Do you like your neighbors?

[tvguy]

We've been in our house 38 years. We are the second owners. The subdivision was started in 1976, and 3 of the 11 houses are owned by the original buyers. Right now our neighbors are fine. It fluctuates from owner to owner. We have three quirky houses on the street currently, but nothing that spills over into my life. Two of the houses are similar situations. Adult children having life events that prompted them to move back in with their parents, but the kids never helping out with the house, then mom and dad pass away, and the kids seem not to be prepared to keep the house up. And one house, very nice family, but they have never painted the house in the 35 years they lived there and it shows.

 

[mumto3girls]

Most of them. Lived here 20 years. Here is a large subdivision. We live on a corner lot at one end of the subdivision. I know most of the people on the street in front of us and on the side street I know about 4-5 houses down on both sides of the street. I best know the people who had kids close in age to our kids. There were years where all the kids played in the various yards and houses and the parents were out in the street/driveways talking in the evenings. We had block parties, Easter egg hunts, movie nights, playoff watch parties and pictures on the first day of school and before trick or treat. The kids are older now, many off to college or about to go and some of the older people have sold their homes and I don’t know the new people as well. There are a couple I don’t like, but they are easy to avoid (and Covid made it super easy) and there are others that I feel blessed to have had as part of my village for all these years. Good neighbors are absolutely priceless.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

I like most of them yes... the one set is kind of weird, but we have had no problems.

 

[Stratman50th]

Our neighborhood is kind of specialized. First, it's over 55. Next, it's what's called a
"Class A motorcoach community". Everything is geared to people who own Class A coaches. For those that aren't familiar they're the units that are similar to and drive like a bus. The neighborhood is empty from roughly the first of April to around mid September give or take. Most people get in their coaches and head north for the summer. So that's why it's kind of weird. When we actually have neighbors, the one's across the street we just love, but they are only here from mid Dec. to mid March. We really don't see anyone else.

 

[Babs Johnson]

The neighbor on one side who moved away about 6 years ago was often "too friendly." I joked that I was going to install a 10 foot high cinder block wall topped with electrified razor ribbon.



About walls. There is this large vacant boardwalk/beachfront lot in Ocean City, NJ. It's been vacant forever. I don't know if it's privately or city-owned. Anyway, I told DW we should buy it. Not to build any houses or condos there. But to put up a 30 foot high "spite wall" and block the ocean view of the neighbors next to it. Pay whatever bribes that are necessary.

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I like your spite wall idea.

I live in an old but updated and converted row house with a 14' wide back yard. I should put up a wall on one side, for the exact same reason. Too friendly. Those neighbors always want to chat or invite us over either inside or outside whenever they see us out back.

A lot of the time, we just want to relax without saying more than hello, etc.

The rest of the neighbors are like us, friendly but not friends.

 

[nkereina]

We like all of our neighbors, but we barely know them. We built our house 9 years ago and every house around us has had new owners move in since the time we moved in. We're the only original owners. We will say Hi and have friendly, brief chats but it ends there. There's newish neighbors across the street who have been there around 6 months, but we've only waved. We just keep to ourselves and don't get into the socialization of it. Ironically, the neighbors on either side of us have become best friends - their children play together, they go out for dinners together. They're constantly back and forth to each other's houses. We don't have kids which is a big factor too.

 

[Micca]

The neighbors to one side are very nice people and good neighbors, but their command of english is very limited so we mostly just smile and wave.

The neighbors on the other side have really obnoxious dogs, and they don't do a very good job of keeping their lawns free of stuff. That said, we don't dislike them and we try to be friendly but they just aren't especially sociable.

There's a woman across the street is who is very nice and we will have brief chats when we're both outside at the same time.

And that's it, we seldom see anyone else outside and we don't know the names of anyone else on the block. We've lived in the neighborhood for 9 years.