Careful. My wife and I went through 3 different apartments in 5 years once. We’d move into a reasonable, yet perhaps needing a little TLC apartment. We’d fix it up (paint, trash, deep clean, we even put in a 10’ x 10’ bluestone patio in one place) because even if it’s not yours forever it will make the next few years more enjoyable. Then inevitably the landlord would price us out with rent bumps (I was told it’s the “market” and not the work you put into the place) or sell the place for a nice profit.
The place we put the patio in? Yeah, the patio was advertised heavily on the MLS listing with pics and everything. I’ll bet they got an extra $20k or so since those kind of patios are rare in Cambridge.
Yep. This is why I’m hesitant to put any effort or money into the place. Although
our landlord has been pretty good about rent increases (two small ones over the eight years), we don’t want to put our money into something that’s not ours.
Also, she’s very odd about improvements. We heard from the neighbors that the couple who rented before us put in three beautiful raised planters in the backyard and the landlord took them out after they moved. Sigh.
I would want to paint that too! A perfect blank spot. You could put up some trellises and plant vines to climb on them. If you need to take it out later, it wouldn’t be too much trouble. If you planted something native and flowering, it would look pretty and the plant probably wouldn’t be too aggressive. Or a two or three-sided trellis just in front of the pole. Cover it from sight without totally impeding access. @ClutchLinkey has a great idea though.
A personal goal is to not have the first conversation with a new neighbor be a complaint. It’s harder than I would have thought. Then the longer it goes on it’s just more awkward to introduce oneself and meanwhile putting up with the noise or parking problems or whatever. Meanwhile, the person who actually owns the property I don’t like dealing with because it’s clear he’s annoyingly cheap as well as uncommunicative. Got up one day in time to see workers ripping out the (perfectly fine) shared fence in the front yard. Thanks for communicating! And for moving the fence a half-foot which fucked up our landscaping. And for never bothering to keep your tree trimmed so now I have to be the bad guy and keep reminding you every few months that you have large branches sitting on and above my power line and internet cables. Then the other neighbor has a tree on our shared line that dive bombs dead palm fronds onto our tenants’ area, we’ve repeatedly told them we want it taken down as it’s a hazard but they are sentimentally attached to it. Or the enormous quantities of water their property floods on ours instead of out to the street.
Sorry, I’ve just really had it with neighbors. We’ve tried to maintain plausibly polite relations but I’m just about to the point of saying fuck it, people need to take care of their business.
/rant
Moved from lib-lib Cambridge/Arlington border in MA up to a burb of Lowell. I’m trying to maintain a good relationship with neighbors which is awesome because they can be nice people too, but it’s tough…
I can get 3-4 neighbors over for a nice BBQ and hang out, and we can jovially debate politics and agree to disagree. I have Biden jokes and they have Trump ones and we laugh. But when the neighbors (mostly elderly) invite their camo-maga-bumpkin gear kids (40’s) over, they clam up and won’t even recognize me.
It sucks, but I get it because they are family. I have put up with shit from mine too.
In my little bit of Tasmanian Ruraltania, I’ve got four main neighbours:
The sheep farmers who own the paddocks behind me. I see them almost every day, but they’re busy working and keep to themselves so I choose not to bother them.
The slightly yobby youngish bloke to my right. The first time I met him was when he dropped by to explain that he was about to start shooting wallabies, so I shouldn’t be alarmed by the gunshots. He’s fine; so long as he keeps the bullets on his side of the fence, I don’t particularly mind. The wallabies are cute and inoffensive, but there’s no shortage of them and his dogs have to eat something.
The retired couple to my left. They tend to keep to themselves, but they’re friendly and good for a chat about the birds. They also have a large veggie garden and a small orchard, and are generally keen to share their produce.
The old hippy lady across the road. She came to introduce herself within a few days of my moving in, which turned out to be fortunate: a medical mishap a week after that left me stranded without transport at a hospital 50km away, and public transport does not exist here. So she came to fetch me from hospital, and gave me some lovely soup the next day (I’ve since repaid that with several cakes and a bit of woodworking). I tend to drop in once a week or so for a cup of tea and a chat, and we check up on each other whenever the power’s out or such.
It’s a rural district with a population dominated by middle class white boomer retirees, so the general trend of local politics are old school agrarian conservative, but it isn’t strongly reactionary (for now). Even the ones who vote for the Oz right tend to be appalled by Trumpist America.
I’ve got a fence with the rough side toward me along the back of the yard (but not on either side). When a storm knocked over a section of it, I waited a few days and went to tell the neighbors (since it was winter, I figured they just hadn’t noticed). In the meantime, they called the city to complain about *me• not taking care of my fence. I was pretty shocked when I got that letter. Why would I have only a part of fence? And yet they have a fully enclosed backyard thanks in part to my supposed section.
Anyway, I just gave them hell for calling the city instead of talking to me about it (like I did with them), and told them that I’d just tear the whole thing down if I was going to be required to maintain it. That changed their minds pretty quick, and they paid for all the materials and we fixed it together.
We had neighbors in TN whose major yard reno (pond and fountain, etc.) did this to our yard as well, washing away our attempts to keep grass growing. We dug a small ditch to aim the water to the drainage ditch in front, and added a low brick/stone wall to make sure), and they complained when their own yard flooded instead of ours. Our grass finally grew back and looked amazing, and we were able to sell our house easily when we were relocated to NC a couple of years later.
We almost bought a small rural property just outside Bodega CA with a clear view of the church where Hitchcock’s BIRDS almost got Tippi Hedron. Water access was a problem so we didn’t buy. But most attractively, the lot was backed on 3 sides by a large, hilly cemetery. So quiet! All the neighbors are dead! A barbed-wire fence would suffice.
Q: Why are there fences around cemeteries?
A: Because people are just dying to get in.
