The first year and a half or so that I lived in my current apartment, I lived next to a young couple that were so pathologically shy or whatever they wouldn't meet my eyes or return my "hi."

But somehow they were social enough to have friends over 5-6 nights a week.

And rap.

Not just play rap music. Play music and they would all RAP. For hours.

That, coupled with their early morning and late night epic fights, made them not the greatest neighbors ever.

Now, however, they have moved and my new neighbor is a nice guy who wears overalls and restores mid-century furniture!

I have the opposite issue: I'd like to have more of my neighbors ON my lawn, so to speak. I live in an extraordinarily quiet and respectful complex, yay! -- but the dark side of that is that the folks who live here tend to prefer a more remote lifestyle. Big personal space. I would love to find ways to bring us more together and enjoy each other's company.

We're in Switzerland (only for the next 2 months), and one neighbour used to practice the Alpenhorn, and almost across from us is an apple orchard where the farmer down the road pastures his belled heifers. Their bells tinkle and clang into the night.

But I can't say these are peeves -- I will miss both terribly.

In Switzerland, there are very strict noise bylaws -- no lawn cutting or noise (e.g., power tools and parties) on Sundays, and on Saturdays, only after 9 am (weekdays 7 am) until 7 pm.

In apartment buildings, you are not allowed to run the washing machine, vacuum cleaner, etc. after 9 or 10 (forget which).

In densely populated places in Western Europe, they have found that strict noise bylaws are very important to the quality of life, and have a very high degree of adherence.

Oh geez. Where do I start? Here's a list:

Neighbors on either side of us walked onto our lawn and sprayed pesticides onto our lawn (where our harness-walked cat eats the grass) without our permission

Threatened to call public health if we did not take down our bird feeder

Helped themselves to landscaping our lawn for us - cut down "weeds" they did not like.

Installed driveway onto an area that is technically our property

No fewer than 13 dogs bark constantly in the summer

Many are renting to tenants who move out and leave their cats behind or lock the cats out all winter

Neighbor's kids broke our windshield playing ball; mom cursed at me and said she pays her taxes, kids can play anywhere they like.

If i lived in Boston I would be afraid you would be talking about me! I was totally vacuuming my wood floors last night around 11 pm! I did refrain from doing my laundry in the laundry room on my floor which can sometimes be pretty noisy, so I guess I could have been worse.

My neighbors scream on top of their lungs! i wonder if they realize we can hear...

I have a large amount of children who scatter in the middle of the street and give dirty looks you as you slowly attempt to try by. As if to say, "how dare you". If they aren't on the street, they're on everyone elses property tromping on lawns, flowers, etc...
I would love to release the dogs on them ala Mr. Burns.

I have a snoopy family across the street who gossip incessantly and have no cues when I clearly try to cut those conversations short and indicate that I don't care about the personal business of other people on the street. At the same time, they ask all sorts of personal questions (especially with regard to what things cost - I caught the father quizzing a handyman I'd hired last year about how much I was paying for some drywall) and complain that I only trim my hedges for tidyness (they think I should trim them to waist height). I've lived in this house for 5 years and have found almost every interaction with this family to be profoundly creepy.

Car alarm. Every five minutes. All night long.

@Emmi - do you have a HOA? Have you tried talking to them? Trespassing? Shooting*? Sounds like you have lots of legal recourse for most of these issues. In the meanwhile, that really sucks. Sorry to hear it.

*with the hose, of course.

for whatever reason when my neighbors nextdoor smoke who knows what my entire first floor reeks of it for an hour or 2.
my neighbors on the other side would play loud music to drown out their screaming children.
The neighbor "boy" (20 something) who drops by and demands $20 to mow my 4x6 grass patch.
oh city living.

I forgot the most charming one. They like to start their lawnmowers going, then cross the street and talk to the neighbors for half an hour without turning off their machines. They also idle their cars in the dead of summer, and truck drivers leave the their vehicles in gear so the backup-beepy noise stays on for as long as they're moving stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW7gQnWYxpw
I hate the drive by rapping....
And the litter, and the dog poop, blaring anything past 11pm on a weeknight.
The theft & vandalism coupled with the police's explicit indifference to it is another matter

@Kuri my neighbors stand behind me while I'm gardening and ask me why my boyfriend and I aren't married yet. Then they ask me what I'm doing with the garden. My friend taught me some good answers: "burying bodies", for one. You should think up some good responses and have a little fun at their expense.

@Chilena same here - isn't that just hideous when kids behave that way? I hope they do a follow-up post so we can all help each other solve our problems!!

@Emmi-wth?! I'd start documenting these things, photos included and, if it persists, talk to an attorney. Or, if you have HOA, file a report.

I'm a pretty tolerant neighbor, but two instances drove me crazy.

I used to have an elderly man living below me who would get drunk about once a month. At 2 or 3am, he'd break out his karaoke machine and start singing really loud and depressing Spanish language folk songs.

The other instance was worse. A bunch of young guys who worked as bartenders moved in next door. They'd come home Friday and Saturday in the wee hours after their shifts and go out in the backyard and holler and fire off guns. I called the cops on them regularly and finally they were made to leave.

My only real pet peeve: neighbor cats that eat my plants and mark my herb garden and front porch. Not to hate, but pee-basil is not my style.

My below me has a live band playing in his apartment on Friday and Saturday nights (no idea why) and I can hear the whole show, but when I try to do an exercise video or my husband plays Wii, they get upset and wrap on the ceiling! Also, our next door neighbor (who is elderly) is just now learning how to play the piano and I can hear all that too. Thankfully, this is only the living room and all I can hear in the bedroom is the sound of dumpster lids slamming.

Annoying downstairs neighbor who's decided any sound she is able to discern in the building is (1) a legitimate noise complaint and (2) eminates from my unit. She calls me about random running water noises, pet and kid noises, etc., certain they come from me, even though they're frequently obviously from elsewhere or I'm not even home. If I ever sell my unit I'm gifting the new resident with Dance, Dance Revolution or a pack of high strung miniature poodles or something.

upstairs neighbor's toddler just learned to walk...that's great and all BUT does he NEED to walk at 6:00 a.m. IN SHOES?? Daddy is adoring of his child...but if I hear anymore cooing, I think I'll throw up. Seriously, isn't "cooing" supposed to be softly done?

And there is someone who's letting their dog poop on our lawn. if anyone has a good idea for a sign i could install on the lawn that would be compelling enough to get them to stop, I'd like to hear it!

I dislike people who sit in their cars with the bass going thump thump thump but the worst is probably my neighbor who flooded my condo 3 times.

@embryoconcepts Thank you - yes we have resolved a few issues - the police spoke to the kids who broke the windshield, but they're in a gang and they still terrorize the neighborhood once in a while. We told the neighbors, "just because we don't have a fence, that does not mean this is your property. This is our property". That was the first time we confronted them and they've backed off, mostly.

Ultimately we're saving for a new home because this street is just hellish in general. People are totally uncivilized.

@Archie - we should, and we want to bring a surveyor out here, but from what I understand, it costs a lot of money.

You are definitely not alone !! My neighbors love to play extremely loud music some nights and always the same cd... Not to mention the discussions between them; sometimes i feel embarrased about all i hear...

every single morning at 8am (give or take 15 minutes) my neighbor - for lack of a better term - hocks a loogie. it is the grossest sound ever and he does it EVERY MORNING. it is so loud that it pretty much is my alarm clock on the other side of the wall. BLEGH.

My downstairs neighbors have mid-week drunken dance parties, public fights in the parking lot, and chain smoke under my toddler roommate's open window, but only until this weekend when the eviction goes through. They're out June 1st, from what boxes we've seen.

My upstairs neighbors have infrequent "man vs. man" fights in the living room - but only when they're high - and the fights sound like they're much, much more active and varied than their sex life. We're starting to wonder how that poor girl that lives upstairs ever gets her rocks off. Because "3-thrust" up there surely isn't doing his part.

In our old apartment, the guy below us parked like a jerk, often taking up two spaces with his ridiculous SUV. He also smoked something nasty that made the whole building stink, then would always burn incense that smelled even worse! He was also a ceiling banger, even if we were just sitting and eating dinner. Not sure what he was hearing.
Now that we have a house my only neighbor complaint is the neighbor that walks his dog solely so he doesn't have any poop in his own yard. He has a bag with him, but I have only seen him use it once when I stared him down. Just last night, around 9 pm, I walked over to his house and had a talk with his wife about the poop I just found after cleaning my whole yard up that day! The other neighbors hate him too...

Loud sex with the windows open.... really guys, we don't need to hear it!

Someone stole the baby hosta I hadn't potted yet, from my front stoop. The thing was barely 3" tall, and cost me $1.50, but someone felt it worth their while to steal it.

Then there's the trash everywhere -- a by-product of moving into a "transitional" neighborhood, where there are not and never have been public trashcans, so people throw things indiscriminately on the sidewalk, or if they feel like being a bit "neater" in the storm drains.

The renters a few doors down are pretty horrifying -- drunk always, yelling at each other and their maybe 8-yr-old daughter, and generally walking around looking like a less glamorous version of Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway in Barfly.

But I love my nosy neighbor (who keeps me up-to-date on the neighborhood), my next-door neighbor who talks to my cat when she sits in the window, my filmmaker neighbor who invites me over for impromptu barbecues, my block captain neighbor who knows every person who's lived on the block for the last 50 years, and the rest of the neighbors who generally make me smile. Not all of them do, but most.

This is near and dear to me right now.... our neighbor gutted his house INTO the alley.. he had a dumpster but apparently the alley is a better place for his stuff. City says they're going to send someone out but we're still waiting.

The man across the hall cannot seem to shut his door gently. Every single time he comes in or out *bang* I've seen him, I know he has two functioning arms.

And the usual, smokers and loud children...

My backyard male neighbors (ranging in age 3-63) all think no one can see them if they pee in the corner - which is about 20 feet from my office desk. I'm thinking of sneaking back there some night and gluing up a sign that says: "This is not a bathroom."

We just moved to a new neighborhood and this is the first time I've ever lived in a real single family house. We haven't really met the neighbors except to ask them to move their car out of our driveway. They don't seem to bad but there's definitely a language barrier, they play mariachi music loudly on the weekends, and their chihuahua likes to bark all the time and incites all the other dogs at their house and throughout the neighborhood.

Also, they have a utility line (not sure what type) that dangles through our yard and through a hole they drilled in our fence. Our house is brand-new and the fences were installed by the builder, so it's likely they didn't ask for permission to do this. I have no idea how to get the line out of our backyard.

fcresenc- LOL, sorry but that's hilarious.

I understand the need to vent ... but Tara, that is a really crappy image choice for your post. The Clint Eastwood character above was protecting his neighbors in that particular scene, not chasing them off his lawn with a shotgun. In fact, the very point of the movie is neighborly tolerance. You get a big thumbs down for using the image out of context -- just like that republican blogger using Shirley Sherrod's story out of context.

I live in a suburb, unfortunately in a neighborhood with no HOA. A few years ago our divorced neighbors sons moved in with him, they are high school and college age. Unfortunately, all their friends and their trucks came with them.

Everyday, ALL day, they are outside "working" on their trucks which involves blasting stereos which clearly have base that shakes the walls through our house (so fun when you have a migraine), revving their loud engines repeatedly- and they have those kind with the mufflers or whatever made to be extra loud.

They usually have several friends over so there are about 4 extra trucks parking in front of our house, slamming doors constantly and revving/blastic music. Then at night they start drinking and more than 3 times we've found smashed beer bottles in our driveway and last weekend they tried peeling out , lost control, and ended up destroying the curb and part of the yard in front of our house.

Problem is, we can't call the cops cuz the neighbor's brother is one. We lived peacefully next to this person for twenty years until his sons moved back and we don't want to make things tense, but it's very frustrating.

Emmi - a surveyor may cost money now (probably not as much as you'd think), but its better than running into problems when/if you ever decide to sell your property. You can grant an easement if you like, but it shouldn't cost YOU anything because they made a mistake, nor should you be liable if anything happens on that illegal driveway.

There's this woman. She has a small daughter (maybe 2 years old?). Her small daughter has a HUGE dog.

The woman walks the dog to our corner lot to pee and poop on the street sign post (which is buried in our yard).

We've asked her to stop. She says it's not her problem...it's her daughter's dog.

I just moved to my new apartment in February and so far, so good. Way better than my old apartment where the fake thugs played club music all the time. Ugh.

I am afraid to say this (better find some wood to knock on), but I love my neighborhood. I should say, too, that I only just moved in just over a month ago. I have in the past had to deal with five kids in an upstairs very small condo running around above my head, fights, people who don't pick up their dog poop, people doing burnouts outside my bedroom window at 2:00 a.m., etc., so I have been there, done that, and it's about time I finally bought a house in a nice quiet, well kept neighborhood.

I have several neighbors who were apparently raised by packs of wild dogs. They have "no junk mail" signs on their mailboxes, and then when they get junk mail, they just toss it on the floor in the lobby. They use the front stoop/lawn as an ashtray. As if it's not bad enough that I can't keep my windows open when they're right outside my window sucking on their cancer sticks. Obviously, you smoke outside so as not to nastify your own place - why do you think it's OK to reek up mine? They leave their stinky trash out in the hall all night because it's too smelly to be inside their apartment. They let their non-resident boyfriends park their 16-foot-long pickup trucks in the resident-only parking lot. They can't take three seconds to collapse their large boxes and put them in the recycling bins so they just leave them lying around the parking lot. Actually, I'd welcome packs of wild dogs to my building if they'd replace these inconsiderate bozos.

bodicegoddess: LOL!!

I rented for 10 years straight before recently buying my first home. the only experience that really compares with the others here was in Pittsburgh, college years. Dude above me would play music ALL NIGHT, starting at 11pm. We had several arguments, and I started banging on the ceiling when I wanted to go to bed (around midnight). one night he snapped and came out into the stairway that connected our apartments, and proceeded to try and punch a hole through the wall. cops came, he was kicked out soon after, dropped out of school, supposedly had a breakdown.

jeezus, you just never know with some people, guy just went nuts.

my current neighbor's barking dogs and constant lawn mowing is a joy compared to that bullshit.

In college, I lived underneath a crack addict. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. And extremely loud. In graduate school, I lived next door to someone who was mentally ill who used to scream all sorts of nonsensical things for many hours on end. The way the apartments were configured, I was the only one who was bothered by the noise, and the management thought I was just a complainer and did nothing to alleviate the situation. Unfortunately, I went to school in a place where housing was very hard to come by and extremely expensive, so I was kind of trapped. Thrilled to finally graduate and get the hell out of there.

Loud arguing at all times of the day, 5 days out of the week. Seriously, they both get into pretty good. It only stops when he lets loose a primal roar that lasts for about a minute.

Kid (15ish) across the street rides his bike, with massive speaker on a wagon behind it, blasting techno on the weekends. I have called the cops on him once already (it was going on for well over an hour).

We don't have a car, and neighbors would freely park in front of our house without asking. 2 or 3 of them did it every day at different times. The houses are small, so one car in front of the house blocks the entire house. I don't mind people parking there at all... my issue was that they didn't ask.

After a few months they had all come up to me to make sure it was ok. We're good now, but I was pissed for several months haha

We also share a bedroom wall with a neighbor whose girlfriend is very.. um... vocal? But that's pure entertainment value.

In general, my neighbors are pretty awesome.

i moved from an apartment building last year. i lived there for 5 years, the last year all of those things got to me. noisy music,stomping around upstairs,loud children in the halls late at night, smoking and hacking. and i could hear my neighbor peeing.

Oooh let's see:

1) Smoking (all different kinds- chemical/herb/misc.)- gets in my apt.
2) Smoking and their fire alarm goes off at 2am- often.
3) Coming home at 2 or 3am with their friends, singing/yelling loudly as they walk past my apt and bang on the walls.
4) Drunk friends attempt to open my door about 50 times before they realize it's the wrong door.
5) Loud video games/music.
6) Their fights in the street in the wee hours.
7) They called the cops once because one of their enemies was banging on the apt. complex door. They forgot they called cop until he came barging in. Shouting. Banging on the doors.

Wish I could pick up my apt and move it!

New neighbors moved in above our garage-level apartment in our non-smoking apartment building and then proceeded to flick lit cigarette butts onto our patio. Luckily they missed hitting the dried leaves and other plant life. When we complained, they began to smoke inside. For a while, the smells of cigarette smoke and weed permeated our tiny apartment for hours at a time; sometimes the strong "skunk" smell would even wake us up when we were sleeping. In such a small space, there's nowhere to hide.

It's gotten better, but we still occasionally have to deal with the smells or listen to their late night noises - whatever it is they do, it sounds like heavy furniture is being moved and 50lb weights are being dropped periodically onto the floor. That plus the door slamming and TV/stereo blasts which only last long enough to wake us up several times a night, usually between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. They've also vacuumed past 10:00 p.m. - and it sounded like they were doing more than just cleaning up a spill.

Simple courtesy combined with a certain amount of empathy goes such a long way.

My busybody neighbor, trying to be "helpful," used to call up the various lawn service companies in town for estimates on how much it would cost to improve my (admittedly sparse) lawn. Not just an over-the-phone estimate either -- the companies would actually come out and tromp around my backyard and leave a little note on my door listing everything that was wrong with my lawn.

Two sisters live above me and have the tendency to walk around in their high heels every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights when they head out to clubs. They stomp, vacuum at weird hours, move furniture constantly and are always dropping things. To top it off, they recently got a yappy dog that barks all day when they're out (and of course, I work from home). At least twice a week I have to bang on my ceiling like Mr. Heckles (except, sadly, I'm the same age as one of them). The people above them are the worst though, constantly having smokers over who throw their cigarettes onto my balcony, which has become a cesspool of others garbage. That combined with the guys across the hall drumming until 3AM, even after multiple neighbours have filed noise complaints? It's driving me nuts. Worst part? We're all owners.

Lets see, the upstairs family has about 5-6 kids, ranging in age from toddler to 10 and are usually unsupervised. From about 4PM-10PM during the week and most of the day on the weekends, the kids treat the apartment like a playground. Constant banging. Crazy neighbor lady in the building next to mine wont let anyone in to fix her defective smoke detector which beeps every thirty seconds and has been beeping for almost a year. People drop trash out their windows into the alley. The large number of discarded chicken wing bones on the sidewalk are like a buffet for my dog so I am constantly pulling chewed up bones out of her mouth. Ahhhh, city living.

I went about a year with mostly 4-5 hours of sleep a night because my upstairs neighbor would come home from his bartending gig at 3 AM, with friends, and proceed to play instruments until 5 AM (at which point I needed to get up to work a 12 hour shift).

On mornings I could sleep in, I was woken up by the same neighbor coughing up a lung and loogies into his toilet like clockwork at 8 AM. I was at wit's end.

Suddenly, things got very quiet and I wondered if he'd moved out. Turns out he passed away from leukemia a few weeks ago. I felt guilty for quite a long time because I think if you're terminally ill and having to work a lousy job right up until the end, you deserve to come home and rock out on your guitar for a few hours.

I regret not going up to his place myself with some hot soup one evening and talking to him about the noise.

Love my neighborhood and love dogs (hoping to get one soon too...) but people who walk their dogs and let them pee on your lawn really irks me. The pee kills grass! I really wouldn't care if it were on the strip of grass on the other side of the sidewalk, but really, we just spent some $ to put in new grass and it really bothers me that people don't realize it causes dead patches all over! Plus we have a baby that's in the grass all the time on his hands and knees, so I basically have to either be grumpy and put a sign up, put up a fence, or just keep him off the lawn. I'm doing the latter. :(

CIGGIE SMOKE: My biggest pet peeve is that my neighbours below us smoke cigarettes outside, on both front and back porches. So once the weather gets nice out, and we can finally open doors and windows, we get that lovely smells of cigarette smoke wafting through the house. How can you tell a person not to do something on their own property?

My downstairs neighbors leave their door open and use the entry hall and front steps of our building as an extension of their apartment, even though they have the garden apartment and sole access to a huge back yard. They never use the back yard, but unless it is pouring rain they are on the front steps of our building in lawn chairs drinking and listening to music from May through October. They're nice enough, but they have loud arguments and having to walk through them every single time I come and go is starting to be a gigantic pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, they are relatives of the landlord and their behavior is common to a lot of the long time residents of the block so I can't really complain. I'm sort of an interloper in the neighborhood, so figure if I don't like it I should just move.

re: my last post

I should also add that my other neighbour is learning to play piano but is doing quite well so it's somewhat enjoyable but his big huge honking pick-up truck which he NEVER takes out goes about 1.5 feet over into my parking space from behind, making backing up extremely difficult.

The constant barking. The only thing worse than a barking dog is a barking dog's owner-- at least in my area. We live up on a nice breezy hill in a house full of windows-- windows I love to keep open. Not so great when you have to listen to the nightly choirs of untrained barking dogs. All. Night.

Also, we have a very modest backyard with an iron fence (as to not block the view). The house behind us sits about 15 feet lower and has a backyard the size of a golf course yet their screaming ill-mannered kids *always* play up on the hill at our fence. Our backyard is only about 20 feet deep. Oh, and they have a HUGE play structure, too. I just don't get it.

FYI, I love dogs and my husband and I have a child.

I live near a church and their inability to not park in front of my driveway bugs me. There's a city posted sign that says "No Parking Here to Curb" and it's all painted yellow. And yet if they're late for church or dropping kids off at the church run daycare, they block my driveway.

I tried going in to the church and asking them nicely to move, but they look at me like *I* am the freak because my hair is weird colors. I finally gave up being nice and just have the cars ticketed and towed.

Also, the neighbor with the billion outdoor cats pisses me off. I'm tired of finding half starved or injured cats on my porch. If you can't take care of your pet, you shouldn't have one. We end up catching the poor things and taking them to the pound.

RobRose, if they kids are unsupervised, why don't you call the cops or child protective services? They are all too young to legally be left on their own.

my apartment isn't too bad. my downstairs neighbor smokes but i just close the balcony door for 5 minutes when it sporadically drifts into my apt & it's ok. the old neighbor in that apt smoked weed & would only play music between 11pm-3 am, so when the building manager didn't do anything about it, i just called the cops and he had sooo many problems he moved out :)

the only problem now is a neighbor from another building close by that honks his horn for God knows at about 7 am. I can't figure out who it is, so I don't know exactly what to do, but it seems that several neighbors including myself basically take turns yelling out the window at them. Works too :)

the weirdest was at my old apt, when my downstairs neighbor came to my door at 8 am one weekday saying there was leak in her living room (the apt layouts are the same) and so it must be coming from our apt. she wanted to come into my apt and look around to find it. i just looked at her like she was crazy. i said we have anything in our living room that could leak, so it must be a pipe. i told her if the building management hires someone to come fix it, then they can come into my apt to fix it only if they need to come into my apt to reach the pipe. but you are not coming into my house searching for a leak at 8 am while i am getting ready for work. who thinks leaks come from the neighbors and not pipes? and who goes to bother the neighbors about this rather than the building management? and finally, who asks to INSPECT their living room to find the leak, as if she has right to come into my home. and this was the first conversation i had ever had with this woman. it was also the last b/c she was genuinely crazy and i didn't tolerate it. i also moved away about a month later.

just speak up, people! nothing will get better without being firm. you're not the ones being rude, they are. you just can't let them do this stuff to you.

Our next door neighbors have a yard crew who find it necessary to park in front of our house for some reason. This wouldn't be so bad except it's a pick-up truck with a trailer so it blocks a lot of space, including the mailbox. If they can't get started right away, they hang around by the mailbox and smoke. They frequently run over the same sprinkler head getting their equipment over to the neighbor's lawn. (Yes, we've spoken to them about it.) They also recently pruned OUR tree. Presumably because it hung over the property line somewhat but they came onto OUR property and pruned it back to the trunk. When they started using a weedeater on the crepe myrtle that's also on our property, my husband made a little fence of stones to show the property line. Apparently, they then surveyed and painted bright orange marks on the curb and sidewalk to show the property line. It IS our tree so I hope they at least feel stupid now.

I like my neighbourhood that I live in, it's an older part of town and the neighbours are pretty eclectic and friendly - but new ones moved in last year. I don't think they know how to walk around and look for each other, they just yell the names of who they're looking for over and over really loudly until the other one answers. Usually at 7am on a Saturday. Our street is narrow and everything echoes. We hear waay to much of their lives and complaints.

Another neighbour is great in the daytime, but come 3:00 in the morning, him and all 8 of his buddies sit on the porch and yap after having been at the bars. It only usually happens on the weekend and I guess that's what earplugs are for. But still.

I thank everyone that posted these awful comments. I guess I always liked my home, but now I love it. And my neighbors. Wow. Sometimes their dandelion seeds and leaves blow in my yard, and occasionally their dogs poop in my yard, but dang, I'll take that over the above any day!!

Let's see....the worst was when we had prostitutes living two doors down from us in an apartment complex. As a smoker, I'd go out on the front deck in the morning to partake in my nasty habit only to see a car parked out front where NASTIER habits were happening in full view. We also lived above a meth lab, I later found out after the massive dumpster fire.

Currently, we live in a bottom floor apartment which is halfway in the ground, and there are two floors above. The people on the top floor are not only loud to the point we can hear them in OUR apartment, but also like to sit outside, chain smoke and SPIT over the railing. I will be outside on my patio and hear smack...smack...smack right in front of my face on the ledge. They have almost spit on friends of mine who have been talking to me standing in the grass multiple times. It is flat out disgusting!

"Also, they have a utility line (not sure what type) that dangles through our yard and through a hole they drilled in our fence. Our house is brand-new and the fences were installed by the builder, so it's likely they didn't ask for permission to do this. I have no idea how to get the line out of our backyard."

Heh. Call the cops, this is an illegal tap (likely cable). They're really dumb if they think nobody will notice.

My former upstairs neighbors were pretty bad. One was passive-aggressive and left a note on our door that our music was too loud, that the bass levels interfered with anything she tried to do (not quite! and in fact our current neighbors have confirmed that our music is, in fact, not loud!). Her roommate was on the other end of the bitchy spectrum: crazy. Once around 3am my bf and I woke up to the sounds of someone banging and throwing rocks on our window, shouting in a husky voice, "Let me in!!!" We were terrified and almost called the cops, but about 15 minutes later she identified herself. We did not let her in.

Oh and my next-door-neighbor tried to climb in through my window while I was in the shower one morning. Luckily somebody else happened to be looking out his window and called the cops. I don't feel threatened anymore because I realize what a complete moron he is (we've dubbed him Douchebag), who constantly says stupid (albeit very amusing) things, and whom we've heard cry "Mommy!"

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY second/third/fourth the smoking complaints. AT--could this be an article subject on its own, so we can share some problem-solving ideas?

I'm a city dweller, and the houses on my street are only 36 inches apart. Our neighbor sits on his back porch and smokes day in, day out--even in the winter, he's chillin' with a hot toddy and his smokes. (Doesn't smoke in the house.) As a result, we don't open the windows in the back of our house, and we even switched bedrooms so that we could sleep in a room where we can open a window. My husband finally asked him if he could smoke elsewhere after 10 p.m. on summer nights (we don't have air conditioning) and he was open to it, which we very much appreciated. But now, we are redoing our backyard and patio and I'm so sad because unless he's not home, I don't even want to be out there breathing all the secondhand smoke. As a result, I don't see us living here long-term, which bums me out because I like our house and I like the neighborhood. I know it's a free country and the guy can do what he wants on his own property within reason, but it's infringing on our rights too...right?

Behind my apartment complex there's a neighborhood street that, somewhere on it, contains a dog that barks. All. Freaking. Night. Usually if I can't sleep, I turn on my A/C unit, which drowns out the noise in exchange for a higher electric bill, so that sucks, but I can sleep.

I mostly just don't understand how you tolerate a barking dog like that, when it's in your own back yard. Why do you not train it better, address its needs, etc? How do its owners put up with it?! GAH.

My dogs bark when I come to my house or if they hear a loud noise, but quiet down immediately. They also sleep through the night like logs. So yes, they do make some noise, but never cost anyone any sleep.

Somehow, in my previous building, this was way worse than: people having parties with loud screaming and music 2/3 nights of the week (plus weekends), stinking up the halls with pot, leaving empty beer bottles on the stair landing and throwing lit cigarette butts not only on my lawn but INTO my house (I guess they were playing bulls-eye with my windows). Oh, and the stairway was the kiddie playground/babysitter, and these kids were loud -one of them sounded possessed.

I moved out when one of them threatened to kill my cat.

In our beautiful condo, we had a neighbor who used to beat the crap out of his wife, she was the sweetest lady too. Used to call our 24 security, who were useless so I started calling the cops.

In that same condo, we used to get cited for everything. Most of the other tenants weren't yuppies working 60 hr weeks or traveling for business like us, they were retired executives who now had nothing to do all day except look for violations. We'd get fined for a dirty kitchen screen, door not nicely painted, you name it. Because of where we were situated, no one ever had to walk by our unit to get to the elevator so someone was making the effort to inspect.

Now, the couple across the street like to scream drunken obsencities at each other in the middle of the night. The boyfriend calls his girlfriend names that no woman ever should be called.

Fireworks... July 4th and New Years day in Honolulu is like a war zone. I hate when kids are playing firecrackers near my home, car, all my belongings. I worry about fire, need to close all the windows to prevent an asthma attack and then there's red paper rubbish all over the street. They start earlier and earlier each year and when a car is coming down the street, they make no effort to move out of the way. Was a prisoner in my home for ten years on those days because we couldn't leave the dog alone. I'm all for the personal fireworks ban.

@AmyinPittsburgh
I swear some of us are polite smokers...really I do. I tell my neighbors upstairs (who are friends of mine) to let me know if the smoke is bothering them, I don't smoke around children, etc. We're not all bad. :)

I have a neighbor that smokes at all hours of the day - I'm not sure she has a job - I can be up at 5 a.m, come home at 2 a.m., be there in the middle of the day and she is on her porch in her pajamas smoking while her roommate stares at his truck for lengthy periods of time. I have a new neighbor who apparently has band practice via Skype but only at 2 a.m. or early Sunday mornings.
Another pet peeve is neighbors in the complex who don't remove their laundry in a timely fashion - we are only supposed to do laundry from 8 am to 8 pm which means the weekdays are out for me but Smoky (who can apparently do laundry any day of the week) washes all her pajamas in the middle of the day on a Sunday and leaves them there for hours.

Our next door neighbor killed a live chicken in their apartment. It smelled like chicken blood for a week.

I live upstairs from a chinese restaurant and downstairs from a guy who fancy's himself a DJ or at least he does to the Chicky with the hooker shoes I hear all the time.

We moved into the upper two floors of a duplex in February during a major ice storm. We had to move then because the other house we were renting was being sold and we had been given notice to vacate. Our new neighbor comes out of his door and the first thing out of his mouth is "you can't park here". We had parked near our door since we were MOVING and there was 2" of ice on the walk and drive. Mind you, he wasn't going anywhere because of the ice storm, he was just pointing out that we couldn't park there, even though we were obviously MOVING IN. That was about the nicest thing he ever said. He and his wife were horrible, bogarted the outside spaces, ignored designated parking spots (go figure - mister "you can't park there.) The ironic thing was that they each had a bumper sticker on their cars that said "Coexist". Um, yeah... We no longer live there and every day I wake up, I thank God for that.

Where does one start?

The couple with a baby next door who have instructed their friends that they can pull into our driveway to load/unload them after they have given them a ride somewhere. It wouldn't be so bad except for the baby is car-seated in and that takes time to deal with. After asking them nicely multiple times to use their own driveway (which requires that they walk an extra 20 feet) I finally went down and yelled at them. That seemed to do the trick.

The girl downstairs who gets wasted every once in awhile and has all her friends come over who like to hang out on the porch to smoke and drink. I have had to run the gauntlet of sketchy looking characters to get into my own apartment.

Any neighbor with windchines. Screw you and your windchimes. Put them in your home and turn on a fan if you like the sound so much.

Neighbors that won't help with shared spaces or garbage day. Wouldn't hurt you to empty the laundry room trash or drag the garbage cans out 10 feet to the curb.

But I've had far worse. The neighbor who took on two puppies and decided after they were full sized and no longer puppy-cute that he was bored of them. He would leave them in the yard all day and into the night where they would bark and cry around the clock. He worked nights so he didn't care. After months of sleepless nights, myself and several other neighbors successfully took him to court over noise and won. He found better homes for his dogs and peace returned to the neighborhood.

PS: for all of you who are bothered by barking dogs, there are usually city by-laws that deal with that. To address our problem, we made a complaint to the city and then we were asked to keep logs for a few months, which was a giant pain in the ass. A hearing date was set and we got to face the neighbor in court. It didn't cost us anything to do, and we eventually got the problem dealt with.

We've had some interesting neighbor habits and problems, aside from the usual loud music and smoke getting into our apartment.

We've had the largest number of ridiculous incidents in our current place in Oakland. We're on the first floor of a 6-floor condo building, and we have a wooden deck while the units above us have balconies. People are constantly dropping things onto our deck, like cigarettes, food, clothing, and random crap from the balconies. The worst was when a deaf girl lived above us. She would have deaf friends over who would smoke at night and then hock loogies off of the balcony and onto our deck. While we were sitting on it. Apparently they didn't know anyone lived below. Shouting at deaf people is surprisingly ineffective. They also couldn't hear us knocking on their door to ask them to stop.

The worst was when one of the deaf friends got sick and vomited what I can only guess was an entire seafood dinner onto our deck. They were about 30 feet above us, so it made a god awful mess. The friend didn't tell the deaf girl that he did it, so she didn't know. I didn't know who did it, so I had to contact the landlord to see if his maintenance people could clean it up. That's when I found out it was the deaf girl's friend. I didn't have the heart to force her to clean up her friend's disgusting vomit. So nasty.

had a bartender neighbor living with her (much younger) boyfriend. not only did i have the clearly common loud rap played all hours of the night and people mistaking my door for theirs... apparently they were selling pot through the mail - how i know? i woke up to US MARSHALS BANGING on my door at 6AM asking me where they were. i should have seen the most obvious sign... their names HUGE in bright colored letters across their mailbox. and i just thought they were tacky!! t

they also had a hand painted swing on the porch .... not so bad? a neon multi colored tie-dye painted swing... barf

glad they got evicted!

Some of these experiences sound terrible, but as for some others...get over it. Really. Other people have lives that they have the right to live any way they want, including smoking. (I'm not a smoker.) If you live in a big city, you have to face the fact that apartment living is actually pretty intimate.

I did have neighbors who used to beat their children. We used to feed information to the police about them.

Seems petty compared to what others have said, but: my downstairs neighbor has a badly-installed ceiling fan, which clicks when it's running. And it's been running, every day, all day and night, for the 9 months that I've been in my apartment, making it VERY difficult to get to sleep. Also, my next-door neighbors who smoke weed in the hall and play loud music on weeknights.

Our neighbor behind us got a new dog that barked at 6:00 am like clock work every day for about 30 minutes for about 2 weeks. This has sinced stopped but I did write a passive agressive letter and put it in his mailbox which turned out to be the wrong mailbox anyway.

Our neighbors across the street just decided to mow their lawn for the first time this year 2 days ago. The grass was hip high and they did not mow their back yard. Maybe they were renting by the hour.

I live just outside city limits so there is nothing I can do about anything except write my passive agressive notes and stick them in the wrong newspaper mailboxes.

Dog-owning neighbours who don't repair holes in fences. I love dogs, and it's really irresponsible of owners to allow their pets to wander onto the street where they could come to harm. We have had to return dogs to their owners quite a few times. Other than that, we have great neighbours.

@ milo.delara - I'm glad there is a self-professed dog lover that says it's ok to not like constant barking dogs. Makes me (who is not into dogs) feel a bit more justified in being annoyed at my neighbor's five chi-weenie things who.are.constantly.yapping. All hours.

@ Puina - I would like to politely point out that people sleep at other times other than just at night. Also some people work from home and have bosses who comment on why can't you keep your dingdangity dogs quite on client calls, and then you have to explain that you don't actually have dogs...

One other pet peeve involves neighbors parking their vehicles in a way that completely blocks access to the sidewalk.

I live in a city with limited parking and small garages, so I understand parking is sometimes tough to find. But I don't think people realize how difficult (if not impossible) it makes it for the disabled or elderly to get around, especially in an urban environment where people are trying to remain independent. Try maneuvering a wheelchair off of a curb, onto the street and then back on again - sometimes at an angle! When my mother was still alive, it used to present quite a challenge.

What makes it even more frustrating is that the solution is sooo easy - people just need to allow enough space for a person in a wheelchair (or with a baby-stroller or shopping-cart) to get comfortably by. When I've tried suggesting that to people, most times they just stare at me blankly.

Aah, it's happening right now. The Landlord upstairs has two entirely inconsiderate sons. The older one yells bloody murder at his mother when no one else is around. She's a timid thing, so she'll do what he asks her to (like running down to his car to fetch his cell phone) but only after he screeches at her for a half hour about how he "doesn't care about this house!" and "Mom! Mom! Where is my shirt!" and "Mom! Mom! You're making me late for work!" and "Mom! Mom! Mom! Go get my phone!"

The other son every afternoon takes delight in revving his car and drag-racing up and down the driveway while playing thumping music at a high volume. It doesn't last long, but he does it because it irks his father, who will yell from the second story to "Shut that sh*t off!!".

These two boys are 30+ years old and aren't moving out any time soon.

My neighbors to the West have been christened "Bad Neighbors" in all my garden blog posts, because they do nothing with their yard, beyond having a lawn service come in once every two weeks. There's scrub growing up into our fence line, and they have an invasive vining weed growing all along the top of it. Periodically, I have to buy a couple of gallons of brush killer, and pour it along the fence to beat it back, and keep it from invading my beautifully tended garden.

Also, people who walk their dogs, and let them do their business all over my garden. They see me out there working my butt off, sweating like a big dog all summer long. Why do they think it's OK to let their dog leave a big steaming pile in my flower bed?

My problem doesn't involve my single night owl neighbors. They're mostly considerate of when they do things like vaccuum. What I can't stand is when people let their kids scream and laugh and carry on at 7:00am on a weekend. Vaccuuming has been known to take place as early as 6:00am.

I'm a night person and I really do my best to stay out of my front room which is right above the kid's bedroom, not to use appliances, etc... in the evenings. You'd think they could be more considerate about mornings.

i let the old man upstairs drop weights on my ceiling every wednesday night for 3.5 years before getting fed up. i banged the ceiling with a broom every time until he got in the habit of dropping them on what sounds like a sofa or chair. how can anyone do that and think it isn't highly disruptive to the person downstairs? from 8pm to 10pm? that is willfully inconsiderate.

a couple of weeks ago he began dragging what sounds like a heavy chair from room to room. morning and evening. i might put in a face to face on this one b/c i don't want to be awakened at 7am (8am on Sunday) or disturbed in the evenings. what is so hard about picking it up and carrying it to the other location?

i'm sure he doesn't realize how well the smallest sound travels - and is amplified - downward. when his feet hit the floor in the am, i wake up. when he stomps around on his heels, i wonder how he doesn't have heel spurs. reasonable living is all good, but contrary to what someone above says, you do have the right to tell the other guy to keep his life from infringing on yours. the intimate nature of apartment living mandates that you consider the impact of your activities on the lives of your neighbors. i'm not quiet because i want to be.

Someone on my block gets picked up for work every morning at 4AM. I know this because the person in the car honks the horn. At 4AM. Every. Single. Morning.

Do you think my neighbor could, oh, I don't know, BE WAITING OUTSIDE WHEN THEIR RIDE COMES AT THE EXACT SAME TIME EVERY FREAKING DAY INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR THE HORN TO HONK? No. No, they cannot.

My biggest pet peeve is loud conversations and laughter (or worse, 'other noises') at 3am on a school night! (I'm a teacher) Do what you want on the weekends, just let me get to sleep by midnight during school nights!!!

The mailbox for our block is just off the corner of our property, next to the driveway. Most of the neighbors park in front of our driveway to get their mail.

The next door neighbors are hoarders who don't take care of their lawn. We and a couple other neighbors complain to the city weekly. They'll hire a yard service to hack their front "lawn" into something remotely decent looking once every two or three years. Their back yard is impassable, the storage shed is completely buried and not visible under a mass of blackberry vines.

These same next door neighbors will talk to you non-stop if they get the chance. It's so bad we'll dash indoors if we see them, or scout to see if the coast is clear before we go outside.

The neighborhood kinds leave candy wrappers in our front flower bed, but compared to the dirt balls next door, it's only a minor annoyance.

While I realize the comments under this article are reflecting the human condition as this relates to neighbours, I must say that a review of all of the comments thus far has provided me with one of the most humourous reads that I have had in absolute ages. I have done my time on the rack with barking dogs, uncared for children, horns that honk unpredictably, early morning vacuumers, and pot/cigarette smokers. I now realize a few things; that dog owners are deaf to their own dogs barking, and that addicted people are not going to change based on anything anyone suggests to them, that folks who vacuum at odd hours probably would not vacuum at any reasonable time and most likely get a head of steam up to do this after a few drinks or a joint. I had a blazing flash of the obvious, I realized that folks were actually "aiming" their cars down the freeway. I was prompted to change my lifestyle to include income and move to the country from a large busy metropolis with all of the attendant neighbour situations. I have never had one regret. Neighbours have been replaced by the rustle of leaves, birds singing and water flowing in the creek.

List form because I'm lazy. This is all about the neighbors behind us. Thank goodness our very long yard provides a lot of space between us.
1. 3 teens and one drum kit OUTSIDE
2. have a 20 by 20 ft yard and just got a pit bull that they don't train
3. leave said pit bull outside all night in the rain (this is LA, but still)
4. when done with a pack of cigarettes or an apple they just throw it over the fence (or aim for my clothesline!)
5. blast music and yell at each other all summer
6. neighborhood cats all poo in the yard
Bonus: I've seen the son pee in their yard :(

OK, I do not normally comment on blogs. But I had to for the following reasons:

1. I just spent the better half of a law and order episode looking away from the tv and reading this post and it's subsequent responses. Making me ignore my beloved SVU is no easy task.
2. Not only do I live in the same apartment as the author of this posting, but I have often times wondered if I am the only one hearing our OCD afflicted neighbors cleaning their floors nightly, and now am so unbelievably relieved that I have not entirely lost my mind to the extend of auditory hallucinations.
3. I needed to add to this for our household in particular: Being on the first floor and being rather petite in stature, I do not have the option of returning the favor, but if I did, I would stamp up every single step and jump down on the landing of our wonderful 3rd floor neighbors who insist on entering and exiting the house like a hoard of elephants. Every. Single. Time.

Thank you for reassuring my sanity.

Sleeplessly yours,
The girl down the hall.

I live in a 5-apartment building on a street that's mostly houses. One of my neighbors and I were just complaining to each other that the homeowners around here mow their lawns way too often. Constant lawnmower noise. Now, after reading everybody else's complaints, I don't feel so bad. (Hell, I'm probably the annoying night-owl in my building!)

My pet peeve about my last residence? I was five houses from the end of dead-end street that had a weird knack for attracting drunk drivers and police chases. About once a year, somebody would come barreling through late at night, hit a parked car or two (some of my neighbors didn't even have driveways), then ram into a barrier at the end of the block.

(If it weren't for the barrier, they might drive right into a creek in the nearby park. We also got a lot of lost drivers u-turning in front of my old house in the summer, because a not very-well-placed sign a block away makes everybody think the entrance to the park in on my street.)

Emmi -- You need to be proactive with your neighbors that have overtaken your property. I'm not sure of the laws in your state but where I live there are "squatter's rights". If someone has been using your property for 6 months or more and you never tried to correct it, it could be theirs.

My dog barks. So, rather than be patient while I work through it (he's doing so much better!), my 28-year-old neighbor has started throwing rocks at him.

Thanks to everyone for their advice - I hope AT posts this kind of thing more often. I feel better already and I've learned some too! Sorry to comment so many times (I always try to post just once - really)!

@Runemistress Thanks for that info, although we'd have to be on crack to not notice that situation for 6 months - our yard is the size of a postage stamp! Once we get a bigger property, if someone squats on it without us knowing then tries to say they own it, god help them. They will regret even trying that. I bite.

Hey Tara, does this answer your question about whether or not you're alone in this situation? LOL! I've never seen the comments fill up so fast here. Thanks for posting this. Like the kitchen accidents post, it is cringe-inducing but also hillarious since it seems we've all been there and some of these stories are mind-boggling.

I actually have an update since this morning! 2 new incidents - wheee!

1. Neighbor's 7 kids had a graduation party, and were burning stuff. Now, I love the smell of smoke, I actually lead campfire workshops. But this was different. I started to get a severe headache, nausea and eventually my throat closed up. They were also burning in some clay thing just feet from the other neighbor's fence. They refused to put it out so I called the cops. I think they're ticked at me now.

2. Neighborhood newspaper tossed advertistments wrapped in plastic everywhere, crazy neighbor across the street took the one on our sidewalk and threw it in our garden, busting a bee balm plant we had. Not sure the plant will even survive.

my last apartment, the guy downstairs would vomit every morning at about 7, and i could hear every last heave. he also used to scream obscenities at his girlfriend and make her yelp and then lock herself in the closet. about 4 times a week. did i mention that this guy worked at the apartment complex??! needless to say, i was OUTTA there when the lease was up! now i deal with screaming "Bebe's Kids," as I call them. up until late, kicking soccer balls onto my second floor balcony, shredding the shrubbery and trees and throwing the detritus in everyone's door and hallways, cursing at each other (these kids are under 10!), vandalizing the grounds, playing and screaming in my tiny hallway (NO kids live in my particular building)... i want to get mad at them, but i have to direct it towards their parents, who obviously don't give a crap about where their kids are and what they are doing :(

@ EastSideSchnaus
That's awful, but your neighbor should never have the chance to throw rocks at your dog. Once your dog barks you should bring it inside. Period. If you know your dog has a barking problem you should be with your dog the entire time it's outside to correct its behavior.

I have the neighbor kids who play in the street and will not move out of the street when you want to get into your own driveway. Sometimes their soccer game travels into my yard and driveway. The problem has gotten better since I informed the brats that they are trespassing and I threatened to call the cops (8 year olds will believe anything). After the soccer ball hit my car and left a (minute, unfindable) scratch, I told them they weren't even allowed in my yard to retrieve their balls, so the game better not accidentally end up there. I have acquired a few soccer balls, basket balls, a wiffle ball and a frisbee. Yep, I'm that mean woman.

I call 311 on anyone who parks in their yard. It's illegal in my city.

The German Shepherd alarm system dog. I don't need to know every time someone drives by. I have a perfectly operable doorbell, I don't need you to bark.

The upstairs neighbors here work odd hours, which means that I get to listen to stomping around, the playing of RockBand/some drum kit game or loud action movies on TV really late. They traverse the staircase, which runs past my kids' bedroom, as though they're a herd of wildebeest, which often makes my youngest wake up and freak out.

They also have a lot of loud screaming fights. The girlfriend is like a wailing insane banshee. They have a small yappy dog, which they'd leave home a lot initially. The dog was not good alone, and I would be subjected to listening to it whine and scratch at the floor/door for HOURS.

They also control the heat in the house, and like it sub-tropical in the winter, even though the landlady has told them to keep it at 68F. Now, admittedly, I don't mind it a few degrees warmer than that, but it'd be routinely at least in the high 70s or the mid-80s, and intolerable, especially before I had my landlady send plumbers to fix the knobs on my radiators (I couldn't turn the heat off).

My boyfriend's studio apartment was flanked by a crazy lady's. If he put garbage next to his door which he was going to take down when we planned to leave the apartment shortly later, she would come and move the garbage to the other side of the door. 5 minutes later, she'd move it to the other side again. Then she'd move it in front of the door.

She'd shove passive-aggressive notes under the door, and leave a dozen air fresheners in a tiny shared hallway that by no means smelled bad. It was chemical warfare.

She's just a bit of a reclusive nut job, and we heard from other tenants that she's badgered, physically attacked and chased off other tenants in her 30 year tenure in the building.

In my last apartment, all my neighbors were awful. I worked from home, and every day around 3 pm, the upstairs neighbor would blast (and i mean BLAST!) bad 80s music. I'm also 90 percent positive his bad habit of dragging in furniture off the street was the cause of our building's bed-bug infestation. The next door neighbors were also overly loud, and apparently the guy was cheating on his pregnant girlfriend because one night I heard a cat fight in the hallway around 2 am. Beneath me lived a girl whose only known method of communication was screaming at people (and I mean literally screaming). She and her boyfriend also had this endearing habit of having screaming matches at 3 am on days when I had to be up early to catch a flight or train... I also heard them having sex...all the time.

Oh, the joys of city living. Now I live in suburbia and my only problem is a neighbor who has a lonely jack russel that likes to howl when he's all by himself. Thankfully!

where to start? The guy who pees in the elevator, the herd of elephants upstairs, and the kid who pretends he has a recording studio downstairs. Ain't life grand?

Neighbor who would vacuum her apartment in the nude while cranking the latest hip-hop tracks ... with her windows open. Probably would have been tolerable if she didn't look like a tattooed version of Divine.

this has made me feel a lot better about my current apartment situation. we've only ever had problems with our upstairs neighbors. we now have a 20 year old college student who lives above us and is the most inconsiderate person we've ever dealt with. we honestly can't believe that they're letting a college kid live here (the building is mainly working professionals and there are only two families that have children here). luckily, we're moving to a top floor unit in July. that day can't come soon enough!

My new apartments' walls are so thin I can hear my neighbor pee and occasionally talk to his cat.

I do recall my neighbor getting into fights with his family. Damn was it dysfunctional. The yelling/screaming matches were getting so loud and concerning that I had no choice but to call the police.

I try not to involve myself in other people's affairs, but I felt like I had to do something.

I had a neighbour on one side (duplex so every little sound traveled through the walls) who fancied himself a musician, but was way too stoned all the time to play very well - he'd practice his electric guitar (turned all the way up) for hours every night. Only every time he made a mistake, he'd have to start again from the beginning. Hours and hours of the first 5 or 10 notes of the same song. Over. and. over. and. over. All night long. In the 2 years he lived there, I don't think he ever got through a song to the end.

The neighbour on the other side had a business selling at the swap meet. His van would beep while in reverse, and was a little too long to back out into the alley in one move, so at 6am every weekend, he'd back out and pull forward, back out a little more and pull forward, 3 or 4 times until he could clear his driveway (which was right under my bedroom window) and be on his way. Beep beep beep... beep beep beep... beep beep beep. As soon as he left, his dogs would whine and bark and cry for hours.

Between the 2 of them, there were a couple of years where I had almost no sleep.

Our old upstairs neighbors would get our mail and never return it. They'd never cover their trash and the wind would scatter diapers, tampons, food containers, etc. on the lawn, and eventually down into our stairwell. They'd leave peed on children's sheets in the laundry room over night, the smell wafting into our apartment (we had a door between our bedroom and the laundry room).

They'd turn on the heat (our building shared a heating system, them with the thermostat, us with the actual heater and the override) until our apartment was 85 degrees, and when I turned it off via our override, she came downstairs and banged on the laundryroom/bedroom door after midnight until I opened it. Then she lectured me on how she paid for the heat (I'd heard from the landlady she hadn't paid any bills in months) and I couldn't turn it off because her children were getting sick from the cold. I found out after they moved out that she'd turned the heat on all the time because she'd been too stupid to close the door to the attic. She'd also trashed the place before she left.

Their rottweiler also bit my boyfriend through the wrist. He was petting him while talking to the owner, and not doing anything odd. The dog reached out to get more pets, but because he was kept on a short leash on the door (cruel) he reached the end of the leash, felt it tug, got spooked and snapped. Luckily,the dog just missed the artery and my boyfriend was able to go to a sliding scale clinic, but they never checked whether he'd needed serious help, or offered to pay for his doctor's visit.

The worst part was the children (ages roughly: 11, 7, and 4). They'd let their kids ride bikes on their hardwood floors (our ceiling). If we went up to talk to them about it, the kids would hide, then come down and ride their bikes 10 minutes later. Their parents either weren't there, or didn't want to come to the door to discuss their children's actions. A couple of times we noticed the mother sleeping in the car during the day when we went up to ask them not to ride bikes. I can only assume she was there because she couldn't stand them either.

They'd scream at the kids and each other, and the kids would scream and throw cartoon style tantrums with them throwing themselves against the floor and pounding it with their fists (once again, our ceiling). Somehow they seemed to both get up earlier than me and go to bed later. I heard when they moved out that they'd also carved stick figures in the hardwoods in their floors.

The kicker is the mom is a Seattle preschool teacher.

Oh, and I've lived in many apartments, and never had any problems with anyone else, so I know this isn't just me overreacting.

Emmi, I'd be ripping up that driveway. If you don't enforce your property rights, you can lose them. Please look into "adverse possession." Quote: "The classic example of adverse possession is a neighbor who puts up a fence or paves a driveway several feet over their neighbor’s property line, without permission, and this “adverse possession” continues without objection for 20 consecutive years. Despite the fact that the neighbor’s fence or driveway encroaches the property line, under the adverse possession doctrine, the property owner may lose title to the disputed strip of land by not doing, saying or even knowing anything about it."

i was reading this thinking how lucky i am that i dont have any neighbor peeves but just as i moved onto the next post it happened - my neighbor's almost nonstop AC kicked on. it's 73 people

Our next door neighbor NEVER shovels his sidewalk when it snows.

Should I mention it's a row house and he only needs to shovel about 15 feet of sidewalk??

And you thought apartment living had its problems? I rented an accessory dwelling behind someone's house. I'm in my 40s, quiet, a professional, no parties, work long hours and was rarely home on the weekends (usually at my boyfriend's). No roommates, paid $1,500 rent on my own, on time each month. One night my boyfriend was parking his car outside and the owner was screaming at him "I know you're living there"! I called the property manager, let him know bf wasn't living there, no clothes, no keys, no visits unless I'm actually home. Mgr told me she was worried about her water/electricity bill going up. Seriously? One tenant who's hardly home & doesn't cook compared to the four people who used to rent the space?

Now, same owner. Honolulu started this great recycling program, instead of twice weekly landfill trash pickups, there would only be one. The other pickup would be for recyclables and garden items. There were three different bins to separate out your trash. Well this owner decided to recyclable/compost bins were perfect for her to store cans in, but not for street pickup, she would hold onto to them and then take it to a center for $$. So, we had one bin for two households and it often filled up before trash day. If they did yard work, forget about it, it went in the landfill bin and there was no room left. I often had to drop my trash/cardboard off at a county center or leave it sitting in my place until the next trash day.

The adorable older lady next door with a tiny backyard - who leave an enormous amount of food out for the feral cat community. Since she doesn't have a yard they eat there and then crap in my yard - uggg

What bothers me is when neighbors don't pick-up around their house or building or simply walk right by papers or things laying on the ground. In other words, people that make no effort to treat it like a home and understand that appearances make a difference for everyone; including neighbors.

The neighbors have CONSTANT screaming fights (sometimes the cops come), teenagers who blast music incessantly, a screaming baby, loud weeknight parties, etc. I have never once complained about any of it. But now they have complained about my alarm clock. What am I supposed to do... it's an alarm clock and a necessity, it's not like my TV is too loud. Now I wish I had complained about them years ago.

Our neighbors burn wood in their fireplace 24-7 most of the year, flooding our home and garden with smoke. This means that many beautiful spring, summer, fall and winter days at our Southern California home have been spent barricaded in the house with the air purifier at full blast, rather than gardening or enjoying a drink on the patio. Wood heating is great for rural folks, not great for neighborhoods. Please pass it on!

"sticky butt" HA HA HA!

In our previous apartment, our last set of neighbors above us were drug dealers. They were loud, obnoxious, smoked weed all the time, and then at one point got drunk and came crashing through the front window into our dining room at 5:00 in the morning, then proceeded to try and run upstairs and act like it wasn't them.

We moved thereafter.

All we've had to deal with here is the one busybody next door and the "Bumpuses" across the road with their pack of yippy dogs.

Downstairs neighbors played a game in our shared backyard where they would lift up someone like they were doing a kegstand and hold their head under water in a cooler full of ice water.

After staying there as long as possible, they would then do a keg stand.

I think it goes without saying that this was not our only problem with them.

I just can't figure out if the girl living above is watching porn or doing it with one of her many 'guests'.

Gosh, the worst thing I can think of is when the guy downstair bought a pile of (supermarket for eating) chickens on sale & roasted them non stop for 48 hours. It was years before we could consider the stuff again.

I have a neighbor who has owned a building next door to mine for thirty years. I bought my home two years ago and since then, he has incessantly bothered me to cut down a majestic silver maple that was planted when the house was built sixty years ago.

This same man never has a nice thing to say to anyone in the neighborhood.....he was born and raised there and thinks that he can tell everyone else what to do. I'm the first who has told him what he can do.

I have become deaf to his voice and blind to his face and his gestures. I love my home and I'm sure it kills him every time I make an improvement to what was once a horribly neglected home in a historic neighborhood.

I have a neighbor who has owned a building next door to mine for thirty years. I bought my home two years ago and since then, he has incessantly bothered me to cut down a majestic silver maple that was planted when the house was built sixty years ago.

This same man never has a nice thing to say to anyone in the neighborhood.....he was born and raised there and thinks that he can tell everyone else what to do. I'm the first who has told him what he can do.

I have become deaf to his voice and blind to his face and his gestures. I love my home and I'm sure it kills him every time I make an improvement to what was once a horribly neglected home in a historic neighborhood.

The ingrate should be happy that I am increasing the value of his property.

@Melissa. I am with my dog the entire time, that's how I know the neighbor throws rocks at it. Do you happen to be my neighbor, because it sounds like you have a very ... interesting idea about dog behavior and how it's my fault that my neighbor has committed animal cruelty an abuse against the already-abused shelter dog I recently adopted.

Noise. I work in a creative field - I NEED solitude and quiet to get my work done.

Partying. I briefly lived next to an apartment building that filled up with party animals, and not only did the noise level skyrocket, they trashed the place. Broken glass was EVERYWHERE.

Utility theft. I had several people steal water from my garden hose (this is a serious issue when you live in drought-ridden SoCal). I had to install hose locks. Chasing down some jackass who ran up a $200 water bill in your name is not fun.

Worst of all was the smoking! I don't care what people do to their lungs, but I have asthma, and I chose a city with strict smoking laws to preserve my health. A handful of really obnoxious troublemakers thought it was hilarious to light up and puff away RIGHT OUTSIDE MY DOOR, knowing I'd have to walk through their smoke to get into or out of my home (there wasn't a back door).

I can live quite happily with road noise, children playing, dogs barking, and musicians practicing. I will not tolerate neighbors who choose to misbehave.

The first set of next door neighbours had a teenag boy who was a total nut job. When his parents were out he'd toss bags of garbage onto my garage roof. I never knew he was doing it until I got within just the right spot to see the garage roof and there it was a ton of trash. Then he'd sling empty wine bottles onto my driveway smashing glass everywhere. Don't know how many times I had to have it out with the parents. One summer day I go out to do some gardening and there is the teenage moron out on the sidewalk with a long metal pole trying to touch the high electrical wires on the street. I immediately started looking for my ladder to help him out. Unbelievable. They moved and in there place are a new set of morons with 4 dogs which they let bark all the f-ing time. This is why I want to go live in a lighthouse!

I was only able to read through the first 10 posts or so. That's it. Thank YOU all for convincing me to never ever move. My neighbors are AWESOME. Sometimes I feel like we're the loud ones on the block and that's because we have friends or family over once every 3 weeks for bbqs during the summer.

Ahh, I am not a crazy person! My neighbour insists on waking up in the wee early hours, and wake us up by banging cupboard doors so hard, my boyfriend jumped up convinced that someone was trying to break into my apartment.

Currently at my apartment I have these crazily talkative old ladies at my complex that like the sit outside all day. I'm terrified of going out to check the mail 'cos once they start talking to you they DO NOT stop. We've had late guests text us to 'save them' only to find out that they've been outside for 30 minutes unable to reach the door from being forced to chatter with them.

When I was still living with my parents people would occasionally enter our backyard without permission and steal fruit, veggies, and herbs as though it was completely normal.

And at my first house my neighbors would get into these horribly loud yelling matches in the middle of the night which they always felt the need to take outside, and if that didn't wake us up the cop sirens responding to them did.

oh, also the guy living above us currently is like 300 or so pounds, when he moves it sounds like the ceiling is going to give in at any moment.

Our apartment is the top floor of a house. Every night, my neighbor gets home and toots loudly. We can't help but crack up. We also hear him playing bass, but that's not nearly as offensive. :)

In reality, he's great. We don't mind the tooting at all.

I live in a (rented) house now, but I still have several complaints. General noise level is definitely one. Recently, I've been listening to heavy things being tossed into a dumpster from probably 7am to 11pm. The back of my place is also next to the back of a bar, and the owners and their friends like to stand out there and talk unreasonably loud while smoking pot. On the weekends there's a constant parade of loud and obnoxious drunk college kids wandering down my street or just standing around. (And I live in an expensive for this city neighborhood. My rent is nearly four digits and I'm in Pittsburgh.)

What annoys me most though is the parking. My street is a narrow one way alleyway. I don't have a car, so I don't mind that people park in front of my house, but I do mind that they park on the sidewalk so close to the house that if I didn't have a front step I literally would not be able to get in my door. They always have to park at a slight angle to avoid the no parking sign too. I've considered calling whoever you call about parking issues, but the sign points towards the other side of the street and then a few feet in front of it there's a sign pointing at my side of the street, and I'm not sure if that means no parking is allowed at all or what.

Oh, and on garbage day someone puts their garbage leaning against my house right under my living room window. I don't know who. I rent the entire house, so it's not like it's a neighbor above/below me, and to my left is a garage and to the right is the driveway for the pot smokers' bar.

My neighbors just got chickens, which I thought was sort of cool - until they get two (2!!!) roosters to go with them. They start crowing at 4:30 in the morning, and don't usually stop until noon. It is really inconsiderate. A while back, my husband and I were debating getting a few chickens ourselves so we could have eggs - but now I am kind of hoping that there is some county ordinance that prohibits people from keeping chickens in their yard.

I have a neighbor that lives in the upstairs apartment, there are 2 apartments in this house:

She come home drunk on the weekends & plays the music so loud that the neighbors in the house next door were woken up by it & called the cops on her. That has at least stopped her. She's mad that they called though. Seriously, if your music (and the screaming) was so loud that you woke someone up who lives in a whole other house, you should be embarrassed, not mad that they called the cops.

She smokes what must be 2 packs a day & the smell occasionally drifts into my apartment. I'm allergic so I end up with a headache.

My neighbors across the street got some new light installed in their backyard which I'm pretty sure can be seen from space. They left it on all night a few nights ago & it seemed like daylight in my bedroom.

It seems like there is always someone renovating something. Hammers banging starting at 8AM, 7 days a week.

Kids screaming. I don't care about kids playing, but do they have to scream like they are being murdered?

Wow I sound grumpy LOL

Oh! And the place I lived previously, had a bad neighbor too. It was an apartment building, so I guess only having one wasn't so bad. But he was crazy. He would complain about any noise at all. He'd call the super if he thought our TV was too loud, even though he would play music so loud that our dishes would rattle. When we were moving in, obviously there is some noise. It was the middle of the afternoon & he was banging on the walls. He'd have screaming fights with his girlfriend & beat on her, but he'd complain about us "talking too loud" And the best one, he called the super on us to say we were making a lot of noise when we weren't even home! We were at a hockey game & had the ticket stubs to prove it. The super was so mad! He told him none of the other neighbors complained about us, and if he kept making false complaints, he'd be evicted. Seems everyone complained about him, but the only complaints anyone else in the whole building got came from him. Crazy!

Not being able to use the back 20 feet of my parklike back yard because of the 3 yards that back up to it full of barking, territorial and neglected dogs. Once you cross the line it's like walking into a kennel. "Ouf, ouf, ouf!"

Someday I'm building a wall.

I'd complain about my next door neighbor and his squeaky suspension and really loud exhaust and need to go places at 4 am. Or his constant arguments with his sometime girlfriend. But really, the guy's hard working and apologetic when I see him and his arguments often end with him reminding his girlfriend that he has neighbors who probably aren't as interested in putting up with her as he might be...

I spent 11 years in small neighborhood that is still "in transition." I was in a house that was split into 3 apts. Over the years...
*A crashed, burned BMW on the sidewalk and a confused cop asking me if it was my car.
*The digeridoo player. He'd take something to expand his mind and play that thing all night. Not so much loud as it made the windows vibrate in the oddest way.
*The young family who loved Jesus and jackrabbit sex - and then yelled obscenities at the subsequent offspring. They hogged the laundry, used my hot water, and after I spent a weekend creating a garden plot, she planted some awful vinely thing in it that took over.
*The crazy dude 2 doors down who would drink all day and yell up at me to turn off my f-ing lights when I would sit on my sunroom in the evenings.
I just moved into a cottage, still an urban setting. The kids next door used the house as a play area (I put a stop to that), and the woman who used to live there would bring them in and give them cookies (nope, sorry). They hit the house with their toys and for some reason, they get let out every night around 10 pm. I know you do this with dogs... but kids? Anyhoo - I'll all over being the woman shaking her fist and being generally cranky. I work ALOT. And I want to come home and be Left. Alone. No wonder the suburbs and their large plots of land are so popular.

@Emmi: I'm sorry. I've been in that situation, too, and it really sucks.
Depending on your city ordinances and how much energy you're up for a fight, indicting them for trespassing, civil disobedience and animal cruelty (to yours and the locked out cats, too) is an option. In my case, indicting them was good enough for them to shape up ... and settle, too.

Good luck.

The boys across the street who played loud music on the car stereo in the driveway all weekend. Only annoying because I really can't stand what they liked. Retaliation-I played opera loudly with the windows open. The rest of the neighborhood probably hated us both!

my neighbor (who's house is 20 or so feet from mine) likes to dance naked in his room with all the shades up and the windows open. he does normally does this at 3 or 4 am and has flashing lights in his room that will wake up the people in my house. Its a eye-opening sight when you mistakenly look the wrong way and see him. (nope he's not hot, reminds me of 'ugly naked guy' from the show Friends).

Wow, I had complaints about some of my neighbors but now they don't seem too awful in the face of some of these comments.

Also, probably because the multi-generational family of drug-addled petty criminals in the house across the street finally got busted and moved out of the neighborhood. Not before commandeering the house and finances of a neighboring paraplegic vet for a few months and plying him with drugs to keep him quiet. None of us in the neighborhood knew until the vet had a medical emergency and an ambulance had to come for him. And the police and social services weren't too far behind but it was still a few years before that family and their hangers-on were dispersed. It was horrific.

Now there are neighbors that occasionally blast music in their truck at 2am and people who steal the entire harvest of plums and apples from our trees. Still annoying but it seems like small potatoes compared to what we used to deal with here.

@BrianneA - I didn't read ALL the posts below yours, so forgive me if your problem has already been addressed; I had a very similar problem with a utility line draping thru a tree and along my fence before trailing up to a neighbor's house. I started calling the utility companies - both the electric company and the cable company sent workmen out - turns out it was cable being accessed illegally. He unhooked it from the pole and asked me to call if I saw another go up.

The next house I lived in had the house built to the very back of the lot, and only the back half of the lot fenced. I was forever cleaning up other people's dogs poop in the unfenced portion of the yard. I started watching for which dogs, followed them home, then used a shovel to scoop up the poop and walked it down to that house. Knocked on the door, and told them that I'd be dumping the poop from my yard into theirs, and making a formal complaint to animal control about the dog running loose day and night. Seemed to work. No more dog poop - just glares from the owners each time they drove by.

One word: Kids.

I do have several of my own, but they know how to behave in public, and they know not to destroy other people's things. There is an unsupervised 6 year old that roams the neighbourhood and always ends up in our yard as he's in my son's class. We have caught him:

1) Throwing large rocks all over the yard (thanks for the $100 lawnmower bill)
2) Throwing rocks at our car
3) Stuffing the tube for our sump pump full of random junk, nearly causing our basement to flood (caught it in the nick of time)
4) Leaving random stuff in our yard, including his toys, a curtain rod, junk from his house, etc.
5) Breaking 4 of our solar garden lamps
6) Breaking the kids' brand new play structure by jumping repeatedly to knock boards from the roof out of place.

His mother scares the hell out of me and is totally unapproachable. The kids know to tell him to go home when he's over because his mother is sue-happy and I'm actually terrified of him getting hurt on our property. Problem is, he's there all the time whether we're home or not! The time we caught him ruining the sump pump, we were just pulling into the driveway. Sucks.

So glad I live in the sticks.

"tell me what annoying things your neighbors do, so I at least know I'm not alone."

Breed.

@Girl & Lamp -- when I've talked to people who live in the burbs or the sticks it seems like they have their own set of issues with their neighbors and some of them overlap with the urban ones too (like dogs and cats on the loose, trespassing, kids, and generally nosy or disrespectful or rude members of whatever community you live in).

We live in an "up and coming" complex- half of the units have been designated for low income families, half are purchased. The idea was to have a mix of people, and to keep out some of the riff-raff. Problems? Kids who think putting fireworks in the dumpsters, which sends garbage everywhere- including my "lawn" (aka patch of grass). Kids cussing like sailors, while moms lean out the door and scream "get your f****ing a*s in the house you brat!", 12 yr old girls feeling midnight is totally fine to sing Katy Perry in the parking lot while wearing next to no clothing, the neighbors MEAN (I mean vicious) Staffordshire terrier who EVERYONE is terrified of, and- by far the worst- the "kids" who just rented a unit across from us. 5 guys in their early twenties who party EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, and NEVER without the cops needing to be called. The other night they thought it would be HILARIOUS to shoot FIREWORKS at our windows- which resulted in a broken window, me TOTALLY losing my cool on them, and cops. Who DOES that?! About 20 units have signed a petition to give to the property management group, asking them to evict the guys. I'm a single mom and do NOT need to deal with them. One day one of the guys whistled at me on my way by, said some REALLY rude crap, and was cussing me out for ignoring them. I mean, I'm only 28, and a party now and then is cool with me, but these guys are just a*holes. :( Too bad I bought my unit like 3 months before those guys moved in.

Upon moving into our first home I was optimistic about having nice neighbors. While our next door neighbor says hello, and appears neighborly, I suspect he is Type A and has no boundaries.
We left for our honeymoon and arrived back home to find our water heater had been turned down. This might be nice, since we did forget to do so ourselves. Arriving home at 1 am after 14 hours of flying and finding only ice cold water was not so nice. Our water heater access is in our side yard, he let himself into backyard to turn off. Mind you, we had only been there a month and barely knew him. We had not told him we were on a trip.
He takes it upon himself to move our trash cans in, nice right? No, this is only so he can put them where he does not see them, in our back yard. His our on his property, side yard, but ours offend him if he can see them when on our property. IF we put them on side yard, he moves them back to his preferred spot.

My last apartment was beautiful, but was unfortunately located next door to an inner-city gas station where people hung out at all hours of the day due to the fact that they sold single cigs there. The last straw (no, the car alarms, fights and screaming didn't do it) was when someone tried setting the gas station on fire.

At my current apartment, my downstairs neighbor (who makes it known that he hates dogs) calls my landlord to complain about barking coming from my apartment when my dog isn't even there. Luckily, my landlord is a huge dog lover and is on to his tricks.

here in a NYC apt. a few yrs ago..i had noisy upstairs neighbors that REFUSED to believe they were loud. After multiple attempts at 'niceness', I printed up signs & posted them in the bldg listing the noise.
APT 5E:
Loud music-tues. 11pm-1am
Argument+Yelling -wed. midnite-12:30
Lovemaking session -Fri. ONLY 9pm-9:10pm!?
Right after this...they were always quiet

We live in a typical Philly rowhouse - shared, not all that thick walls. Of course, it's the city, so we expect normal everyday noise. We did not expect for our neighbor's dog to bark *incessantly* for two hours each and every time they leave her alone. They were very apologetic when we talked with them about it and said they would buy her a shock collar to see if that helps. Um, why not take her out for more than a half block walk twice a day? Why not take her with you to the kids' baseball games if she so clearly does not like being left alone? Yeesh. We also did not expect for their outdoor cat to use our small garden as his personal litter box, but that now pales in comparison to the nonstop dog yapping.

I used to have a neighbor that had such loud sex, in her living room, that it disrupted ANY entertaining I could do in my home (duplex). It was so bad it was comical. I told the landlord I was moving, and she insisted on mediation, imagine sitting with your neighbors and talking about their sexual practices (my best comment during mediation: it's very loud but it never lasts long!).

Now, I'm in a house, one neighbor throws her trash into my yard and yells like a banshee at her kids (ear splitting pitch, truly) and she throws all animal waste in my yard yelling that my cats shouldn't poop in hers (right but, psycho neighbor, I have indoor-only cats so is their poop "magical" enough to migrate through windows and walls to get to your unkempt yard???).

The other neighbor, who has a demon adult child living in their garage that they're afraid to kick out (drug addiction and emotional issues and he's about 32), his loud music and penchant for hurling racist and misogynistic insults at me is a major problem, as are his friends urinating in my front garden when they're drunk or throwing trash in my yard or the back of my truck after bbq's. Now, I collect the trash and deliver it to their front door step, that's definitely cut down on their post-party trash in my yard. When the son was throwing rocks into my backyard, that hit me as I was gardening, I brought it up to his parents and his mother had the nerve to describe him as 'an angel who would never do that' (I realized later I should have filed an assault complaint). Also, I don't hesitate to call the police on noise anymore once it's exceeded an hour's worth or is after hours (10p here), and when I re-called police one night (2a) because the neighbor's crowd was throwing things at my windows the police came back and hauled two of them off. My lights were never turned on that night but they just assumed I was the one who called (police don't reveal your identity) but the city attorney's aware of their behavior and has threatened to bill them for all the police calls made by their neighbors (you have 60 days to pay those or they can go so far as to seize your property). I keep praying I'll win the lottery, be able to push-buy these neighbors out, and then move to a quieter community. I know, I know, Confucious says 'when you seek revenge, dig two graves' but I really want better neighbors!!! Now, if I moved again, I'd do some serious research into noise complaints in the area before I buy.

dog poo. how hard is it to pick up dog poo people?? drives me bonkers.......

@Emmi, call City Hall, in my area a city surveyor coming by shouldn't cost you anything. Also, if there was a neighbor mis-step, you can request that the city attorney send the neighbor a letter telling them to clear it up (use the city surveyor's report in your request to the city attorney).

On dog poop issues, I followed one woman in my neighborhood home, I told her that if she let her dog poop in my front yard again and didn't pick it up that the poop would be in her mailbox. She either stopped doing that or took another route walking her dog! You certainly don't need to confront someone face to face, and I wouldn't necessarily advise anyone to do that because it can prove dangerous, a letter in their mailbox (mail it USPS) often does the trick.

When my mother had someone stealing her beautiful flowers from her front garden, she put up a little sign in the iris border that said "God can see you stealing" and when it continued the next year she changed the sign to "For stealing my flowers I've asked Satan to follow you home". The flower stealing stopped cold and, we knew who it was, he lived just a block away. Because we divided the iris, and gave them away freely to neighbors, there was absolutely NO reason for anyone to steal her blooms!

Very entertaining posts... I'm still thinking I need 20 acres to myself just to get over the bad neighbor experiences!

My fiancé and I have lived in our first apartment together for about 2 years now. No major problems, so far. Except...just within the last year, we've come to the realization that our next door neighbor may be mentally ill. She screams (and I mean SCREAMS) complete nonsense for hours, through the night and into the morning. (And we didn't notice it for the first year, for whatever reason.) We haven't said anything to our building manager, because really, what can be done? Unfortunately, I doubt our manager can increase the neighbor's medication...

I used to live next door to a woman whose brother lived with her. She was in her 50's and he looked every day of 100. Actually, i think he was only 60something.
Anyway, I was working days and had a part time job at night. Sometimes it would be after midnight when i would get off and almost 1:15-130 when I would get home.
He was always parking his funky, nasty VAN IN MY DRIVEWAY. Because it was so effin LATE, i would go to my mom's house (10 min away) and sleep over there. When i approched him, he said that he didn't think i was ever home. I told him that some of us WORK for a living and that even if i'm NOT home, it's still MY PRIVATE driveway, that I am paying for.

After i finally talked to him, it SEEMED as though he had stopped. But one day I came home from my day job super early (toothach) and guess what?? NASTY FUNKY VAN WAS IN MY DRIVEWAY. I was PISSED!!! I banged on the door and told him to hurry the hell up and get that ugly piece of crap outta my drive. That turd had me waiting over 10 min for him to put on clothes and saunter out to move it. As he walked to my drive, he glared at me as though *I* were the problem and not his disgusting azz.

I'm sorry. I really need to exhale. (breathing in, breathing out). It was over 10 years ago, but just thinking about him, pisses me off. Yeah, i gotta get over it.

I thought that living in an apartment was the worst (My neighbors above me LITERALLY pee'd all over my balcony one night to get'revenge' for a previous legitimate noise complaint). I was of course wrong after moving into my new home to find that my next door neighbor is a bee keeper and I am allergic to bees. Working on finding a legitimate legal solution to the problem (he's breaking some ordinances) but it sucks to have to move in and deal with this sort of thing right away- especially when the property is OWNED and there's no intermediary.

@dirce79 Then you would also have to explain to the homeowner association why you are running a business in a building were it's not allowed (my case).

I worked from home and had to deal with loud noises from other neighbors but I was smart enough to understand that, hey, that's the exception. And there are noise regulation laws for the night hours for a reason.

But thanks for insulting a random commenter, it must be awful being so uptight and entitled. You must need to vent.

bethundra's comment is lost in the ocean of whiners. everybody posting here should read it at least once.

kristinfaurest.... although bethundra's situation is very sad, it doesn't mean every other person commenting is a whiner. i'm sure if you had to deal with some of these issues, you would be a little less quick to judge.

back when i lived in a ridiculously close-quartered building, the two very sweet little old sisters who lived upstairs staged an adorable "smoking lounge" about 20 yards from the building complete with a cafe table and umbrella, vintage ashtrays, and string lights. they never came right out and asked the smokers to stay away from doors and windows, but their honey drew the flies all the way to the back of the shared garden.

they also baked fresh bread every monday morning and made homemade soup when you were sick. i don't really have any complaints about my current neighbors, but i sure do miss those two...

I lived upstairs from a mariachi, too! I didn't mind the music at all -- he was talented, and a really great guy besides.

I did mind the guy across the hall from us who refused to put his annoying little yappy dog on a leash (because "he's so well behaved"). This "well-behaved" dog would run into our apartment and wreak havoc any chance he got, and the owner would just stand there and *ask* the dog to come out. Dude, come in here, pick up your dog, and keep him the hell out of here!

gettysgirl...and everybody...i have had to deal with plenty of issues, i live in an apartment in a european capital of 2 million, we have the same issues we'd have in the states plus cultural issues. on both sides: we have been the offenders (my husband and i with our love of loud music, and our loud six-year-old) and our neighbors have been the offenders as well (smoking, loud malfunctioning alarms, etc) and every time what has solved --- or at least nearly solved or ameliorated -- the problem has been just getting to know each other better. for me this came from long years of learning the language and the culture. because then we tolerate each others' small transgressions a little better and we accommodate the others' requests a little more openly than we do when we're in conflict with a stranger.

I could have been emmi's next door neighbor? I love to garden and I take a lot of pride in my lawn and landscaping in general. If I had a neighbor that had weeds, that they didn't control, I would spray their yard too. I would also mow that crap down if they were too lazy to take care of it. Weeds go to seed, and seeds spread...all....over....my....yard. Deal with it.

Sealbeachy: learn to use punctuation properly, and go work for Monsanto, you deserve each other.

Some of these things are pretty funny, I think because we've been there (at least with some of it.) We've had some interesting neighbors that drove us crazy, but now we can look back at the experiences and laugh (um, usually/sometimes). We had a family of drummers across the street who practiced any time of day or night, and their dad didn't respect the neighbors enough to ask them to not play ALL the time (we understood that they needed to practice, but maybe they could have done it in their home, rather than in the garage for the whole neighborhood to hear, and not practiced say at 10PM). The drummer's cat who would dig in our flower beds and poop there (we think out of revenge for us asking them to be a little quieter). (NOTE, anyone who has this problem, a solution is cayenne pepper, which also works for dogs. It burns their noses when they sniff for a place to poop, but is harmless, from what I've read. Also, cats supposedly don't like rosemary or vinegar.) We had a 5AM wake up call from the neighbor's dog. When we talked to them about it they said that the dog also woke them up. Oh OK. At least we weren't the only ones. The all day barking from another set of dogs, who incidentally were given away because the barking started to bother the owner's boyfriend, who worked nights. We also lived across the street from a do-it yourself car wash, where people would vacuum their cars with their bass pumping. We called the owner of the car wash, who said he wouldn't do anything about it, we called the police, who asked us if we'd called the owner. We went over and asked people to turn the music down, and they were usually apologetic, but eventually we just moved, it was too much (all day, every day!). After moving from these past neighborhoods, we're realizing that the more we get to know our neighbors, the less these kinds of things might annoy us/the easier it might be to resolve these issues, because we have a relationship. Sometimes, in the case of the drummer family, it didn't work to get to know them (I brought them cookies once and told them we wanted to be friends, or at least have everyone feel welcome on the street). Hopefully in most cases it would have.

I actually saw someone pooping in my drive way!!!! I ran out with a bag and made him clean it up and then I hosed it down(for as long as I possibly could!). It was just so wrong!

It used to be, on my street, neighbors that would play their music (awful rap crap) well into the night so loud the entire block could hear. Then I got a burglar alarm. It mysteriously went off every morning at 3am. For two weeks. Now, the music isn't so loud anymore.

There's the neighbour down the street who had highly amplified church services in Spanish without a permit in her yard at 6 am on Sundays. We'd call the police and she'd shut down long enough for them to get out of the area and start up again. She finally stopped when someone vandalized the life-sized virgin Mary statue in her front yard (I SWEAR it wasn't me!).

I have a love-hate with my neighbor's incessantly barking dog. He is a really sweet and rather dumb Weimarauner, but has a carrying deep voice. I think it's the RwroooWooWoo that drives me nuts the most. He will bark for hours on end. Hours! I've clocked 8 hours at a stretch. Unfortunately she leaves him out when she goes to work and sometimes doesn't come home until 9 pm.

0.25 of an acre is not enough land to let your dog bark as he pleases, a bark collar would be a simple fix and would please everyone in the neighborhood, but apparently she refuses to do anything about the noise. Oh and I forgot to mention that originally there were 2 of the doggies, but the way the owner tethered them originally, one of them strangled itself with its own leash. The one that is left could be a great dog but needs a LOT of training, of which he's gotten none of. Anyone want a really expensive dog?

@PattyK -- you just made me laugh so hard I nearly choked! That ain't right at all!

1) A month after I moved into my flat, the guy living next door to me came into my room through the balcony door at 1 am to watch me sleep. I rolled over in bed to see his face staring at me less than 2ft away. Police couldn't prove it was him because the prints on the balcony railing had been wiped down, and he didn't leave any inside.

2) After psycho stalker guy moved out, a LOUD pregnant couple moved in. The pregnant lady would chain smoke outside and the smoke would blow into my flat. THey would also turn the TV up really loud and yell at each other. I complained about their noise, and after that they started to throw food scraps, rubbish, and cigarette buts into my courtyard. After the baby was born, they put his crib in the wardrobe along our shared bedroom wall (which is pretty thin), and I was woken up at least 3 times per night by the baby crying. If she was in the house by herself, she would let the baby cry inside (for up to an hour!) while she was outside smoking.

3) DOGS (and their owners) who let them poo anywhere and everywhere (usually in the garden in the common area outside my flat), and leave the dogs at home during the day letting them yap for 8 hours on the balcony.

4) Loud music and parties. One neighbour sings to Justin Beiber until 4 in the morning, has 12 hour parties over the weekends, and gets drunk and talks/sings/yells with her friends on weeknights. I don't sleep much.

"Get off my lawn" says it all. An annoying woman moved in to the house next door. This is the kind of person who peeps out her window whenever she hears a sound and when I let my dogs out to do their business at night. I came home from work to find a worker on my property doing repairs for this woman. Imagine the horror to find a stranger in my enclosed yard. He took apart a fence on our property to get to my yard. After I confronted him, he slinked back to the neighbor woman's side and proceeded to put my fence back together. Asking for permission to come onto my property would have been the decent thing to do, but I guess some people have no common sense.

I guess I got very spoiled living in a small apartment complex in a small CA. town for 10 years. The manager lived onsite and was very quick to address the few problems that occurred.

Moving from there to a central valley redneck (and proud of it!) city was an eye opener. Dogs that barked all night. Usually because people were walking up and down the street. All night. Everybody drove either a pickup (with a loud muffler) or a "rice burner" (import car with a loud muffler). Family across the street with 2 houses (one no bigger than an average garden shed) behind the front house - they had at least 20 people living there, and were running a daycare for all their friends - one of the kids climbed over my fence into my yard - with two black labs barking at him. Extremely nosy neighbor next door - she actually asked me if my husband and I had a sex life! (We were both 50 and it was a second marriage for both of us).

He had a heart attack 2 years later and passed - after that someone started leaving me cryptic notes taped to the fence (still have no clue what they were supposed to mean), and one night I got up because the dog started barking (Yes, I go see why my dogs are barking) and saw someone running back out of the gate.

That was the last straw, and I moved a couple of months later. Ended up with two neighbors who were wonderful. I miss that place. Had to move to AZ to take care of my mom. The neighbors here are pretty nice, I just don't have time to socialize. Guess I would have if I hadn't spend the last hour reading all these posts.

I bought a condo under the craziest dude in the universe!!! Their living room was above our bedroom so we would wake up to loud cracking sounds that sounded like the ceiling was going to fall. Then they would run around the living room and move furniture around CONSTANTLY! It was like living under Jurassic Park.

Upper condos are required to have carpeting, but these people had wood floors. We offered to buy them carpeting, but they refused and started being even louder just to "stick it to the white man". We tried talking to them, but ultimately the condo board forced them to get carpeting.

To make us pay for having to get carpet - they broke into my condo and the other condo above us and have flooded us a grand total of SIX TIMES in a little over a year. The association won't do anything. The police won't do anything. NOBODY will do anything. Basically unless we have a video of them doing this the police won't even talk to them about it.

We ended up buying a new house and moving because the condo was no longer safe for our baby, with all the flooding. The crazy guy is selling his condo as a short sale now. And we were 2 weeks away from selling ours when they flooded us again.

We had lost our homeowner insurance after flood #5 so now we have no way to fix this stuff and we have to pay 2 mortgages until we can fix the flood damage and sell.

Thankfully, our new neighborhood is great!!!! We just hope that the condo can be sold soon so we don't go broke and lose both places!

@puina - Apologies if I offended. What you said hit close to home bc my neighbors said something similar when I asked about possible bark control solutions. Also, my work from home is not my own business, I telecommute with a company.

I have two old people on the corner who I would dearly love to strangle. After over ten years of their constantly accosting me and disturbing everyone around them,I went to the other neighbours and we started to fight back.We had to!

You couldn't do anything for blocks without them calling city hall,building managers and accosting people.Constant aggro.

I had a huge dog.His poo matched his size.I trained him to do his business in our yard BEFORE his walk.Regular doggie bags would not have cut it.At least in the yard I could use a shovel and clean it up right away.That's SHOVEL.Keep this in mind as I tell my story.

They are gardeners.Fair enough,but their gardens are at the side and front of their house.Being on the corner they did get alot of poo.So do I because I have a phone pole and hedge.I hate it too!

One day my daughter was walking past their house and the wife found a poo at the same time.So,she proceeds to scream at my then 7 year old to clean up 'your dog's shit'.My kids runs to our house,upset,got a bag and runs out the door to clean up somebody's poo in the old battleaxe's yard.I follow her because she is acting strange and appears to be crying.I'm almost at the corner and can see my kid picking up dog crap and the old bitch has her back to me and is screaming at her.It's vile,other people can hear and I'm moving fast.She also wears hearing aides.When I gently put my hand on her shoulder and she turned around...she was so 'shocked' her knees buckled.I went off like a bomb.I am surprised I didn't hit her.

I didn't get any response from her.SILENCE for once,so I ask my daughter...what's going on?She's hysterical and howling like a siren.The story comes out finally.

This is it now...I've had enough and it's a show and a showdown.Incidentally her husband was looking out the window.He stayed inside.Smart man...and romour is he used to drink hard.Can't imagine why.

I went home with my daughter and got a a fresh poo from our yard.On the shovel I walked it down to her.Looked like something a pony dropped.Believe it! I dumped it on her lawn.The I proceeded to tell her if she by chance ever saw another like it...call city hall because someone is renting their garage as a stable or feel free to knock on my door and I'll come down with my shovel.I also told her to put up a barrier.Fence hedge or anything because that's what i did.At least the poos in one spot.Dramatically...as all the other neighbours stared with their jaws dropped,I went home.

Week later she's out there with a crew and building a fence.Without a permit.Yes...I called the city.I was familiar with the employees there after years of her calling on us and others.They new her because of HER calling for decades.Sometimes daily!

He didn't miss a beat.Informs me he has a pile of them and three petitions from the highrise apartments!

The fence did go up and she has become somewhat quiet.I could write a book about her.Can't stand the sight of her.

I own my house and my next door neighbours have tenants that live in their basement. I know this because of noise complaints I made to the police. Parties and music blasting until 4am Monday mornings,etc. I made so many complaints to the police the dispatch asked me to make a statement. They don't do anything besides ask people turn the music down unless someone makes a statement. Then the police determine whether or not a fine should be issued. Well then I had enough. There are city bylaws for noise after 11pm and I don't think anyone can justify playing music loud enough I can sing along to it in my own house that is next door. My windows are always shut too. They also had this little dog that would not stop barking. If I was in my yard he would bark until hoarse. I felt sorry for the creature but haven't seen him around lately. I never made any complaints about the dog but I'm betting another neighbour did. They also throw garbage into their truck beds and it blows all over our yard. I found an empty can of Febreeze in my front yard. So perhaps they throw garbage into our yard too. They also like to repeatedly start their quad which never moves at 7:30am on Saturday mornings. I hope they enjoy the yeast infections and constant ass itch that I wish upon them.

We had a young couple move in next door.Both working with the life style to match.Newlyweds and their first home.Few years went by and they started a family.They also got a dog.Never knew them well until the first summer after getting their dog.

I love dogs...and I have four retired greyhounds now.Even I must admit that dogs themselves are not the best neighbours!

They worked long hours and the dog was often tied out.I don't do this myself.They did.This particular summer was constant thunderstorms.The dog was outside,nobody home,howling for hours in the storms.Drenched and so scared he would lay on the ground petrified.It was a pitiful sight.

I knew the animal wasn't outright abused....neglected under the circumstances,most certainly.So,one day I just went into their yard and got him.Brought him to my house,dried him out and let him snug in a blanket in our kitchen.When the storm was over I took him back to his yard.I did this a lot that summer and when we couldn't get to him a few other neighbours starting going out to get him too.We all did this for weeks and they didn't find out until one day they came home in a storm and he wasn't there.I could hear the husband yelling the dogs name and wandering up and down the street in the storm.

I called him to my door,got him inside and ....he sure was happy to see his dog.They thought he was riding the storms out in his fancy doghouse.I explained what was really happening.He told me the dog was teething on everything in the house.I didn't doubt it because he was chewing my dog's toys to crap.

Dog's secret life now revealed,the neighbour figured out a way to leave the dog free in their basement when they weren't home.Crisis over.A few years later and the dog was run free in the house.I guess after the weeks of thunderstorms,the dog decided anything was better than being tied out.

This is the type of neighbourhood I live in.Urban ' hood.but we stick together and make it work.Even for the dogs.I wish the old battleaxe on the corner would get with the program!

My neighbors two doors down keep they're unleashed tiny dogs outside at all times. They have no fence so the pomeranians and chihuahuas just lay in the street and run in front of my car every time I drive past. Hard to see at night and very annoying.

The late-night vacuuming is easy to explain. They are like me and get their cleaning bug at bedtime, lol. I always have the most motivation for cleaning late at night.

My pet peeve at the moment is my uppies having LOUD sex. Between the banging bed, the squeaking mattress, the grunts and the screams and moans, I am hoping that he'll injure himself or she'll get an incurable infection. Ok not seriously, but yeah, it's pretty awful.
The previous uppies had SPOILED children who would run, jump off things, throw heavy things, and throw their toys from their balcony into my yard (we're in a quadplex, I'm on bottom with a yard, they're up top with a balcony that overlooks the yard). Brats.

Sealbeachy, spraying poison on someone else's property is incredibly offensive. My parents' dog actually died because their neighbors sprayed some sort of toxic crap on their shrubbery. They didn't ask permission, and they didn't bother mentioning it. The poor thing had brain damage and seizures, it was freakin AWFUL. Keep your poisons to yourself, you hear?

@Bethundra

I just got the same wake-up call about the old couple on the corner.The husband was put into a nursing home a few weeks ago.The wife is alone and feels so guilty because she can't care for him herself.Every time I pass her in her garden she is weeping.I feel awful for her.I'm over my 'grudge' and wish I could help her somehow.It's so very sad.