I choose "Other" - My neighbour can't cook and burns everything! STINKY!

Pretty much every morning and evening I can hear my neighbor's TV over mine. I think I would have to wear earplugs in his apartment just to keep from going deaf!

I have a JESUS FREAK EVANGELIST WITH AN ELECTRIC BAND playing loud off key jesus tunes on the corner near my window from 3-8 every frikking saturday for the past 8 years.I have been trying to smite him with my coven's powers since forever.

My landlord - who is my neighbour - has a bunch of the rudest, nastiest teenagers ever to disgrace the earth. The girl is a drug addict who brings her drug dealer, violent boyfriends home and is constantly getting kicked out of the house. We had the police over last night - charming.

My stalker neighbor lady was horrible. She'd go outside and try to peer in my windows. It was technically not a crime since it was an apartment building and she rented there and therefor had a right to be on the property.. looking in my windows. She's also follow me and interrogate people that would visit me.

I have nerdy college boys above me who must role play sword fight because that is the only option I've come up with for the really fast scampering and quick, loud food steps i hear...always above our chandelier so you know they don't have a dining table...

My previous neighbor was a crack dealer, a drunk who hooted and hollered all night long, brought over his crack whores, called the cops ALL the time and then stood inside yelling at them through his screen door - I'm so happy I bought a house and moved!

If only it were neighbor singular... for us it's multiple neighbors, along with other sources, that cause too much noise. We live in a Chicago high rise and there is constant noise pretty much all hours of the day. During the day, there is the construction noise from neighbors remodeling and building projects like facade repairs and installing new emergency elevator recall system. In the afternoons and evenings, it's the bratty 7 year old across the hall throwing temper tantrums, the neighbor above who thumps like he's doing step aerobics or something, and the dragging of tables & chairs in the party room (we're 2 floors above it). The joys of high rises and the way sound travels through concrete. My wife is back in school and studying at home most days -- the noise is seriously about to cause her to have a breakdown!

Before I moved, my neighbor who was in a separate house (though only 8 feet from mine) installed a 60 tv with surround sound and would watch every loud movie he could get his hands on to test it's limits.

Nothing like lying in bed trying to sleep and listening to dinosaurs from Jurassic Park roaring from next door. I could feel the bass in my bed.

Then he rented it out to people who's bathroom window lined up with my bedroom window (again, 8 feet away). The wive would blow dry her hair at 3:30 EVERY morning. It was too hot to sleep with the windows closed.

I guess I'm really sensitive to sleep disruption. I don't really care what noise my neighbors make during the day.

OTHER - first, the neighbour is just weird, he played nice and smiled and tried to chat when I first moved in, but then I realized he was feeding all sorts of lies about me and my dog to the landlord. this is all extra weird considering that now I know that he is a drug dealer and you'd think he wouldn't want to bring any extra attention to himself but now I wonder if the landlord is in on it... oh, and he likes to blast crappy adult contemporary music on the weekends and has the loudest most disgusting sex late at night and early in the mornings on weekdays (it's like there's a construction crew grunting with a jackhammer - I need to wear my ipod to get to sleep) and it seems extra awful considering his line of "work"

My neighbor's apartment emits a smell LIKE SHE IS HEATING A DEEP-FRYER FULL OF BEEF WITH LIT CIGARETTES.

It intrudes on my sleep, gives me headaches and generally makes me want to die.

Also, my other neighbor in my building is a drug dealer.

My neighbor used to be GREAT - even with his dog - but his girlfriend moved in a few weeks ago - she's the LOUDEST walker EVER! I don't understand why someone needs to stomp around the house like that all the time!

I used to work with a wonderful copy-editor/writer extraordinaire who is deaf and she said it was wonderful because she could just take out her hearing aids and not have to worry about the loud neighbors. I can't tell you how many times in college I wished I was at least partially deaf so I could just remove hearing aids and have total silence!

My neighbors are really nice, but the worst for me is the cigarette stench I get from next door (I'm in a townhome). I've coined her 'Smokestack' because the smell never lets up! And if I park my car too close to her front yard, my heating/ac unit smells like smoke when I first use it. Yuck!

I once had a neighbor named Sunday School Shoes. I was convinced she was a small girl wearing black patent leather Sunday School shoes with hard heels running overhead on the wooden floors day and night.

We've got one set of neighbors that we like except for the son-in-law, who is a very nice man but is a chain smoker. He tries to do it in the further corner of their yard, away from us and the other neighbors but you can still smell it.

On the other side we have several families living on one big property and everyone is pretty quiet and you hardly notice them--except for the family in the middle house. They don't tie up their trash (and they sure generate a lot of it because they can't close their bin!) so the neighborhood mammals all get into it. They call Hong Kong at 11:30 p.m. on their cell phone and talk and laugh loudly in along their CPR driveway (I guess the reception is better outdoors). The husband used to bring a stool, smoke his cigarettes, and talk on his cell phone well after 10 p.m. in our garage until my mother came out to tell him off. His wife used to come home from work, smoke her cigarettes in their driveway, and then throw the cigarettes into our yard. We asked her nicely to stop doing that (one fell into a pile of dry leaves) but she kept denying she was the culprit until my brother caught her in the act. Their mother used to curb her dog on other people's lawns and then deny it was her dog--even when she was holding the dog's leash in her hand. She'd just stand there shaking her head until you stopped talking to her and left. They can never seem to remember what day bulky trash day is because they blithely leave garbage on the lawn of the people who live in the front of the property. Oh, and they just had a baby! As soon as that baby cries they all start yelling so you can't even hear the poor kid. We're very grateful they're not violent or running a crack house but the neighborhood just hates them.

I was going to give voice to a complaint about my neighbour, but after reading all the above comments I realize that I should probably count my blessings. (My complaint was only that her new relationship was going very well. Extremely well. OH MY GOD YES YES YES kind of well, at every hour of the day or night, and her bedroom is directly under mine, and it became a bit embarassing seeing her in the hallways the next day-- though I have to admit that she looked great, with an enviable spring in her step.)

Before I moved, the people that lived above me either had a pet elephant or were dribbling a bowling ball. When they moved out, the new tenants came down and asked if it would be okay if they got a treadmill...so then I had the pleasure of hearing her run on it in the morning.

Now, my biggest problem is that I can kind of hear my neighbor's tv through the wall in my bedroom. Having come from where I did, this person is a saint! :)

I live in a house and have bad neighbors on both sides. On one side is a woman with a varying number of children (some are hers, some are nieces/nephews who come over a lot), all of whom are so poorly behaved no other kid on the street goes near them. They throw rocks at my dogs, have nearly killed my big old pecan tree, I caught them trying to climb on my roof, etc. They're renters and their mother doesn't care and does nothing when asked to control the kids. As long as they're not in the house bothering her, it's fine.

The neighbor on the other side is a control freak. If a car parks on the street in front of his house, he goes door to door to find out whose it is and get them to move it (this is a public street I'm talking about) just because it annoys him to see it there. The people who live behind me rescue/foster animals and he apparently sends them strongly worded letters every time the dogs bark and bother him (no, they don't bark at night -- he doesn't like them doing it during the day in their yard when he can hear them from his yard/house).

I'm fostering an elderly lab mix right now who is very calm and quiet. My neighbor, who has to know everything, was peering over the fence and the foster dog barked, understandably, since it was someone he didn't know. So the neighbor came over and asked how long the dog would be staying and could it not stay that long because he didn't like it. My car was involved in an accident and I was able to drive it home. Before I woke up the next day and before the tow truck arrived, my neighbor (who apparently didn't like the view of a banged up car from his window) came over and proceeded to strip off all the broken pieces and hide them in my bushes. I freaked out because I thought the insurance might not cover it, but he was like, "Look, I HELPED you." Which I didn't ask for or want.

I got a great deal on my house (the sale predated the renters, but not the nosy neighbor) and I love love love it, but I have lately given serious thought to moving.

Sorry, I just had to share even if no one reads the whole thing -- it made me feel better.

We have two single girls living above us. One is quiet as a mouse when she walks around, although she suffers from the same door slamming affliction that affects her roommate, who must have club feet because we can hear her heels slam on the hardwood wherever she goes. After stomping around for 20 minutes in high heels, she'll take them off, throw them on the floor, then stomp around barefooted for 20 more minutes. Maybe she has a really inefficient room layout? Anyway, after 6AM shoe stomping became a problem, I went upstairs in pajamas, asking her very politely to please please just keep the heels off in the morning - Only in the morning. Please. Thanks. You would think that I asked her to smear dog crap on her forehead the way she looked at me but she did comply for two days. A note was plan B, but the note only worsened the problem, despite the fact that it took me an hour to write just to make sure it was a note I truly wouldn't mind receiving myself if the situation were reversed. She recently started dating someone - her soulmate, it seems, a loud obnoxious stompy guy who stands in the hallway laughing loudly and slams both doors on his way in and out. They should really get married. And move out.

They're not horrible people otherwise, which is why I don't understand why the foot stomping can't stop - it's not like we constantly bitch at them or anything, since I only asked twice. However, since that conversation two months ago, I admit to surrendering to the broom handle last night, and I "managed" to save hanging some photos on the walls until after 10PM once...but this girl is seriously driving me batsh*t insane. It's just unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be any reasoning with people - If asking is not effective the first time, then it's usually just because the other person is inconsiderate to begin with, so asking repeatedly rarely helps.

The outside door slamming is another problem, entirely, and is partially the landlord's fault, because the doors are in terrible shape - the wood is swollen every time there's a change in humidity, and they're impossible to close quietly unless you're hyper-conscious of it. So it sucks, but it's not necessarily because people are being assholes, which doesn't make it less annoying, but it makes it tolerable. Except the indoor doors, which slam because people are slamming them instead of shutting them. You know, why take the half a second to close the door when you can just slam it, right? It accompanies the stomping perfectly.

I'm just confused. Does it bother them equally when the third floor people slam the door/stomp? If it does, how and why are they not more conscientious? What IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? Or maybe, truly...it doesn't bother them? It really does boggle my mind.

I live in a small cottage and I've got a neighbor on one side who has to slam the security screen door as hard as he can at all hours. The neighbor on the other side sings very loudly, very off key, very late at night. Stop. I can hear you.
Not to mention the nosy lady on the property next door who knows ALL of your business. The joys of living in the city!

My neighbor and the person living in her guest house are NUDISTS with no curtains. She also happens to be a very foul person who is hated in our neighborhood. the people who live in front of me (I live in a back apartment) are loud ghetto girls with bad taste in music. and the neighbors to my right are my NOSEY cousins who have hawk eyes and have destroyed their back yard - such an eyesore. The neighbors behind me are ok.

I'm with you, Juliet. New boyfriend. This one must be a winner. OH MY GOD! Yes Yes Yes Yes! BABY!!! YES!!! (banging the walls)
It's embarrassing.

My neighbor and his wife are an older couple who are gone to New York and Europe half the year - I hardly ever see or hear them...

I have a neighbor who keeps us outside chatting for hours about the most personal details of her life, including her abusive ex husband and what she found under her toenails.

TMI!

In my old place the walls and floors were super thin! The neighbour above me had three kids who stomped around like elephants at all hours. I put up with it thinking, 'They're just kids right?' Then one night. I broke my own keep the peace rule - I rehearsed a song at home - and the following morning I saw them heading to the landlords house to complain about me...I now live in a soundproof apartment and it is fabulous!

What about crazy landlords? The same landlord hit on me numerous times while I was living in his building. The final straw was when he knocked on my door drunk one night asking for a flashlight because he had lost his key. I went outside to help him only to find his key right in front of my open window...he was peeping through the window as I was lying on the sofa, oblivious. I don't even know how long he'd been there.

We have fabulous neighbours, but their pine trees make the biggest mess in our yard and I get so tired of the nasty job of cleaning up those big needles!

HA! Juliet, your story was funny and it's true, it could be a lot worse. I need to realize that the stomping overhead is not so bad compared to some other possible situations. There are a LOT of drug dealers living in our midst! I just need to stock up on earplugs at all times. Not so bad.

Palindrome - I totally call the cops on anyone that parks their car in front of my house, mostly because my neighbors tend to party until late and then I have to hear the car's owners throwing up on my lawn, slamming the doors, and screaming about how drunk they are and about to drive at 3am. The first time I left it, and they stomped my lilies, puked on the sidewalk, and pummeled the 25 limit sign. And I couldn't sleep because this was taking place 15ft from my bedroom. Now I'm a total bitch about it.

I also have a stalker neighbor who likes to come into my backyard through a gate she refuses to get rid of and watch me through my sliding glass doors. I finally freaked out and told her to gtfo of my yard. She also likes to complain and offer to cut our lawn, which we don't cut often for green reasons, because she can't use above mentioned gate as easily. No, I don't want you to have access to my yard creepy lady!

I once had a saint of a neighbor who adopted her daughter's children because her daughter ended up in prison for selling/using crack and prostitution. A month after I moved into my house the daughter got out of prison and moved back in with her Mother. Not one week went by before she was back at it while her Mother was at work. Her Johns were terrorizing the area and bringing in drugs. We finally had to have another neighbor break the news to the Mother and have the girl put back in prison.

I've since moved and problems here seem minor by comparison.

My next door neighbors are always arguing. It makes me feel like a little kids who is hiding when mom and dad fight.

My neighbors upstairs love to walk around in their shoes, which gets very nosy (who wears high heels around the house at 11 on a Tuesday night?). And their new dog that they keep in a cage in the room above mine when they are gone, sounds like it's being strangled and trying to dig through the floor.

But after reading all of these posts, I'm realizing that I have it pretty good.

Wow - I'm so lucky. The worst I get is day-time noise from my landlord's wife's hair salon next door. Even though my upstairs neighbors have kids I never hear anything except very faint music, or the shopping/laundry cart banging down the stairs (also day-time noises). The only issue is a sunday night party that happens monthly at a nearby venue that I can hear through my yard. But I'm hoping that they wont be partying outside anymore, it being winter-time. In fact I worry a lot more about my own noise, since i am a) single and hence sometimes have night-time visitors of an intimate nature who make sounds my neighbors' kids shouldn't hear; and b) moved recently so am still hanging art/shelves/light fixtures.

So glad this post is up, makes me know I am not alone!

On one side I have my landlord who's house is 4 feet next to mine with the exact same house lay out so our living room windows face eachother, kitchen etc. He doesn't have a job other than being a landlord to just my roommate and I so he feels the need to stop by once or twice a week just to make sure everything is ok.....like taking it upon himself to go into our basement to check the lint trap in the dryer. He askes us to take time out on our days off so we can meet up and talk about the house, which is just him telling us his "Daddy list" as he calls it; "you need to clean the grout in the bathroom" ( he noticed that the last time he stopped by ) "Why is one of your living room light bulbs burnt out?" the creepy daddy list goes on and on.

On the other side we have the Adams Family house only much, much crappier. They have grass and weeds up to my waist growing in the yard and raccoons and RATS living in the attic of the house...not to mention the pigeon nest in a gaping hole in their wall just outside my bedroom window. Oh, and the baby pigeons just hatched and chirp constantly.

To top it all off my landlord and the Adams Family are feuding with each other. My landlord wants me to call the Department of Health and report them and the Adams Family bitches to me about the landlord every time they see me outside...It is just great.

we have trashy, loud, obnoxious neighbors that are absolutely unbearable. i work from home and now wear headphones and have a white noise machine that runs all day to mitigate the noise that they create. i am not sure why the tv needs to be so loud and why yelling from room to room is they only way that they can communicate.

thank god for large earmuff style headphones!

My neighbors have announced they are pregnant. Given the noise without a baby, we are now looking into moving. :(

I know buying a house doesn't fix bad neighbor problems, but when you live in a building from the 40s without any insulation, your neighbors are your housemates. And when you rent, you can't control that at all.

I'm done now, thanks for letting me vent!

the worst part about all of this, is all these people think all this behavior is perfectly acceptable, and have no idea how it intrudes on other peoples lives, nor do they care.

what happened to treat others how u'd like to b treated?

chottomotto -- I can totally understand your situation (which sounds horrible), but it's not the case in this neighbor's. I'm talking about during the day. My street is very quiet -- we don't have any loud partying types. But neighbors do have have people come over -- afternoon bbqs are big here and many people have large extended families. He doesn't own the street and since no one causes damage to his property or makes enough noise to be a nuisance, it just seems really irrational. Your case sounds like it has the potential to escalate to something bad, but on my street, NOTHING happens. People park their cars, walk to the house they're visiting, visit and then go home.

What about the neighbor's out-of-control KIDS? I guess that could be under "person he lives with"? Anyway, they ride bikes and play soccer in the central courtyard of our building - screaming, horns blowing, soccer balls flying all over the place! Sometimes they even throw rocks!
And it's a really trashy family of course... parents don't do anything. Not to mention, they are the only family with kids anywhere around here. I live in the middle of the city, in a not so kid-friendly area, so I have no idea what they're doing here in the first place. I guess the kids have nowhere else to play (sad), but really annoying!!

Most of my better neighbors were forced out by the recession in recent months, and have been replaced by the most obnoxious renters imaginable. It's clear the bank was desperate to fill every vacancy; when I was an apartment manager none of these people would have gotten past me.

My new neighbors include:

*People who blow cigarette smoke everywhere in public areas, including around my door, knowing I'm violently allergic and not caring that they could actually send me to the ER (this sort of thing may be acceptable elsewhere, but generally doesn't fly in this town)

*White-trash girl who used my carport as a dog wash (ironically, the dog was cleaner than she was)

*Other neighbors who helped themselves to water from my carport hose and drove my water bill up 50% (I finally had to have hose locks installed)

*The people next door, who woke me up at 8 a.m. two days before Christmas moving in (it sounded like an elephant stampede) and spent the next two weeks making the loudest "improvements" possible. My holidays were ruined.

*Neighbors who don't keep an eye on their kids. All summer, I'd hear noises late at night and discover kids as young as 12 sneaking out between 11pm and 4:30am. I don't mind the kids too much but shouldn't their parents be at least a little concerned for their safety?

*11-year-old kid who has spent the past three years trying to peek in my windows.

*Neighbors dropping off their kids at the nearby elementary school (even though it's only two blocks away), ALWAYS in a speeding SUV, and not even braking for animals.

*Neighbor who lets her large dog poop near the communal pool gate and doesn't clean it up

*White-trash young adults who are always running around in common areas late at night, sometimes with open beer bottles in hand

*Stupid kid who sets off fireworks in the street every summer (illegal)

*College kids breaking into the pool late at night and splashing loudly

*Family of schizophrenics who refuse to provide adequate veterinary care for their cat. That poor creature got so sickly I reported them to the authorities for neglect.

I'm looking forward to getting the hell out of here.

My apartment building, built in 1940, is 16 studio units, each occupied by one adult. Amazingly, 13 of my neighbors seem incredibly considerate - you wouldn't even know they were there (I think I fit into this category myself, at least I hope so!)

The guy who just moved in next door who was singing and playing guitar in the wee hours, though, I'm not so sure about. And the young woman downstairs who comes home drunk and giggly and OH MY GOD SO LOUD after the bars close - well, someone just needs to set her straight that she's no longer living in the dorms at <insert party school of your choice here>. I'm afraid that someone is going to have to be me. And soon.

Both BF and I have neighbors with loud dogs that are left out all night. The neighbors refuse to do anything about it. In fact they purposefully let the dog out and let him bark, and only come out if they see us go out our house to video tape the barking. We have a court case pending on the issue its so bad. They are just rude and think they are above the law somehow. They could easily keep the dog in their home or in their back yard were they have no neighbors on the other side. What makes it especially worst is that BF has a neurological hearing condition and works from home, and 4 hours of yellping dog can actually cause him to get ill. :(

whoops, that should read "no longer living in the dorms at (insert party school of your choice here)" - bad choice of brackets, sorry 'bout that.

JEALOUSY
one cooks & it smells amazing, which makes me seriously hungry! haha
the one below me has a mansion with a huge swimming pool. someday, i'm gonna jump from my window & do a cannonball in their pool.

OCCASIONAL WEIRD BEHAVIOR
i have another one (apt bldg) who has to recheck that his door is locked by shaking it violently every morning. it sounds like BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!

Our neighbor didn't like the bushes that seperated our yards and gave us privacy, so he cut them down. They were on OUR property. When we brought it up, he screamed and yelled about how he was clearly the only person who cared what the neighborhood looked like. Then left a defunct water heater in the front yard for weeks, and rotting pumpkins on the awning over his doorway for 10 months, neither of which we would have been able to see if he'd left our bushes alone. (He did buy 3 arborvitae and planted them where he took down our bushes, but it'll be years before they even begin to provide a minimal amount of privacy again.)

Who lives near celebs?

After taking care of my previous neighbors' small yard for two years (for free) after they moved and their house was on the market, I've got new neighbors. Now the flower beds are full of noxious weeds, the back yard full of trash, Halloween decorations are still up, litter that falls out of their cars blows onto my property and they never take in their garbage can. I do it while they're at work. They are quiet though. The noisy ones are on the other side!

I live in a studio apartment full of 20something year olds - except my neighbor who's well into his 30s and obviously grumpy about living in a hip studio apartment building - every time I make ANY noise he pounds his fist on my wall really loudly...this includes me putting up a shelf at 2pm on a saturday! really dude, but what other time is more appropriate for putting up a shelf than 2pm on a saturday! geez! now i walk on eggshells...i even take my heels off when I get home so he doesnt throw a fit about that. i hate it.

My boyfriend is a heavy stepper. Our house is all hardwood and linoleum and I keep telling him to try and step a little lighter as to not thump thump around and bother the lady downstairs.
Only, he really hates the lady downstairs (I agree, she's weird), so he almost does it on purpose!
I have no complaints about my neighbour except she cooks HORRIBLE smelling food and it permiates everything in our house (clothes, bedding, towels... EVERYTHING). She's also super shy so she gets her boyfriend to complain to us when it's too cold in the dank basement. We don't listen to him though because he doesn't live there and our landlord has even said that we don't have to. WE've been sharing the house for a year now and she still can't come knock on the door and say "hey, you mind turning up the heat?!"
When her boyfriend demands it, we just ignore him and then make loud remarks about how warm it is in our suite.
Mwahahahahahaa... so passive agressive.

but seriously, you want to live in a warm dry apartment? Don't live in the basement of a house built in 1950! COMMON SENSE.

When I had my studio apt in Laguna Beach, it was at a courtyard style apartment open on the street side overlooking the town and ocean. For the most part, everyone got along, but the was one apartment with the partying bachelors and all their friends visiting on weekends. They left the sliding door open, hooting and hollering to anyone they'd see, stereo blaring.... I came home one sunday evening, and their cd player was skipping constantly, nobody was fixing it. I went to the door and knocked, no answer....went around to the balcony in front, and one of the guests was passed out on the couch, so I took it on myself to step inside and shut the freaking stereo off. Other than that, it was the usual random partying loudly at night (life in a beach town) from who-knows-where.

Oh wait.... another night, one of the neighbor's visitors was standing over me when I woke up from a snooze on the couch. I felt something tickling, it was him sliding the tip of a kitchen knife along my forearm! He was sent over to ask if I had any ice they could use.

I'm arranging to set my studio/office/loft up in an industrial area, so I don't have to deal with that crap or any of the other stuff I've been reading about here.

Must vent too:

Upstairs my neighbor refuses to wear anything but their wooden clogs (what I imagine they're wearing) when touching their feet to floor as soon as they get out of bed. I wear soft slippers in my apartment so my downstairs neighbor doesn't hate me.

Across the courtyard my neighbor blasts his video games on his surround sound entertainment system with the windows open. Apparently it HAS to be played at high volume no matter what. Last night he played the same song on his entertainment system looping for at least 20 minutes.

I don't mind when people have guests over and they are enjoying themselves loudly but little things like clog lady and mustplayvideogamesatfullvolumewithwindowsopen man really test my patience.

we had people in our basement suite who grew

sorry i was cut off by my computer
the people in our basement suite of the house we rented grew vast amounts of pot in the backyard. and smoked it constantly. beyond that they were pretty mellow. obviously.

I just moved to a downstairs apt because I got tired of climing 2 flights of stairs all the time. Now I have someone over me who is a heavy walker and a obsessive compulsive cleaner who must do 3 loads of laundry a night, uses dishwasher every night and vacuums each evening (the sound of the machines are very loud). I went upstairs just a couple days ago to ask her if she could walk a little softer because I can hear EVERY little sound. She wouldn't open the door, but yelled through the door, "Yeah, fine, ok."

It didn't work, she still stomps over my head at midnight, 3am, 5am, what in the world do people do 24/7? Doesn't anyone sleep anymore? Ugh

It is hard to find a decent apartment that is well made and have decent neighbors, too. I am not sure if such a place exists.

I used to live above a girl who worked for the apartment community I was in, and she would pen her dog (his name was 'Shut Up') all day and night in the tiny fenced in porch off her kitchen. Which was right under the balcony off MY kitchen. So I got the lovely smell of urine soaked concrete and dog feces wafting into my kitchen for two weeks until I threatened to call the Health Department and the SPCA. She wouldn't even clean up the mess - maintenance had to come in. She got rid of the dog.

Then she started fighting with her boyfriend every weekend, so I got to hear him repeatedly get kicked out of her apartment in his underwear (kind of amusing) and listen to her kids cry for their daddy (not amusing). During the day, she would blast country music so loud that my windows rattled. Finally after three months of hell, the apartment complex fired her. Ahhh.

I think I've mentioned this one in a previous post on the topic. My neighbor is a schizo-effective transexual MTF who decided within a month of moving in that she had a crush on me, and began an aggressive campaign to be my best friend. The knocks on my door, morning and night, at least twice a day, comments confirming she's overheard personal conversations through the hall wall, inquiries about who my visitors are and which ones are my boyfriends... I sometimes feel like she's stalking me. I can't do yard work without having her come down (she works at home.) I've caught her letting my dog into her house "for a visit," while I run through the neighborhood searching for her. She's both blatantly hit on me, and left love notes in my mailbox.

The only thing that seems to keep her away is a boyfriend, which I currently have. So there's relative peace in the house. She acts quite rude when she encounters mine in the hallway, and never knocks. She probably listens though...

this will definitely be a 'hot post'!! our neighbor next door pounds on our bedroom wall when we talk above a whisper. uuugh. a different neighbor used to park their additional car in our parking spot.

my upstairs neighbors are horrible. They stomp constantly, it sounds like the guy is working out with a bar and drops it on the floor, and they get in the worst arguments ever. They've thrown furniture against the walls, yelled obscenities at eachother, etc. I've heard her scream "You're f'ing psycho" and then I hear running and "STOP!" it's really horrible. I've called them cops on them twice. It's really depressing. The worst part is that it's not at a normal hour. They woke me up at 6 a.m. sceaming at eachother. On a Saturday. Who the hell has something to YELL about on a Saturday morning at 6 a.m. The rest of the world isn't even coherent. Go back to bed!

Wow, I had it easy compared to some of you. I can't believe people look in other people's windows. Creepy.

Before I moved my upstairs neighbor was a heavy walker in a totally carpeted apartment. I just took to calling her Stampy.

My next door neighbor would leave his trash out for days and raccoons would tear through it and I would have meat bones on my welcome mat and garbage all over which he didn't see (He was/is blind). The complex talked to him and it got better, but didn't totally stop. The worst was our bedrooms shared a wall. He either had night terrors or really knew how to satisfy himself every few weeks. I really think it was night terrors. It had to be. The screaming.

I wore earplugs to bed every single night. Plus took prescribed sleep meds to block out neighbors and drunk people in parking lot who liked to discuss loudly how drunk they were.

I have had experience with an over-attached, nosy neighbor that made my whole block look like they were sneaking around when they were only getting their mail. She moved. We all rejoiced. I've never had it so bad that it would cause me to move. I really feel bad for other people who posted.

After reading these horror stories, thankfully, my main complaint is that my house is right in the midst of several retired couples...I cannot be outside for any reason without having to chat. I plan my front yard gardening around whether or not their cars are in the driveway. The nicest one has serious OCD...when I mentioned off handedly that I was considering removing a large shrub, his wife practically begged me to let her husband remove it for me to get him out of the house...I left a phone message for them that we had changed our minds and preferred to keep the shrub...2 days later, he's out there hacking away at it...I let him continue, bc he really is so nice...about a week later, he said, "Oh, I got your message today...sorry about that...it'll grow back."

Our neighbor is a young girl (20-ish) who lives in the in-law unit of our rental home. She's a relative of the landlord. Nice girl, but she has no clue about being energy efficient, recycling, saving water...We always have to remind her to turn off her lights (keeps them on even when she stays over her boyfriends apartment), has no clue about what goes in the recycle bin (we have had to shift things from the recycle bin to the regular garbage bin). It's sad that even after we've asked her time and time again to save energy, recycle efficiently, the only thing important to her is her shoes and her guy. FYI Since we pay for the electricity I have to be even more nagging about it UGHHHHHHH

Wow, this stuff evidently makes people aaaangry. For those who are complaining of noise, I have a tip. I live right next to a bar/nightclub that is LOUD - louder than any neighbor I've ever had before, including partiers, loud sex havers, door slammers, and the guy who I could hear snoring every night through the wall. When I moved into my current house, I got a big fan, and I run it every night. It really helps with the noise, and now I can hardly sleep without it. It's soothing.

my downstairs neighbor moves furniture back and fooooorth all day long and all night long.

One of my downstairs neighbors has a horrid yappy dog. Not a big deal, except when I come home to find the crazy next-door lady outside their door BARKING BACK.

In once place, my neighbor would tell their visitors to park in my reserved parking spot, so I'd have no where to park when I'd get home.

I also used to live next to a house that was so close to mine that I could reach out my window and open theirs and crawl in if I wanted to. Yes, THAT close.

What made it worse was it was their bathroom window in front of my bedroom window, so I could hear their grown son (mid- or late-twenties and still lived with them) snorting and coughing in the shower (he was a smoker) even with my windows closed, and I could smell it when anyone used the bathroom.

When the grandfather was still alive they'd take him to the bathroom and occasionally ask him if he was done yet so they could carry him back to his room (he was too weak to walk). He'd be very descriptive: "No, I'm not done yet! It's only about halfway out!"

EW!

Last year I lived next to this obnoxious, zitty twenty-something girl who would have parties every night until the sun came up. She and her friends would scream and dance around to that Bloodhound Gang song, "Bad Touch", and my bed would vibrate. I ended up complaining and she was unable to renew her lease, so she bought a cowbell and invited all her friends over and jumped up and down and banged on her cowbell and screamed. All of my surrounding neighbors complained and she was evicted. What a nightmare!

Our neighbor is a nice guy, but very nosy and officious as he is the building manager (and he is also older and kind of deaf). He often loudly YELLS to asks our guests who they are and what they're doing outside our place. He also once yelled at our cat sitter and frightened her-- he was so intense she thought he was crazy or drunk (he apparently thought she was trying to break in). Yesterday he thought my boyfriend was trying to steal orur own car because the trunk was stuck... our neighbor ran out yelling at the top of his lungs. Probably good for safety, very embarrassing though!

Former neighbors:

There was the woman who had five dogs in a one bedroom apartment who didn't take them out. When she moved out the floor was covered with about a centimeter of dog feces, urine and hair. If I had known what was going on, I would have called the police. As it was, they barked constantly. It was weird, they'd bark every hour on the hour, all night.

The woman who vacuumed two or three times a day. This didn't bother me so much as perplexed me. That apartment was awful for other reasons.

Current neighbors:

Now I'm living on a floor with two apartments of college students - so beer cans, screaming, idiocy, and this one guy who keeps losing his keys and then coming home at 5am and banging on the door for a half hour - a very angry man who does not like the college kids and yelled at the top of his lungs how he was going to rob every apartment on the floor if they "disrespected his crib", he also brought along his friend for back up (I think he was armed based on the hand in the jacket and position against the wall), someone who flipped out the other night and was throwing large glass containers at the walls and door of his apartment, and an older woman who must be loving this.

Below, I have a woman who says I'm loud. I'm doing my best to be quiet - no shoes inside, I'm in bed by 11pm every night, I get home from work on average 8-9pm and leave in the morning at 8am. I can't put in carpets for medical reasons and I spent an afternoon recently putting those little felt sticky things on all furniture with legs. At some point I'm going to lose it and when she starts with the broom at 9pm, I'm going to get out my hammer and get percussive on the floor.

I wish she'd focus her energy on my other neighbors.

I love this thread. It makes me feel better about some of my neighbor gripes, and validates my frustrations about others. I've had a string of lousy neighbors over the years.

* I lived above a meth addict who didn't sleep and also apparently had Tourette's syndrome because he barked. Yes, like a dog. His favorite music was the disco remix of Madonna's "Don't cry for me Argentiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnaaaaaaaa" which he liked to sing along with while running from one end of the apartment to the other. He had a compulsive, very loud masturbation problem (problem because he'd be at it for about an hour).

* I lived under people who decided that their parenting style was that there were no rules. This meant a totally out of control child who did not sleep and consequently, neither did I.

* I have a neighbor who screams obscenities on the telephone and cries for hours. Lately her family has been visiting and apparently it's a family trait. That and throwing furniture. The police have been there three times in the past two weeks. Everyone in the neighborhood is furious.

* My landlord recently renovated the apartment beneath me and thought it would be a good idea to install hardwood floors. The new tenants are stompers and door slammers, and constantly yell at each other and their dog. Charming. I just don't understand why it is so hard to just close a door gently.

Dyam! I stopped reading after the 10th or so comment. I feel for all of you. I've had relatively good neighbors.

The last and worst one lived just above me and is/was an alchoholic. He'd get drunk and run around his apt and the common hallway area at all sorts of hours and scream at the top of his lungs out the window or wrestle with his um...man friends. This happened on a weekly basis. I finally got fed up with it and walked upstairs to talk to him about it. The guy wouldn't answer the door. What a coward.

As I was walking away he had to open his door because the fast food delivery guy showed up. So I walked back over and told him in an even calm voice that he needs to keep the noise down and he said he didn't have to and was doing the curt arsehole thing. So I just told him that we all have to share walls in this city and if he kept it up, he'd be evicted.

He then called the cops on me. Apparently, from what the police told me I am not allowed to knock on my neighbors' doors and attempt a civil conversation. OK.

I've tried many times to speak with the manager and owner and documented all instances.

For the next month or so every time he came in to his apt, he'd literally stomp on the floor back and forth for a good hour. One night, he must have gotten a whale of a bender because he locked himself out at 4am and proceeded to get a hammer or something heavy and try to bang to his way into his apt.

Apparently that was the final straw for everyone. Next morning he was evicted.

Guess what? After experiencing that, my wife and I decided to ask to move into his former unit (top floor) to ensure we never risk that experience again. So we are now living in his former apartment. We were moving our stuff in as he (and his father?) were moving stuff out. It was pretty funny.

To add even further insult to injury, he's moved into the building next door and sees me occassionally on the street with my dog. He never says a word or looks me in the eye.

Some of you people are grumpy pantses. People need to wash their dogs somewhere and water is pretty cheap. Glad you're not my neighbor.

my former neighbor used to set barrel fires in the tiny backyard every night and waft the smoke around from 11pm-3am so that my two bedroom would fill with soot. he got progressively crazier - he would hang out in the hallway of our 3-apt building and poke any guys passing by in the neck (roommate, boyfriend etc.) he didn't touch the women but he would yell at us, or run a circular saw constantly so we couldn't hear ourselves think. he would also follow me around the neighborhood and just glare at me. the police wouldn't do anything at first but after I had the fire dept. come a few times, they started taking him to the psych ward. we got him evicted after 6 months of hell.

now my boyfriend's early-20s neighbors think that setting bonfires on their shared roof is a good idea. and weekday all night keg parties.

former neighbors:

the one next door (in a 1940s courtyard-style apartment) was a chain smoker who would ash his cigarettes on the valance above the window, often by my door. he was over 6 feet tall so I guess it was the right height for him. i just always wondered why the hallway smelled like cigarettes until i stood on a ladder one day. Eww!

He also conveniently placed his speakers right next to the wall my bed was on (i shared a room with my roommate, so I didn't have anywhere else to move my bed) and would also come home every night drunk and/or stoned around 3-4am and listen to coldplay so loudly that my bedroom wall would vibrate. not even weekends. every day. like tuesday.

the real kicker was when he got a pet ferret that he never cleaned and would let hang around near my front door. of course i couldn't say anything because the few times i asked him to turn the music down (around 4:30am), he would either a) turn the music up or b) threaten me.

i later found out that he was planning a career in politics.

my downstairs neighbor was vastly better compared the my adjacent one with the exception that he would sometimes go fishing and leave somewhere around 3am. More than a handful of times, he would leave the alarm on even though he was gone, which i could hear through the floor of my bedroom!

revolution-9: that is ignorant as hell. Your neighbor should be writing about you! If you know she's shy AND she's cool, why cant you just turn up the effin heat?! Maybe she lives down there bcz it's all she can afford?

I mean, seriously ;-p

ooh-food: I hope you're joking. Water isn't cheap when people are STEALING it from you!!

WTF?!

I've had some bad neighbors. One guy was raising a rottweiler in our building (no pets allowed) and he had nightclub sized speakers in his apartment that he blasted sooo loud, books would fall off of my shelves. People would sit in the hallway and throw chicken bones in the window sill. My roommate was a counselor, and this guy got out of prison and decided to pay her a visit. At 3am. Luckily, both our boyfriends were there. No AC in my room, so i put in a window unit. I woke up to one of my neighbors in my room: a bird. The carpet burn from when I jumped out of bed and slid across the floor are still on my knees.

The next place, the stupid girl would bang on the ceiling if I had my music on at all. The music was so low, I couldn't hear it standing outside of my bedroom with the door open (and I have excellent hearing. I can even hear my neighbors peeing in the morning. YUCK.)

My next apt was cool, but the upstairs apt had creaky floors. Also there was a church across the street that had an annual festival. I'm all for church, not for horrible, loud gospel rock singing at 8am. Then there was the naked guitar player.

The next place was a south Jersey ghetto (and it was in philly). Loud drunk SJ girls screaming "WOOOO" in the middle of the night. Drunken SJ guys getting into fights at 3am. Plenty of drug addicts in this "luxury" new construction condo development. Not to mention the upstairs keggers every weekend. They must have been Kirk Franklin fans, because all they did was STOMP (lame, I know :-)

My new place is filled with old people and med students. Heaven :-D

I'm one of the lucky few it seems. My neighbors (also my landlords) are awesome. We three live in a big ol' 1887 Victorian and I've never ever had a problem. They're are very, very quiet and so am I. Once in a while they hear my kitty cat and once in a while I hear their dog. None of us smoke, none of us party and I'm doing some repairs and remodeling for discounted rent. We're all super-environmentally aware, too. They even invite me over for dinner every so often. Yay for awesome young, hip landlords.

My former landlady in LA lived in the apartment next to mine in her 4 plex. She is a barely recovering drug addict/alcoholic whose mom bought her the building so she would have gainful employment (and a free place to live) as a landlord. The worst of her annoying habits, aside from loud lesbian sex noises, her shrill phony laugh, and singing off key constantly to the white stripes, was her TWO completely undisciplined Pomeranians. Dog experts readily agree that pomeranians are the wrong choice for anyone in an apartment-- they bark constantly because to them barking is the equivalent feeling of having an orgasm, apparently. Landlady had not one but two of these creatures who would never stop barking for any reason. What made matters worse is that she never took them on walks (they relieved themselves on "poopy pads" on the kitchen floor); as a result, they put all of their pent up energy into hysterical, high pitched barking. Im so glad to be away from that insanity.

Most of these seem to be about people simply walking around. People have to walk. The girl above us is kinda noisy when she walks, but I doubt she actually knows it. She's just walking. (She also has a stupid yappy dog that flips out at 3am when she finally decides to come home.) But I doubt anyone knows how heavy their steps are unless they are very intentionally stomping about.

I don't understand why people freak out about sex noises. Seriously? What am I supposed to do, spend my entire apartment existence having quiet, vanilla sex as not to disturb my neighbors? If it goes all night it’s understandable, but if you are a generally quiet person otherwise an hour or so of noise isn't the end of the world. Maybe people are just bitter they are not getting laid.

We are with the group of multiple neighbors being in an apartment building. We got barely adult boys across the hall who slam their door going in or out, they have a ton of guests, and more people are living there than should be...and under us we have a couple who loves to blare music any hour of the day or night, uses every cuss word you can think of when they fight and they scream at each other for hours (along with throwing things), and then when they make up we get to hear them doing the naughty under our bedroom. It sucks!

My neighbours play rockband for hours on end. and the girlfriend cannot sing at all! We've complained to the landlord (after they played from 11am saturday until 3am sunday...seriously) but they can only do so much unless the police are called. I've gone over to talk to the guy that lives there, politely asking is they could turn it down so I could study. But the rude, drunk jerk has clearly just google'd "noise complaint" and found that he is "allowed to blare music as loud as he wants until 11pm"..which yes is true, but becomes completely void when it disturbs other people. I've called the police as well to find out what my rights are. Lately, they haven't been to bad. I think because building security came up to speak to them and while security was there 3 different people in different apartments opened up their doors and started telling the security guard to call the police.

ooh_food: and I'm glad you're not my neighbor either. I had a landlord who tried to steal electricity from me. Electricity is cheap too, but I sure as heck didn't roll over and let him get away with it.

I am so sick of how entitled some people feel. If you want to wash your dog, use your own water. Trying to be cutesy about stealing doesn't make it right.

I pay quite a bit extra in rent for my parking space, and it drives me crazy when someone parks in it. It's not the inconvenience of parking in the street (ok, sometimes it is), but the fact that I'm paying for it. Said neighbor will park in my spot when I'm gone (at work) and then acts surprised and angry when he's "caught." Sorry, it's the DRIVEWAY and you don't even live in the building.

I don't know, but it seems as if the world is cycling out of control. No one seems to respect his neighbor. Our neighbor had two pit bulls, but now has 3 extra(I don't know what kind of mutts) that live with him in his apartment. He sells drugs on his bike, has all sorts of weird people in and out buying (selling?) drugs. I've told the police, but they do nothing; he and other neighbors up and down a very upscale neighborhood put their poop in our trash containers and walk off; when I asked one in what universe did she think that smell was okay in someone else's home, she said our nasty,. drug selling neighbor does it. Wow! I'm so angry I feel like retaliating, but I don't know how.