Trying to sell our house but neighbors "junkyard" is making it impossible
Location: Colorado, USA Our neighbor has been collecting bikes for years. There is a pile in his back yard with at least 3 layers of bikes that covers the whole yard. It has never moved, just gotten taller. It has created issues for Xfinity and Xcel, both have filed complaints, but because it can't be seen from the street no one has been able to do anything about it. We are trying to sell the house and every single person who expressed interest said no because of the bikes. We have gone through the HOA and Code Enforcement with no response or help. Is there literally anything we can do legally or do we have to wait for someone who doesn't mind living next to it to actually sell?
Cat fact: cats frequently dislike code enforcement as well.
Love how every story I ever hear on Reddit about HOAs is always “they are fining me $25,000 because the flowers I planted by my window are a slightly different shade of lavender” and yet here’s a guy operating a bike cemetery in his backyard and HOA is all like “can’t do anything bro”
The stories of 'I had a valid complaint about a neighbour and the HOA handled it to my satisfaction in a competent and timely manner' aren't very interesting and won't garner much engagement hence you're only exposed to the extreme ends of the pile of incidents
This! And I think a lot of people wouldn’t feel the need to post if their issue was settled quickly and quietly.
It’s why you see a lot of reviews online that are either “this pizza exploded and killed my grandmother - it ran out of the house, keeps killing, it’s forming a zombie army and my little son has joined” or “this pizza was delicious and arrived on time. All the toppings were perfect. Plus it brought my kitten back to life and installed carpet throughout the house!”*
*exaggerated for hopefully comedic effect - my point is that it seems to me people are likely to review things they really like or really hate
That's right, and for added "usefulness" for some classes of service you have so few options to choose between that reviews are almost entirely worthless.
For example delivery companies, or banks. You can use DHL, or UPS, and some smaller companies. Lets pretend there are 10 delivery companies - they will deliver a billion parcels every year, and 50,000 will be messed up. So you get complaints saying "UPS are WORST EVER", but everybody else is either indifferent or positive.
Try choosing an insurance company, an airline, or anything like that, based on reviews and you soon realise the whole thing is a waste of time.
I get surveys from IT at work that include “how likely are you to use this service again?” - what else am I going to do when my work computer is fouled up?
In the UK, there is one delivery company whose name is mud, Evri (Evri parcel will get dragged through a hedge backwards then delivered into a gutter while its pouring down with rain). Yet, because they're the cheapest option, so many companies still use them. And Royal Mail are so underfunded they're contracting Evri. We live in the darkest timeline.
Now see this is something I would still put firmly in "unreasonable hoa rules" territory. Christmas decorations should still be up on new year's. It's still Christmas on January 5. It's like people haven't heard the song!
Personally mine are still up around Easter. I get compliments from the neighbors.
Someone posted a story sort of like that, they put up a ton of XMas decarations, the HOA said they were against the bylaws and would start fining them $100/day if they were still up the next week. The last update said they owed them $500 and OOP still didn't plan on taking them down, and her husband is apparently too controlling to her because he wants her to take them down
Yeah. The story I always tell about my HOA drama is that at last year's Summer Picnic the person that volunteered to bring soda brought store brand sodas and used a mix to make the lemonade, not real lemons!!!
Fun fact: outside of anglo North America, most countries use their version of lemonade to refer to Sprite-like sodas. They either don't have a local tradition of a lemon-based juice or call it lemon juice. Which causes its own set of problems, of course.
I lived on the second floor in a gated condo community and a neighbor moved in with a dog, and I quickly realized that was going to be an issue. She let piles of poo and pee build up over a fake lawn she installed in her porch area. A few droppings wouldn't bother me, but it [medium sized old pitbull] was outside all day in a very small porch area and she would go over a month without cleaning the area at all. I had to stop using my balcony due to the pervasive smell and the flies. The dog was also aggressive and would lunge at people if it was ever taken out for a walk [which was rare], and it would bark at me every time I went upstairs to my apartment. I put in numerous complaints, but the HOA did nothing. It was so frustrating.
I genuinely don't get the point of HOAs when they are either overzealous and stifle the personality of a community, or do jack shit except accept monthly fees.
When I grew up in Colorado, our neighbor had an old, claw footed bathtub and some bikes in their back yard. I wonder if LAOP lives next to them. I wouldn't be surprised if the bikes my neighbors planted in the 80s have grown and matured into a full bike pile by now.
It’s horrible when people bring an invasive species to an environment where it spreads like wildfire. Soon there’s Treks and Scotts popping up all over the neighbourhood yards.
What's the neighbor going to do, claim it to his homeowner's insurance and file a police report? Here's scrap value for fifty rusted bikes and a hundred dry rotted bike tires. 50/50 on the cops not caring enough to call it anything more than a civil matter.
So bike theft is a huge problem in Denver, usually perpetrated by the unhoused. We often wonder where all those bikes go, since the days of huge street encampments with piles of bikes and bike parts are no more. I think this may be our answer.
If utility companies have been hindered by them, they’re likely in a utility easement. Which would be cause to have, at least some of, them cleared.
My money is on no one having said that in their complaint and code enforcement went full-on bureaucracy mode. “Doesn’t violate what the claim was. Job done.”
Or, maybe I’m just jaded by the amount of lazy code enforcement officers I’ve seen.
Bikes do in fact have fluids to drain, btw. Besides hydraulic brakes, there’s also the lubrication of the various bearings, even if it’s mostly grease. That still leaks out over the years.
I've never seen a leaking crank or front fork stem, lmao. People can make a mess while working on their bikes, of course, and smear grease where it shouldn't be, but any competently maintained bike will not be anywhere near capable of "leaking" grease in any discernible quantity over years
In a rusting pile being rained on? Yeah, that’s gonna happen, eventually. Bearings don’t go dry over the decades under those conditions because the stuff evaporates.
Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but I don't think you should be able to force your neighbor to clean up their backyard if it's not a health or safety hazard to you. Who cares if he has a stack of bikes or a nude sculpture garden? It's his yard that he paid for and it isn't actually hurting you. If you hate looking at it, build a taller fence.
It sucks that LAOP is having trouble selling his house but "use the law to bludgeon someone into doing what you want with their property" feels like a bad remedy here when no one is being actually harmed.
Yep. My neighbour has a bicycle graveyard and my house actually had a rodent problem before I moved in with my cats. I get to see a lot of owls, though, which is kinda neat.
Our local hoarder house’s vermin got so bad the city actually got involved and ordered them to clear out the worst of the junk. Unfortunately there wasn’t a huge follow-up after the first round of cleaning. They were so overpopulated that they were decamping to our building’s outdoor space until the landlord hired a new property manager that cleared out the yard and hired an exterminator.
Cats make a huge difference. I know they’re hell on the local bird population but when you have mice or rats around, there’s truly nothing better. The orange guy that used to hang out in our yard made a world of difference. (I would’ve adopted him but I’m too allergic; he has a home with a neighbor now.)
My cats are indoor-only, so there are still rats outside, although less in my yard because I specifically store dirty litter in the garage between collection days.
Somewhat interestingly, some of the rats I've seen aren't brown, so definitely some pet rats got into that gene pool at some point.
Even if they don’t hunt, just having a cat can help decrease the mine at rats, because the smell of cat urine will not only deter them, but it has been proven that female rats living in areas that have cat wee will have less babies.
A few times a year my neighbour pops round to borrow a cup of used litter.
She spreads it round the outside of her shed, and borders.
She swears it’s a big help.
(It’s the biodegradable wood pellets, so shouldn’t do any harm.
Both my boys are fixed, so it doesn’t attract female cats, and also lets other cats know it’s some else’s territory.
I give her the whole tray, but cup sounded better, and I don’t ask for it back.
Yes I was a bit confused the first time, until she explained)
Larger rodents are a surprisingly good deterrent as well. I keep fancy rats in a region that has regular pest problems, and the only time I've ever seen mice indoors was when I was stuck living with an actual hoarder.
And from that experience, I also learned that domesticated rats will murder (and eat, if I don't get there in time) the absolute shit out of any mouse that trespasses in their cage. My fattest, fluffiest, most spoiled of babies was an absolutely brutal hunter, and I suspect would have gone on regular sprees if he hadn't been too lazy to escape.
The downside of course is everything else that the cats kill on the side, which is why dogs are a better alternative if you don't want dead birds and lizards too.
ETA: This one sentence comment is objectively hilarious, but context is four cats eight bedroom house and this house is too big for me to clean but most hosemates kinda suck
My across the street neighbor as a kid was a backyard hoarder like this. When he eventually kicked it, and the city had to spend time and money hauling off all the junk, the rats that lived there had nowhere to go.
We caught 217 rats in traps in two months. I cant even imagine how bad the next door and behind neighbors had it. We'd be up at night hearing them chewing in the attic and walls. Who knows how much damage there was behind the walls.
Metallic Bot
Trying to sell our house but neighbors "junkyard" is making it impossible
Cat fact: cats frequently dislike code enforcement as well.
Love how every story I ever hear on Reddit about HOAs is always “they are fining me $25,000 because the flowers I planted by my window are a slightly different shade of lavender” and yet here’s a guy operating a bike cemetery in his backyard and HOA is all like “can’t do anything bro”
The stories of 'I had a valid complaint about a neighbour and the HOA handled it to my satisfaction in a competent and timely manner' aren't very interesting and won't garner much engagement hence you're only exposed to the extreme ends of the pile of incidents
This! And I think a lot of people wouldn’t feel the need to post if their issue was settled quickly and quietly.
It’s why you see a lot of reviews online that are either “this pizza exploded and killed my grandmother - it ran out of the house, keeps killing, it’s forming a zombie army and my little son has joined” or “this pizza was delicious and arrived on time. All the toppings were perfect. Plus it brought my kitten back to life and installed carpet throughout the house!”*
*exaggerated for hopefully comedic effect - my point is that it seems to me people are likely to review things they really like or really hate
That's right, and for added "usefulness" for some classes of service you have so few options to choose between that reviews are almost entirely worthless.
For example delivery companies, or banks. You can use DHL, or UPS, and some smaller companies. Lets pretend there are 10 delivery companies - they will deliver a billion parcels every year, and 50,000 will be messed up. So you get complaints saying "UPS are WORST EVER", but everybody else is either indifferent or positive.
Try choosing an insurance company, an airline, or anything like that, based on reviews and you soon realise the whole thing is a waste of time.
I get surveys from IT at work that include “how likely are you to use this service again?” - what else am I going to do when my work computer is fouled up?
Create a competing IT division in places official IT doesn't look, of course!
In the UK, there is one delivery company whose name is mud, Evri (Evri parcel will get dragged through a hedge backwards then delivered into a gutter while its pouring down with rain). Yet, because they're the cheapest option, so many companies still use them. And Royal Mail are so underfunded they're contracting Evri. We live in the darkest timeline.
Yeah, guess it's use it til it breaks, at which point you try to jump to a different company.
I forgot about some holiday ornaments on a tree in my front yard. MY EVIL HOA SENT MY A POLITE EMAIL REMINDING ME TO TAKE THEM DOWN!!!!1!
I took them down and wished them a happy new year!! The NERVE of these dictators!!!
Now see this is something I would still put firmly in "unreasonable hoa rules" territory. Christmas decorations should still be up on new year's. It's still Christmas on January 5. It's like people haven't heard the song!
Personally mine are still up around Easter. I get compliments from the neighbors.
Yep, Christmas ornaments aren't hurting anyone or damaging anything. Why should anyone else care?
Someone posted a story sort of like that, they put up a ton of XMas decarations, the HOA said they were against the bylaws and would start fining them $100/day if they were still up the next week. The last update said they owed them $500 and OOP still didn't plan on taking them down, and her husband is apparently too controlling to her because he wants her to take them down
Yeah. The story I always tell about my HOA drama is that at last year's Summer Picnic the person that volunteered to bring soda brought store brand sodas and used a mix to make the lemonade, not real lemons!!!
Fun fact: outside of anglo North America, most countries use their version of lemonade to refer to Sprite-like sodas. They either don't have a local tradition of a lemon-based juice or call it lemon juice. Which causes its own set of problems, of course.
I lived on the second floor in a gated condo community and a neighbor moved in with a dog, and I quickly realized that was going to be an issue. She let piles of poo and pee build up over a fake lawn she installed in her porch area. A few droppings wouldn't bother me, but it [medium sized old pitbull] was outside all day in a very small porch area and she would go over a month without cleaning the area at all. I had to stop using my balcony due to the pervasive smell and the flies. The dog was also aggressive and would lunge at people if it was ever taken out for a walk [which was rare], and it would bark at me every time I went upstairs to my apartment. I put in numerous complaints, but the HOA did nothing. It was so frustrating.
I genuinely don't get the point of HOAs when they are either overzealous and stifle the personality of a community, or do jack shit except accept monthly fees.
Mostly an HOA provides a method for the neighborhood majority to seize the property of undesirable minorities.
Also possible LAOP has an enemy on the HOA board who is orgasming from their petty power.
When I grew up in Colorado, our neighbor had an old, claw footed bathtub and some bikes in their back yard. I wonder if LAOP lives next to them. I wouldn't be surprised if the bikes my neighbors planted in the 80s have grown and matured into a full bike pile by now.
It’s horrible when people bring an invasive species to an environment where it spreads like wildfire. Soon there’s Treks and Scotts popping up all over the neighbourhood yards.
They supplant the lovely Schwinns that are native to the area.
They interbreed and that’s how you get Huffies 😑
When the Gary Fishers start breeding things really go downhill fast
I shouldn’t suggest a tire fire, I shouldn’t suggest a tire fire, I shouldn’t suggest a tire fire.
Arson is not the answer.
But it would probably work.
What's the neighbor going to do, claim it to his homeowner's insurance and file a police report? Here's scrap value for fifty rusted bikes and a hundred dry rotted bike tires. 50/50 on the cops not caring enough to call it anything more than a civil matter.
Not in;Colorado. Good chance you burn your house down.
So bike theft is a huge problem in Denver, usually perpetrated by the unhoused. We often wonder where all those bikes go, since the days of huge street encampments with piles of bikes and bike parts are no more. I think this may be our answer.
we’ve found bikes georg?
Maybe. One way to find out…
Quick, OOP?
Do your neighbors ever refer to axle grease as a ‘condiment’?
If utility companies have been hindered by them, they’re likely in a utility easement. Which would be cause to have, at least some of, them cleared.
My money is on no one having said that in their complaint and code enforcement went full-on bureaucracy mode. “Doesn’t violate what the claim was. Job done.”
Or, maybe I’m just jaded by the amount of lazy code enforcement officers I’ve seen.
Bikes do in fact have fluids to drain, btw. Besides hydraulic brakes, there’s also the lubrication of the various bearings, even if it’s mostly grease. That still leaks out over the years.
Bicycles, not motorcycles.
Modern bicycles often have hydraulic disc brakes.
Oh! Thanks, I didn't know.
Correct. Some bicycles have hydraulic brakes. And they all have bearings.
Brakes can use either mineral oil, which is relatively benign, or DOT brake fluid which is anti-benign.
Ah! TIL. Thanks.
I see where they got that. Some people think “bike” = motorcycle and the two wheeled things without motors = bicycle
I was talking specifically about push bikes in my comment, btw.
I've never seen a leaking crank or front fork stem, lmao. People can make a mess while working on their bikes, of course, and smear grease where it shouldn't be, but any competently maintained bike will not be anywhere near capable of "leaking" grease in any discernible quantity over years
In a rusting pile being rained on? Yeah, that’s gonna happen, eventually. Bearings don’t go dry over the decades under those conditions because the stuff evaporates.
[removed]
Uh oh...
Oh. That... Yeah, that's a good idea.
Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but I don't think you should be able to force your neighbor to clean up their backyard if it's not a health or safety hazard to you. Who cares if he has a stack of bikes or a nude sculpture garden? It's his yard that he paid for and it isn't actually hurting you. If you hate looking at it, build a taller fence.
It sucks that LAOP is having trouble selling his house but "use the law to bludgeon someone into doing what you want with their property" feels like a bad remedy here when no one is being actually harmed.
As someone living near a house like LAOP’s neighbor, I promise there’s a nasty rat’s nest on that property and the problem is radiating outward.
Also it clearly is hurting LAOP if it’s causing issues with utility access and preventing LAOP from selling the house.
Yep. My neighbour has a bicycle graveyard and my house actually had a rodent problem before I moved in with my cats. I get to see a lot of owls, though, which is kinda neat.
Our local hoarder house’s vermin got so bad the city actually got involved and ordered them to clear out the worst of the junk. Unfortunately there wasn’t a huge follow-up after the first round of cleaning. They were so overpopulated that they were decamping to our building’s outdoor space until the landlord hired a new property manager that cleared out the yard and hired an exterminator.
Cats make a huge difference. I know they’re hell on the local bird population but when you have mice or rats around, there’s truly nothing better. The orange guy that used to hang out in our yard made a world of difference. (I would’ve adopted him but I’m too allergic; he has a home with a neighbor now.)
My cats are indoor-only, so there are still rats outside, although less in my yard because I specifically store dirty litter in the garage between collection days.
Somewhat interestingly, some of the rats I've seen aren't brown, so definitely some pet rats got into that gene pool at some point.
Even if they don’t hunt, just having a cat can help decrease the mine at rats, because the smell of cat urine will not only deter them, but it has been proven that female rats living in areas that have cat wee will have less babies.
A few times a year my neighbour pops round to borrow a cup of used litter.
She spreads it round the outside of her shed, and borders.
She swears it’s a big help.
(It’s the biodegradable wood pellets, so shouldn’t do any harm.
Both my boys are fixed, so it doesn’t attract female cats, and also lets other cats know it’s some else’s territory.
I give her the whole tray, but cup sounded better, and I don’t ask for it back.
Yes I was a bit confused the first time, until she explained)
Larger rodents are a surprisingly good deterrent as well. I keep fancy rats in a region that has regular pest problems, and the only time I've ever seen mice indoors was when I was stuck living with an actual hoarder.
And from that experience, I also learned that domesticated rats will murder (and eat, if I don't get there in time) the absolute shit out of any mouse that trespasses in their cage. My fattest, fluffiest, most spoiled of babies was an absolutely brutal hunter, and I suspect would have gone on regular sprees if he hadn't been too lazy to escape.
Dogs are actually better ratters than cats! A good little terrier will be way more efficient than cats, which kill everything else too.
Dogs kill; cats deter. In the long run, cats are better despite killing fewer rats. It's like with plague: kill cats-- die.
The downside of course is everything else that the cats kill on the side, which is why dogs are a better alternative if you don't want dead birds and lizards too.
I have six litter boxes.
ETA: This one sentence comment is objectively hilarious, but context is four cats eight bedroom house and this house is too big for me to clean but most hosemates kinda suck
My across the street neighbor as a kid was a backyard hoarder like this. When he eventually kicked it, and the city had to spend time and money hauling off all the junk, the rats that lived there had nowhere to go.
We caught 217 rats in traps in two months. I cant even imagine how bad the next door and behind neighbors had it. We'd be up at night hearing them chewing in the attic and walls. Who knows how much damage there was behind the walls.
Vermin. A stack of bikes could easily be a lot of places for mice and the like to live.
But what if LAOP lived in Alberta, which has no rats? Would it then be ok?
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be in LAOP's neighbor's yard.
Seems the issue isn't even how ugly it is, but the struggle to have any public utilities wired.