Entries Tagged 'Neighbors' ↓

If you have a noisy neighbor and you live in an apartment complex with a landlord or management company, you can lean on them to quiet down your neighbor. Sometimes it’s faster for you to just ask them politely and sometimes it’s easier to have the landlord handle it because those are “official” channels and you may be more comfortable with doing that.

In your lease you should have a clause called “Quiet Enjoyment,” of which has two parts that apply to you. The first part is that you have to be quiet in the first place, that’s the piece that the landlord should enforce for you. The second part is that you should be able to enjoy your apartment and live there in peace, that’s the part you’re trying to reclaim! So, even if you don’t have something as specific as “Quiet Enjoyment,” you should have something about noise.

You should contact your landlord every single time you have a complaint because eventually the landlord will have to evict that person. It’s important you do this so they can establish a frequency and so that they can use it as a way to confirm that the neighbor complied. Just because you said it once doesn’t mean that the landlord has completed their job, just keep contacting your landlord and your, the squeaky wheel, will get your results.

If your neighbors are noisy and they haven’t been cooperative when you ask them to turn it down, consider researching your local noise ordinances. Practically every single neighborhood and community will have a noise ordinance and the police have absolutely no problems enforcing them. Generally the rules establish certain “quiet periods” that require people to maintain low decibel levels during certain periods of time, generally when people are sleeping. The best place to check your noise ordinance is to refer to your city attorney’s office (or check the internet). Once you figure out what the laws are, confirm that they are actually breaking them and then call the police.

Unfortunately, nothing. Unless the view was granted by law or some other rule in your neighborhood, such as a homeowner’s association, you have no recourse to prevent it. The reason for this pretty clear, it would be unreasonable for the city or state to have to enforce this and determine what is considered a view and what isn’t. The only thing they can do is prevent the building if it’s clear that the structure has no value to the owner and was put up just to block the view.

View Ordinances

If you are lucky enough to live in an area with view ordinances, then you might be in luck if your view is obstructed by trees. If you live near the ocean or some other great view, view ordinances might protect your view from growing trees and the owner of the trees have to trim them to restore the original view. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to new buildings or structures.

Who is responsible for paying for the trimming? It depends. The tree owner has to pay if the trees were planted after the law was passed. The view-obstructed homeowner has to pay if they were planted before the law was passed. There are exceptions to this rule and they should be spelled out in the ordinance (such as how city trees are exempt).

Zoning Laws

If you can’t go to a view ordinance, consider checking out the zoning regulations for residential (or commercial, depends on who is block you) buildings because it may require that buildings be under a certain height, be set back from the street a certain distance, or occupy less than a certain percentage of the property footprint.

Yesterday I warned that anyone who deliberately harmed a tree was on the hook for two or three times the value of the tree, payable to the owner of the tree (the property onto which the trunk breaks ground). This is also true if the neighbor accidentally kills the tree, either by putting something on it or cutting the roots or anything else, and can be enforced by the courts. The basic rule is that anyone who cuts down, removes or damages a tree without permission will owe the tree’s owner money.

First off, deliberately harming a tree is something you should never ever consider on strictly moral grounds. However, if you do, the legal recourse is severe. In nearly every state, if you deliberately harm your neighbor’s tree then you are liable to at least two or three times the amount of actual financial loss. That’s right, if you kill a $200 tree, you’re on the hook for two or three times that. (As background information, the impetus for these laws was to prevent loggers from cutting down and stealing trees)

If your neighbor cut down your tree, sue them.

If your neighbor’s tree is sick or dying or otherwise looks like it’s about to fall on your house… you can’t cut it down. That’s right, even if it’s teetering on the brink of disaster and it looks like a puff of air could bring that tree down onto your home, you can do nothing about it. While it seems unfair, the motivations for the law are just because it’s meant to deter someone from making that claim in order to cut down a tree.

What you should do is get your city government involved. Call your city’s attorney’s office to see what your recourse is but generally they will step in and either force your neighbor to deal with the tree or deal with it themselves, billing the owner for the services.

Incidentally, the ordinance that forces your neighbor to deal with that situation is one that prohibits the maintenance of a dangerous condition on private property. So, if your neighbor has anything dangerous on their property, whether they’ve installed their own 5,000 gallon drum of natural gas or it’s just a sad tree in its last moments upright; you can report any dangerous situation and force them to deal with it if reasoning fails.

So you and your neighbor have a fence between the two of you, who is responsible for maintaining it? Is it the person who put it up in the first place? What if neither one of you were around when the fence was constructed? What if you want to replace it, can you compel your neighbor to pay for half? These are all tricky questions because it’s the intersection of ownership (he who buys it, owns it) and property boundaries (in theory, if the fence is constructed exactly correctly, it’ll be 50% on your property and 50% on your neighbors).

In general, unless you make special arrangements with your neighbor (in writing, if you plan on enforcing it), you both own the fence and you are both responsible for maintaining it. In face, you aren’t allowed to take it down or replace it without getting permission from your neighbor (though I suspect you wouldn’t get much argument if you wanted to replace it and pay for it entirely yourself). If you neighbor refuses to maintain their part of the fence, you do have some legal recourse but this is one of those situations where talking about it usually can resolve it pretty quickly. Most people aren’t that much of a pain about fences since they get as much utility out of them as you do and generally have a strong sense of what’s right and wrong about them – less of a judgment call.

When it comes to fences, the main sticking is generally about height. In general, and your local laws and ordinances may differ, most residential areas call for a maximum of six feet for artificially constructed fences in the backyard and four feet for those in the front yard. Again, laws may vary where you are but those heights are generally what is considered acceptable. As for growing fences, or natural fences like bushes, trees, shrubs, etc.; the rules vary more but generally range within five to eight feet.

If you want to get an exception to the rule you’ll need to request a variance and build a strong case. A great example is if you live near something particularly ugly or noisy or high traffic and have a good reason to try to block it out, such as a movie theater or gas station or other such venue. Since you will have to go before a board of some kind for approval, it helps to get some of your neighbors involved to bolster your case since they will likely benefit as well from a higher partition between you all and the noise.

Asking for an exception because your neighbor’s house is ugly or they yell alot… probably not going to work though.

Trees. They provide shade, filter CO2, look beautiful (sometimes), and can cause all sorts of headaches for neighbor-to-neighbor relationships. I’ve heard of so many arguments over hanging branches, accidental (and not accidental) killing of trees, dying trees, etc. that it’s amazing people even plant trees on their property anymore.

Ownership

In general, to determine ownership, look at where the tree comes out of the ground. If it comes out on your property, it’s considered yours. If it comes out on your neighbor’s property, it’s his or hers. If it’s in both, it’s considered a boundary tree and both parties have ownership. With ownership comes the responsibility to maintain it, so whomever owns the tree has to maintain it.

Trimming Branches

If you don’t own the tree and there are branches leaning over into your property, you are legally allowed to trim them (make sure you don’t have any tree trimming laws, I’ve read horror stories like the one I just linked to).

Let’s say your neighbor puts up a fence and part of it sticks into your yard. As a nice neighbor you might not say anything because it’s not really a big deal, but that’s actually a tremendous mistake that may bite you down the road. What could possibly happen over a little fence?

Title insurance refuses to issue insurance. If you try to sell, a title insurance company may not be willing to issue title insurance to the buyer because of this seemingly minor encroachment. This is because you didn’t do anything about your neighbor using your land and thus the neighbor may have a claim on that part of the property. It’s not that the issue can’t be resolved, it’s that what was an open and shut case is now something far more annoying (think: lawyers and paperwork) that the title insurance company doesn’t want to deal with.

Neighbor could have claims on your land! Depending on the statutes in your area, if your neighbor builds on your land and uses it for a long enough period of time, they actually get ownership of that land. On one hand, I understand if that makes total sense. If I accidentally build an extension of my house onto a foot of my neighbor’s property and they never told me, it’s unfair of them to force me to rip down that property right? They were there when I was building, if they knew then they should’ve said something. If they didn’t know, then its their fault! On the other hand, it’s understandable if someone gets upset because someone else essentially stole their property. It’s an ugly situation so clear it up early if you discover it.

What if you tell your neighbor and they still continue?

• Step 1: Make sure you’re right! You may have wrong information just as easily as they may have the wrong information. Double check your records and discuss it with your neighbor. If he or she still disagrees, escalate it.
• Step 2: Hire an attorney to write a letter demanding that construction stops. If your neighbor continues, unfortuantely you have to go to Step 3.
• Step 3: Sue. Unfortunately you have no choice after this, you must bring the issue to court and have the judge issue a temporary stop or halt on construction until you can file a civil suit for trespassing.

It’s very important that you ensure you’re in the right before you proceed, it would be silly to go through all that effort and money just to find out you had incorrect information!