Use to have a neighbor who had a pretty large RV that was parked in his backyard but you could see it from over my ajoining fence. One day I asked him why he had an RV he never drove in his backyard and he told me he had bought an RV who’s engine was shot from a friend but since had well-kept and spacious living quarters in the back and basically made it an extra room in his house since he basically parked it’s main door right next to his house side door so you could get into it without being outside too much.
I asked him if he treated it as a guest room and be said no, he treated it like just another normal room and would go into it once a day to watch TV or use the restroom when others were occupied. Occasionally someone would sleep in it at night too if say someone was having a party in the house and someone wanted their shut-eye.
It sounds like your basic “redneck engineering”. A cheap way to accomplish the same basic goal as a built-on house addition with zero concern for class, style, appearance, or the neighbors’ sensitivities.
My daughter and almost son in law fell into a deal like that–they rent the house next door and there is a 30 foot gooseneck trailer on the property that a former tenant lived in. He bought it from her, pays the landlord a small sum to keep it on the property that’s rolled into their rent and he spends the majority of his time in there. He’s casual about housekeeping and my daughter is definitely not in that camp so this cuts down on friction–he can spread his stuff out and she doesn’t have to see it. He sleeps out there sometimes too because she has a work schedule that on some days requires her to be up at 0330 to get ready for work, which means going to bed around 2000 or so and so he decamps to the trailer so she can sleep undisturbed. It’s actually a really neat arrangement, well worth the couple grand he spent to buy the thing.
It also functions as a guest room, which is also quite handy. They can have someone come visit for a week who needs to come and go without bothering anyone and this arrangement works well for everyone.
Exactly. I would not want to live in a neighborhood with a non-functioning RV parked in the yard next door. YYMV. People complain about HOAs–but people also complain when their neighbor has a washing machine on the front porch, a car up on blocks, doesn’t bother to cut the grass, and the siding is falling off but there’s nothing they can do about it.
Look, HOAs aren’t for everybody, and obviously not for you. But when people can’t sell their house because the rest of the neighborhood looks like shit they just have to suck it up.
Friend’s FIL parked his RV at their house and never used it again. It was their spare room. Lots of storage space, guest room, having a party they moved a lot of stuff in there and used the stove top to heat food. I recently put an addition on the house but I would have considered using an RV as extra living space if I couldn’t afford that.
As far as I know there’s no regulation at about leaving it on your property and using it as you please long as it’s registered. ETA: Seeing mention of HOA above, I meant no regulation outside of rogue villages.
Our neighbors have a functioning RV parked in the yard next door. They’ve had it forever, though probably only a decade really. Every year they drive it down to a trailer park on Cape Cod for a three week vacation, the rest of the time it’s covered (with a fitted tarp-like thing) and sits along the side of their garage, maybe three feet away from the garage, about the same distance from our property line. I don’t see how it matters that the RV is functioning or not, if the only difference is that it isn’t there for 3 weeks out of 52.
Yes, it’s not House Beautiful material, but it’s well maintained, and the couple are splendid, helpful neighbors in dozens of ways, so I refuse to fret over it. Heck, I’m sure they’re annoyed at our lack of maintaining a ‘beautiful lawn.’ I mean, we cut it, sure, but we don’t bother to fertilize it or weed it or anything. I’m sure the ‘grass’ is mainly an assortment of weeds, but they’re green, cover the ground and keep dust from blowing around, so we pretty much don’t give a damn.
If they can put up with our horrible lawn, we can overlook their RV.
In general, I think people spend too much time poking their noses into other people’s business. If you’re talking a dangerous situation, or even something that causes an active nuisance like, oh, raising chickens and have a rooster that crows, fine, get involved. Otherwise, live and let live.
It may well have been the cheapest way he could add an extra room and bathroom; and being slightly separated from the house would make it quieter when the house was noisy. I don’t want one myself; but there’s nothing that looks dumb about the logic to me.
Some area’s zoning would frown on this. Other places wouldn’t care. I’d think the main issue is whether the bathroom’s being managed properly – is the RV hooked to the house septic or town sewer? if to the house septic, is the system sized for what would presumably be the same load as an extra bedroom? if self-contained, are they emptying it properly? But they may well be handling it properly.
Do RV’s automatically look ugly? To everybody?
How about cars parked in the driveway, very likely at the front of the house? Are they also offensive to the eye?
I think the kind of house that looks from the street like it’s two-thirds garage is ugly. Should people be forbidden to build or live in those because I don’t like the way they look?
This RV’s in the back yard, behind a fence, and apparently visible only to immediate neighbors. And nothing in the OP says that it was rusting out, or otherwise visibly junky.
The town next door has an ordinance about storage of RVs campers & boats. Have to be completely in your backyard or enclosed in a garage. And you can only run power to the RV when opening and closing after use. No one is permitted to dwell or keep house in the RV
There’s been an occupied camper in my neighbors side yard. He lives on a corner it’s visible but behind a partial privacy fence. Two older adults been living there year round for a few years. They have hay bales stacked against the chassis for heat retention I guess. Some one complained about it a couple months ago I saw in the planning commission minutes the code enforcement report. Still there Today. Very quiet people never a peep.
