I know I have mentioned buying a house here with less land to which to retire. Well, we did. I had sold my house in Wales the past summer and wanted to tuck up the money, no point putting it in the bank, that’s for sure! The bastards want to charge you to keep your money these days round here.
So, we buy this house, about the same size house as here but on a small town plot. The plan being sell this and move into that. Well, when we viewed several times the place was as quiet as the grave, suited me fine, I hate noise. Immediately we made the purchase and handed over the filthy lucre all hell lets loose! The hard rock music from next door vibrating the walls of our place and then another time bloody bongo drums! One could be forgiven thinking one had been transported into the Congo basin and missionaries were aboiling!!
Now this induces me into acquiring a very itchy trigger finger but I appreciate that society in general do not like seeing corpses bleeding in the streets, very untidy and smelly. In an effort to avert the odium of the natives and a prison sentence I issued an instant ukase that we had acquired a rental property and I wouldn’t live in the place, baked, fried or boiled or alive or dead! A rental agent was hastily acquired and the wish to have less garden was hastily amended to a declaration that my knees were much better and five acres was nothing at all to garden interminably to the end of time.
We were excessively fortunate and found a stream of good tenants all willing to pay far more than we had thought for the place was worth so that was a silver lining. The place is occupied for at least the next 6 months.
Now we get to the real horror story, we cannot get our place off the market! The USA treats property contracts to sell far more seriously than does the UK where it is relatively easy to withdraw your house from the market. Unfortunately the inventory of houses is rather low at the moment and we are trying desperately to repel a string of putative buyers intent on viewing and offering on the place. In deepest darkest January they are turning up at 4/5 per week! AAARRRGH! Needless to say we are sabotaging the place as best as possible as we were previously, but now with far more serious intent. The rat poison routine, smoking more than two industrial chimneys, refusing to remove manic leaping dogs etc etc. We live in terror of being made the full asking price offer and having to live with bongo drums. I suppose we could buy another house but that verges on the bloody ridiculous, we are trying to get rid of houses not collect them in batches!
Unfortunately this is all compounded by some rather complicated diagnostic medicine. All I did was complain of a small pain in my back to my GP. Xrays, CT scans, biopsies etc etc later we are still no nearer any diagnosis. They found three things wrong but not instantly diagnosable. Yesterday I spent in the local hospital having an MRI under full anaesthetic, wonderful, evidently they had to keep stopping and starting me deliberately to get some specific picture. Retrospectively I think I should have taken an aspirin and died quietly! But I have managed to fend off intrusive endoscopies in all orifices so far after mightily duelling with the gastroenterologist. What is it about these guys all they want to do is give colonoscopies, bunch of perverts! I just about restrained myself from telling him so and was suitably silkily polite, after all when you’re out for the count they might get up to all sorts of retribution! None of these things look like real killers, just the wish you were dead routine instead!
Now, for the cherry on the cake, today was nattering to a girlfriend in the garden club who lives across a field at the back of the new rental house. I told her about the noise and she said “Oh wait till the summer, they have a band and practise in the garage with the doors open! We can hear it from our place easily!!!” There go any good tenants I should think!
So just be careful what you wish for you might just get it and a lot more besides! The only silver lining is that one can use the rent income to stuff one’s ears or one’s orifices against the depredations of the proctologists!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Commiserations,CO. I’m afraid a full-frontal assault may be the answer. I refer of course, to your almost-neighbours, not your anatomy! 🙂
Don’t you have any laws against outrageous noise in the US? Mind you it can upset (some) neighbours if one complains about noise – but frankly I’d sooner do that than put up with it!
Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane have some pretty good laws regarding unwelcome noise. My neighbour in Canberra told me that horrendously noisy Sunday afternoon parties were the ‘norm’ from the people at the back and that they all barracked themselves in their houses on Sundays. No way! I called the police to clarify the position – they told me not to go knocking on the door – their knock was louder than mine. We never had another noisy Sunday afternoon thereafter…
Adelaide was another matter – the council there was on the side of dog-owners who allowed their dogs to bark morning noon and night. My local council tried everything, including intimidation, to get me to drop my complaint. I told them they’d picked the wrong woman. It took me a year – but they eventually changed their ‘laws’ and the dogs were silenced…
I think we all gave you good advice about making your home as unattractive as possible – good luck with this latest attempt!
Good luck with the tests… I’m inclined to think that the medical profession have only a vague idea of what they are doing. They’re great if you have something that one million or more people are suffering from – but anything out of the ‘ordinary’ and they cant wait to start experimenting …
🙂
CO: Realtors are not keen to let a ninety day or 180 day exclusive listing go without a fight, they are all pretty hungry these days. It may be worth a conversation to offer them some part of their expected commission in settlement, but it could be expensive, commissions here run about five percent total (split equally between selling and buying agent) and they will probably be expecting most of their share to quit the listing. Certainly cheaper than another house. You can also legitimately hold out for the full asking price but there is always a risk that someone will offer it.
I have never regretted moving full time into the wilderness, the odd gun blast is the only noise during the winter months (hunters, mostly).
My in town house was a trial to sell, the potential buyers were very demanding (it is a buyers market here) so another ploy is to be unresponsive when a potential buyer makes what could be considered unreasonable demands. My house was close to the community pool and during the summer the swim meets make a deal of noise on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, so I listed it in the early spring before the pool opened. The buyers were a nice Japanese couple posted to the US by a large company, unfortunately the day after closing he was posted back to Japan so the house has never been lived in. However I still get calls from my ex-neighbors telling me that the grass has not been cut of the leaves not raked, I try to be patient with them and explain it is not my house and have the money to prove it but old obligations seem to die hard.
.Sheona: Bags of laws against noise, bright lights, bad smells and untidy property all pretty much unenforced in the real world.
Sorry Boadicea, my noise comment was in reply to your comment not Sheona, a senior moment (all too true).
Plenty of laws here too, but this is a very small settlement and not quite sure one would want to earn quite such public odium involving the police. Plus if we ever lived there we have three dogs who are bound to bark at some time, dogs barking is fine in my book but rock music is another kettle of fish entirely. Unfortunately not quite sure the neighbours would see it quite like that!!
Best off keep it a rental. To be honest, I never liked it that much it was spousal unit, I preferred another house but it had stairs and he has a few ambulatory problems with one knee, even after surgery so I had to gracefully give way on that (dammit!)
LW it is 6% here!
I think the best policy is to make it smellier and smellier, must cook kippers every time a viewing is due! That’ll see ’em off!
Hope the tests show nothing more serious than a surfeit of gardening, Christina. Good luck with the renting out – been there, done it, didn’t enjoy it.
We rented out our house in the Derbyshire Dales for holiday-lets for a couple of years until the foot-and-mouth outbreak took its toll on visitor numbers. Sold up – eventually!
Solidly with Sheona on the rental issue, I tried being a landlord once or twice, in the US the landlord has NO rights or leverage to get rid of bad tenants (most of them IMO) the repairs usually outweighed the returns. I’d probably take a loss and be done with it.
Mrs O. Good luck with the back, I’m not much into alternative medicine but the Chiropractors seem to do a better job there than the pill pushers.