The backstory - 2 years ago, a neighbor of ours started the process of subdividing his lot and building a second house on it to sell. This lot is facing ours on the private street we live on. He had to get permission from the town to do so, since the subdivided lot doesn’t meet the zoning requirements. I wound up going to a Board of Appeals meeting to support his proposal, since it would mean the gravel street we live on would have to be repaved, which was a good thing.
Well, that turned out to be a huge mistake. We’ve had nothing but problems with the neighbor, the builders, and the town since then. From giant holes in the road that we weren’t aware of until we almost drove into them in the dark, to workers shitting in the woods facing our front window, to broken water lines, to stereos blasting at 6:30 AM when the kids are all asleep, to the town engineer & planning dept. approving plans for the new road that would have effectively prevented us from driving our cars into our own driveway, this has been a disaster. Early last year we wound up exchanging “No Trespassing” notices with the neighbor as well. We’ve done everything we could to keep on top of things and wound up calling out the police more than once, but we also quickly found that the planning dept. can’t be trusted to call us if the builder was appearing at a meeting, and that he could request to be on the agenda up to 3:30 on the day of the meetings, which are held at 7:00. Having 3 kids under 10, it’s pretty difficult to arrange babysitting quickly enough to attend a meeting with only 3 hours notice. There are still a few outstanding issues with the road which are directly affecting us.
The only saving grace was that the falling real estate market meant the house wasn’t selling. All good things come to an end, and the house sold yesterday. We’re furious about this, since at one point we were told (verbally, but not in writing) by the town that they would not allow a Certificate of Occupancy to be issued until all the defects were corrected. Well, they did issue the Cert, and now we have new neighbors. The problem is that my wife already hates them. She’s got, let’s say, difficulty seperating her feelings for the old neighbor (who still lives in his old house on the front half of the lot) from the new ones, who have done nothing against us. I’m trying to convince her that starting a good relationship with the new neighbors will be good for us, as well as pissing off the old neighbor, but she’s not buying it.
Not really looking for any advice here (2 different lawyers have told us there’s not much we can do), but just had to vent a bit.