A small rant about homeowners who don't give a crap about their property.

The BBQ Pit
21

Oh boy do I know what you guys are talkin’ bout!

Those filthy savage Injuns just let rainwater collect at the low spot of the property and eventually create an alkali flat! When the U.S. Gubbment “foreclosed” wink, wink on them, they didn’t do any better! They just let the place get over-grown with sagebrush and tumbleweed! And they let them damn “Pony Express” punk’s horses poop all over the place!

Imagine the nerve of some people! They buy a house and have the brass to actually live in it, wrecking it for the next guy!

:rolleyes:

“But I’ll always regret that Rwandan thing.” --Bill Clinton

22

I married one. Not an alcoholic who punches holes in things but a homeowner who doesn’t care about her property/yard. Lucky me. When we first met, she already owned the home we moved into and the yard was bad. Half the back yard was dead, completely dead. A quarter of the front lawn was bare dirt. It was all over-grown with tall grass and weeds. I’d asked her the general questions in that getting to know you kind of way, particularly if she had nice neighbors. She told me they all hated her. Guess why? :slight_smile:

About a year or so after meeting her, I went with her to visit her parents in Russia. The scales fell off my eyes and I understood a little better her attitude towards lawn care. Simply put, for the most part people in Russia do not have lawns. Nature does what nature does, no one “manicures” their yard - why do that? Heck, most do not have lawns anyway as I mentioned. Lawn mower sales is not a booming industry. Haha!

Anyway, after a few years and getting engaged, I moved into the house she already owned and went to work right away. That first spring/summer was a lot of work just getting grass back and the endless battles with weeds, new grass seed, and assorted woodland animals that had taken to living in the tall grass.

The second year the grass looked great, the lawn was well taken care of and healthy again. I re-built the flower beds around the property and had quite a nice little color bouquet all summer long. Last year, the third year, I started adding larger landscape elements like a young tree and several arborvitaes. This year we have two arborvitae like trees that have been ignored for a good 15 years and are now over-grown above the front roof-line of the house and I’m getting them removed and the roots torn out. Fortunately, even though they were planted a mere feet from the corners of the house and have grown to over 15 feet tall, they have not damaged the foundation (yet!). Next year we re-do the brick patio and put in some landscaping brick walls to create additional new flower beds and add a cedar fence around the back. Yippee!

All my neighbors love me and I enjoy chatting with the retired homeowners who border my back yard as they give me tips on various lawn maintenance techniques, etc. I constantly get compliments on how good the place looks and back-handed complaints about “how it used to be”. As a homeowner, even though it is my wife, I understand where they are coming from - it is their neighborhood too and their property values. I enjoy doing my part, keeping our home well kept.

Of course, to this day, Mrs. MeanJoe just shakes her head in bewilderment and wonders what the hell the big deal is over lawns. I’ve told her that if she was my neighbor before we met, I’d hate her too. :smiley:

MeanJoe

23

Sure, but what the fuck are YOU talking about?
Daniel

24

Jadis’s Neighbors: “She was so quiet and kept to herself. Who knew she had all those bodies buried in the basement?”
:wink:

25

This is my exact reaction. After having over $15K worth of work performed on my brother’s house, just to pass escrow, $400 ain’t shit. A couple holes and fucked up doors don’t sound like much. We had to have both bathrooms and the kitchen completely remodeled…and they weren’t even drunks!

Sam

26

So, I just want to be clear here - because the previous owners didn’t take care of their property, you were able to buy it where you wouldn’t have otherwise been able too, and now your pissed off that they didn’t take care of their property.

This doesn’t actually make any sense to me, whatsoever.

However, in the spirit of grousing for the sake of grousing - tough break. I hope your repairs get done quickly, and are the last of them required. :slight_smile:

27

No, actually the condition of the property had nothing to do with getting it at an amazing price. The amazing price had more to do with the bank not wanting to own the property through the winter and have to pay to keep the utilities on, and they’d already had one failed contract due to the buyers not getting financing. They were in a hurry and they unloaded it to me at my asking price. No, the house was in move-in condition, with the exception of the minor things I mentioned.

I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand about being frustrated that I had to waste money fixing something that could easily have been avoided to begin with. That’s all. That’s the essence of the rant. Sorry it doesn’t meet your outrage standards.

And as for this:

I have to agree with Left Hand of Dorkness here…ummmm, wtf? Are you on some sort of psychotropic substance?

28

It doesn’t matter. It was “dirt cheap” precisely as a result of having been the property of negligent owners (or else they wouldn’t have been evicted). Have they been more sensible, you’d never had the house at the first place. Also, you bought it as it was. You could probably have noticed that there were some issues. And should have added this to the cost when considering buying the house. Thinking “actually, this house is going to cost me XXXXXXX + 400 $, can I still afford it?”. I suspect it wouldn’t have changed your decision, or houses in the US are way cheaper than over here.
You can’t have your cake and eat it. Get a “dirty cheap house” from people who were enough off-base to be evicted and expect them to have been reasonnable enough to take care of their property.

29

We’re probably somewhere in between you and Russia, here, but I must say that reading several threads on this board about lawns and neighbors issues, my opinion is the same : “what is the fucking deal with lawns in the US?”. In what way is it any of my neighbor’s business if I don’t want a lawn in my yard? Especially since I dislike lawns. I find them just lame.
It sometimes seems like having a lawn is mandatory by law, and you’re going to be jailed if you don’t mow it at the appropriate moment. It’s even more weird since american people usually feel very concerned about property rights. That’s my yard, and if I want to grow beans and pumpkins or wild grasses and flowers, rather that a lawn (that I deeply dislike, by the way) that’s not any of your bussiness. If it hurts your sense of aesthetics, look elsewhere.
Sincirely, I would be infuriated if I was living in a neighborhood where people would feel they’ve some right to tell me what should grow in my yard, and especially if they wanted me to have a fucking lawn (Did I mention that I hate lawns? Really, honestly, I prefer wild grass. By far.).
(And i’m sure they would all awaken me in the early morning while mowing their damned lawns)

30

I doubt you’d be jailed, but there are laws about upkeeping your yard. Like I said, the house I live in was a dump when I moved in. The yard, honestly, was way, way down on my list of priorites and I put about zero effort into it the first 6-8 months. I eventually got a notice from the city that grass must be kept at such and such a length, and piles of brush must be cleared away, etc. etc. They gave me a week to get it cleaned up or else I’d be cited and assigned a court date. I figure one of the few neighbors on the street whose yard wasn’t in worse shape than my own must have complained.
Considering that one schmuck down the street had (and five years later, still has) grimy, moldy, ancient white carpet covering his front yard, I was more than a little annoyed at being singled out. Such is life, I suppose.

31

And that is exactly the sort of half-assed busybody nonsense that makes me want to explode when people talk about joining homeowners associations.

Lawns, in the first place, are just expensive, meaningless status symbols. They waste time and money. I had 2 acres and now I have practically nothing and I’m pretty damn proud of that fact.

The sort of person who would come over to share lawn tips with me if the sort of person I don’t want on my land.

I do appreciate gardens, though. At least there you’re accomplishign something. But a lawn? You’re not appreciating nature…you’re subduing it.

32

and water. Oceans and oceans of water. Here in central Florida we drain the aquifer to water our lawns and then whine about how all our houses are falling into sinkholes.

33

Note to self: Apparently not being a renter requires becoming deeply passionate about grass and lawn care.

Will continue observing these strange people and report back.

34

Read again. Jadis got the house because the bank wanted to unload it before the heating season.

As for the comment about Jadis being quiet and keeping to herself… hate to tell you this, but it’s TRUE. And she’s a bit homicidal as well. :smiley:

Jadzie, why don’t you shit $100 bills for me? I’ll be your best friend!

35

Not all Americans are lawn freaks. Growing up in California, where droughts are common and it doesn’t rain in the summer (everything turns green in the winter, plenty of people don’t have lawns because it’s a waste of resources. My parents used to shake their heads at the manicured lawns and wonder what the hell was wrong with people that they would spend time and money on this.

In the eastern part of the country, or at least here in the Midwest, it rains a great deal in the summer, though, so you don’t need to water the lawn and it’s not as big a drain.

36

We likely won’t spend money on our lawn, but it is a little weird owning a house and realizing that you just sprinkled a lawn repair mix over bare patches of earth :). Granted, the lawn repair mix (from all signs consisting entirely of green-colored newspaper shreds) came with the house, but still.

I agree, though: gardening is the way to go with a yard. We’ve got some sixty square feet of double-dug wide beds this year, and will expand it every growing season. I loves my garden!

Daniel

37

My brother and his wife bought a house that was not treated well by its previous owners. (Sis-in-law took one look at it and saw “potential” and a great location. Bro saw “a lot of work”). Had it been treated properly, it would be a nice house with a wonderful yard. It would also not have been in their price range. Still, I think Jadis is entitled to rant a little about the lack of care given by the previous owners. Even if the amount of money is trivial. My brother keeps finding new things that he can’t believe the previous owners did or did not do.

38

Here in Calgary, we are also trying to spread the word about not having a monoculture, water-sucking lawn on every front yard. We’ve taken about 75 square feet of grass out of our yard so far this year, with the rest to be taken out as we go. The grass will be replaced with plants that are chosen specifically for their hardiness for this area (no watering, no pampering, and very little maintenance required for them) and other types of ground cover (tree bark, pine cones, gravel, etc.).

39

Oh, man. Don’t even remind me of that. When I got laid off and had to move to get another job, we had to have over $2,000 work done on our house just to get it to pass inspections. That’s because “the regulations changed.” Oh, that much in less than five years, eh? Fuck you very much. (We did everything except the electrical work ourselves, or it would’ve been about 3 times that.)

Not necessarily. DogDad was almost persuaded into becoming a Lawn Freak by our next-door neighbor at our old house, when I pointed out that all that’d mean is he’d spend half his time watering and fertilizing just so he could spend the other half mowing.
We mow ours. We have Tulips and Gladiolus, but only because they were there when we moved in. I’m a great believer in “plant it once, if it grows, great, if not, well then it wasn’t supposed to. If you gotta replant it next year, don’t do it at all.”
However, Dueling Lawn Care Companies is evidently BIG BUSINESS around us. <shrug> I just don’t get it.

40

I just don’t get it, I guess. I like living in a place where the Mexicans(1) wander in regularly and cut the grass. I saw a dude out raking today and was like, "Ew! Raking! I don’t want to own a house cause we’d have to do that again.

  1. Offenderati Note: I have not actually inquired as to their ethnic origin. They may be Cuban or Puerto Rican or Guatemalen. So if you’re offended, just assume I said, “Hispanic Lawn Care Workers Who Speak Very Little English Judging By All The Spanish Yelling Back And Forth.”