Are your Neighbors Sabotaging Your Sale?
Pay attention: 25 Ways
they could be discouraging buyers.
By
Andrea Reynolds © Copyright 2008
If you’ve been a good neighbor your
neighbors may not want you to sell and leave. Even if your
neighbors don’t like you, you are still a known quantity
and new neighbors (the people you eventually sell to) could
be potential neighbors from hell. Why would they want to
lose a good thing? As my father says: “Better the devil you
know, than the devil you don’t.” That simply means that
it’s often better to deal with what’s familiar even if they
are not ideal, than take a risk with an unknown. Not that
you’re a devil, of course.
Here are some deliberate actions I have observed, designed
to keep prospective buyers away when you want to sell your
home:
1. Neighbors who suddenly decide they need to bounce
basketballs, as hard as they can, in the street outside
your windows as you show the home. Prospective buyers can
imagine the headaches they will suffer if they move in.
2. Neighbors who pile up their garbage for a week next to
your parking spot which is the first thing buyers will see
as they pull up to your home.
3. Neighbors who dump their rusting,
derelict appliances in unavoidable view of your living room
windows for buyers to see.
4. Neighbors who strategically place a
children’s swing set at the edge of their property and
yours in plain sight so that older folks who want quiet
will be deterred by the anticipated noise of boisterous
children.
5. Neighbors who suddenly place their stereo speakers –
facing your home – so that they blast your home with their
loud heavy metal music or gangster rap.
6. Neighbors who suddenly need to paint the fence on your
side with toxic-smelling stain, while talking loudly on
their cell phone using fowl, vulgar language that can be
heard as you show your home.
7. Adult male neighbors who decide to invite their buddies
over to battle their remote control cars against each other
on the street. The noise from three of them at once gets
inside your head and doesn’t quit.
8. Neighbors who will invite their friends over to blast
their car stereo systems through their open car windows and
trunk.
9. Neighbors who put their cars up on blocks for weeks next
to your property… on both sides, making it look like the
stereotypical trailer park instead of a manufactured home
community.
10. Single neighbor women who tell their
dates to pee on your front deck steps to create a strong,
nasty smell noticed by visitors as they enter your home.
(The urine from men who have been drinking all night
permeates wood decking and takes forever to dissipate.)
11. Neighbors whose dozens of empty pop cans, papers and
pop bottles just happen to be blown by the wind onto your
property… several days ago.
12. Neighbors who strike up a conversation with every
prospective buyer who shows enthusiastic interest, but then
after talking with your neighbor are never heard from
again.
13. Neighbors who instruct their lawn maintenance guy to
avoid cutting and spraying weed killer on only the lawn
next to your front lawn so the weeds take over a once-
beautiful lawn causing an eyesore.
14. Neighbors who refusing to water their lawn next to
yours so that the grass turns brown and creates an eyesore.
15. Neighbors who let their BIG dog leave piles of poop
adjacent to, and on, your front lawn and never pick it up….
except to throw it on your front walk or steps so that
buyers will step in it.
16. Neighbors who trespass on your property cutting your
grass down to nothing, just ten minutes after you’ve
carefully manicured your lawn on a diagonal to a lush 3
inches tall.
17. Neighbors who park – and refuse to move - their
employer’s dump truck in front of your parking spots so
that you can’t go anywhere and so that your real estate
agent and prospective buyer have nowhere to park.
18. Management’s employees who use your
extra parking spot as the dumping ground for plowed snow
which, when banked up high, obliterates your For Sale sign
from view by people driving by looking for homes for sale.
19. Neighbors who cut the flowers off
your outdoor display plants, leaving only the stalks, an
hour after you plant them at your entrance to welcome
buyers.
20. Neighbors who reject your offer of a $500 finders fee
for referring their friends who are in the market to buy a
mobile home. Wouldn’t you think they would want their own
friends living close by, especially those who visit every
day? And wouldn’t you think unemployed people would want an
easy $500 when they have pets and kids to feed?
21. Neighbors who throw a garden hose on your lawn so you
can’t cut your grass before more buyers arrive. Then when
you move the hose back to their lawn, they throw it back
onto your lawn as you get your mower started. If you keep
the fight going you reduce yourself to their immaturity,
but if you stop the battle you can’t get your lawn cut
without destroying their hose and dulling your mower blade.
22. Neighbors who rev the engines on their parked cars
making a lot of noise and a lot of unpleasant exhaust
fumes, or who open their car windows and crank up the
volume so loud the organs in your chest vibrate.
23. Neighbors who tell their pal, some old guy without a
shirt you’ve never seen before, that he can stand on your
lot and hammer away on your fence for hours.
24. Neighbors who instruct their toddlers
and grade school age children to stand outside next to the
buyers’ cars and taunt the buyers with dirty words and
outrageous lies about the home they were just visiting.
25. Adult neighbors who pour sugary soda and dirt on
buyers’ cars while they are inside seeing your home.
The message is: If you buy this home you won't be able to
stand the neighbors.
Of course, these are all things you can rarely prove unless
you take a picture or video them doing it and even then
management and the police will likely do nothing. While I
do recommend appealing to your neighbors directly and
asking them to stop as a first step, if they refuse get out
as fast as you can even if you have to cut the price even
more. Actions like these only confirm to you that you don’t
belong in this neighborhood.
