, But Their Neighbor Is Furious About The Decision
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You know what would be really nice? Getting to meet the neighbors before moving into a new neighborhood. A perfectly awesome house in a perfectly wonderful neighborhood can quickly become a nightmare if an awful neighbor lives nearby.
In this story, one couple had the rare opportunity to move into a house before they officially bought it. That was enough for them to realize their next door neighbor was going to be a big problem.
They ultimately ended up not buying the house, partially because of the neighbor, but first, they got revenge.
Let’s read all about it.
I Lived Next To The Guy That Called the City On All His Neighbors Weekly. I Bet He Remembers This.
My wife (22F at the time) and I (26M at the time) shopped for a home in 2016 before things got too crazy, and we found a small place in a working-class neighborhood.
We were working on getting the property approved for the FHA loan, and in the meantime, the seller allowed us to stay there so we could start fixing up the place.
It was quite the fixer-upper but we were young and the prospect of sweat equity was exciting.
Every neighborhood has that one awful neighbor. Theirs happened to live next door.
We were surprised that the house was so inexpensive until we got to know our next-door neighbor.
Devin was somewhat famous in the neighborhood for finding reasons to call the city over infractions.
For example, he would go out at night and measure the distance tires were from the curb. He filled noise complaints all the time and would intimidate folks on the street with threatening letters.
Most memorably, Devin would actually regularly heckle the previous black tenants of the property we were buying from the safety of his elevated backyard. It was on a bit of a hill.
The detached garage was a problem.
What made the property we were buying was difficult to qualify for the FHA loan was that the detached garage in the backyard had a sloping roof.
The structure was at least 70 years old and was in disrepair.
The seller paid to have it torn down, however, this only revealed that one of the walls of the structure was the retaining wall for a huge section of Devin’s backyard.
The 8-foot retaining wall was in bad shape, it leaned in towards my side by nearly 18 inches at the top from the bottom. It looked like it wouldn’t take much to fall over and presented itself as a hazard.
He made a decision.
With permission from the seller, I tore down the retaining wall with the intent of replacing it myself, at my own cost.
This opened us up to a barrage of creepy, threatening, cryptic letters from Devin.
He was going to sue, we had to have an engineer approve of everything, etc, etc. He called the city almost every day. He insisted that we pay for everything despite the fact that it was the roots on his side that were pushing into my property.
The code enforcement worker privately agreed with my assessment but seemed cowed by Devin’s daily calls.
He decided to get revenge on Devin before moving out.
Anyway, I decided that I was done dealing with Devin. It was too stressful. I didn’t even own the place, I was the buyer and the loan wouldn’t get approved anyway due to the issue.
Neither the seller nor Devin were willing to pay for a new wall and I knew that anything I built wouldn’t be good enough for Devin anyway.
Before my wife and I gave up and moved out, I hacked a bit at the roots that were the last thing holding Devin’s yard in from falling 8 feet down. They were overhanging my side of the property, after all, so I would’ve had to cut them down before building a replacement retaining wall.
My guess is that Devin ended up losing about a fourth of his backyard and his fence over the next couple of months to erosion.
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Devin sounds awful, but I can understand why he was upset about the retaining wall. It would’ve been nice to mention the problem and the plan to him before tearing it down.
But, good riddance. I hope they found a better house.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This person wants to get to know the neighbors before moving.
This person thinks he should’ve handled it differently.
Another person has a question and a good point.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who changed their minds about donated items, only to return to the shop to find them all sold.
This person thinks it worked out for the best for OP.
They definitely made the right decision. The garage was a problem. The retaining wall was a problem. The loan wasn’t going to happen. And the neighbor was awful. Most of all the awful neighbor. That’s reason enough not to buy a house.
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