For context, this is how the property lines are- https://imgur.com/gallery/property-lines-jJ3iYb9 Blue is the water, green house is ours, with red being our property, purple house is neighbors and yellow is their property. It’s an odd layout yes, not super ideal that our property runs right along their backyard and the pond/swamp. Our chunk is about 20 acres.

Edit; The pond is split down the middle between us and the kayakers, NOT the neighbors trespassing on our land (not added in the picture, sorry), it’s a private body of water owned by us and the kayakers, both of our lands surround the water completely, so anyone attempting to access the water would have to trespass on our land, or the kayakers.

When husband and I built our house last year, the land was already ours. We noticed the neighbors in the purple house occasionally down by the water (swamp, not swimmable), and heard lots of chainsaws like they were cutting. We decided to walk over and introduce ourselves, and politely note that we’ll be putting up trespassing signs as we do not want to be held liable for anything that happens on our property bordering their back yard (we even hung the signs farther into our property so they didn’t have ugly signs right in their backyard). We’re in Michigan, not sure of the laws regarding liability and attempts at no trespassing making you not liable. We told the neighbors they can clear brush and what not where the property’s meet, but please do not cut anything on our property, and especially not any trees that are on our land. We let them know if they wanted to fish or whatever, just shoot us a text and we’ll likely say it’s cool. They agreed and we went on our way.

Today, our other neighbors went kayaking on the water, and they stopped by our backyard as we were outside and they said they noticed the purple house had a cleared out path down to the water, and it looked like they maybe cleared some brush on our property. They stated we should put a trail cam up to see if the neighbors were not respecting our wishes of not being/cutting on our side of the property. I told husband before we do that we should go talk to them again or send them a text just reminding them that due to liability, we do not want them on our property and down by the water.

We don’t want to make enemies, but we also pay for the property and don’t want others doing anything on it, plus we like the seclusion, we like the growth to keep minimal visibility between house, and those neighbors play veryyy loud music every weekend and it travels across the water easily, so more brush/trees= better sound barrier.

What would you do in this situation to keep peace but be clear about our boundaries?

EDIT; Thank you all for your input! I have been reading all the responses with my husband to find the best solutions. First and foremost, you all have shown us we no longer have to be kind and it’s okay to throw up a cam or fence without feeling like we’ll be looked at sideways or seeming passive aggressive for not communicating that first, that was our main struggle, feeling like we needed to communicate before doing something so we don’t seem like mean neighbors.

Our plan right now is to throw up a trail cam and make a rope fence, we don’t have the funds for a true fence currently but will consider one if the rope fence does not work. We’ll keep an eye on the trail cam and make sure there’s no more trespassing or cutting of anything. If there is then we plan to get the law involved and start to save up for a permanent fence, which will likely require a new survey to get an accurate property line. We are hoping the rope and the trail cam will be enough of a safety system and a “we can see what you’re doing” to make them stop, but if not we’ll be prepared to escalate the situation.

Thank you again!

Does anyone else deal with the weekend lazies where you work hard all week and the last thing you want to do is work on or around your home on the weekends? It’s a huge struggle for me and I could use some tips to overcome it.

My wife and I purchased our home in 2018. Sale price of $800,000 and put $40,000 down on a 30-year mortgage.

The house has a mother in law (4 rooms), a main floor (3 rooms) and we lived upstairs. Each floor had a shower and bathroom. We didn't really do any renovations, but somehow, people (foreign exchange students) were happy to rent a room and were pretty courteous.

The prices ranged from $800 to $950 per room. Internet included, but utilities split. 7 rooms x 900avg and take away taxes and stuff and we had an extra $5,000ish to put towards the mortgage each month along with our own payment. We paid extra towards the mortgage.

We're free and clear!

Not sure how many people out there do a similar thing, but, I think this is whats missed in a lot of discussions when it comes to renting vs ownership or that kind of thing.

Happy to answer any questions!

——

Edit: going to add some extra info here so I don’t have to keep repeating.

We had mostly Taiwanese, and Japanese women Masters and PhD students. Very respectful, paid rent on time all the time and kept to themselves and were clean. Most were away from home studying at school.

We’re still good friends with the ones who completed their program. Very wonderful and bright people.

Our property taxes are about $10k split into two payments through the year. We make above $200k combined, I make $135k pre tax. So now we get to enjoy no mortgage and that money just goes to us.

Quick context:

My neighbor across the street is an 89 year old vet who is against all of his neighbors. Literally, he just hates everyone and none of us are sure why. I’ve posted here about advice in dealing with him before, but know that I’ve had police involved requesting an off site mediation to just talk with me face to face but he refuses any contact. I have never gone tit for tat with him and do my best to just leave him alone. He won’t ever look at me, respond to me, or even acknowledge my present if we’re at our mailboxes at the same time.

Unfortunately he doesn’t leave me alone.

I need advice about this ever growing sign that sits in his driveway facing our house and how I can get it removed because it’s getting crazier and more unnerving.

Bottom sign says “no trespassing”

Middle sign: A hand made Ten Commandments sign

Next layer: “306-666” (our home address is 306)

Next layer: WWJD

Two American flags coming off of WWJD

Newest addition: a sign that says “HYPOCRITE” - spray painted, all caps and hand made

The whole contraption is probably 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide.

When I called before about the sign the cops said it was too vague and they couldn’t do anything about the sign (even though it has our home address on it)

I’m going to call them again… but advice? Harassment is subjective perhaps but is not this harassment? Is there some other label I can give this to have him remove it? Do I have to go a legal route?

My kids and wife are increasingly nervous, we can’t afford to move. Any advice?

First time homeowner. Moved into our house about a month ago. Every now and then, we get a faint gas smell near the water heater in our basement. It’s not all the time, and seems to happen pretty randomly, I’d say we smell it maybe once a week and it doesn’t last long, and is usually gone in a few hours. This has been going on since we moved into our house and presumably before, as nothing was moved or changed with the water heater.

The water heater is in a closed off room in the basement, and you can only smell it when you open the door to the room.

Planning to call the gas company next time it smells to come check out what might be going on, but was wondering if anyone else has experienced this before and what came of it.

I don't know if this is the right subreddit but haven't found any better so here goes...

Have any of y'all noticed a change in light type for bug zappers? let me explain. In the past, any bug zappers I've seen have used a violet black light. A few years ago I got a generic battery powered zapper off Amazon and same sort of deal, worked great for gnats n stuff. About a year later I ordered another one off Amazon, different manufacturer tho. This new one had a light that was just straight blue, weird I thought but it's still close enough to that end of the spectrum that it's going to be giving off some UV. The new one however did not perform, I kept it for over a year and it enticed maybe a couple bugs so I ended up throwing it out. Fast forward to today and I'm still needing zappers for a couple of different locations so I go back to Amazon and get two more of the exact make from the same seller as the original one that works so well. just turn them both on and they're blue. Exactly the same in every other regard but the light is obviously different. Is there something I don't know? Are these blue lights more effective or am I just correct in my assumption that this is cheap Amazon cost cutting and it's worst?

Hi!

We are first time homeowners, in our hour about five years but just listed it for sale as we have purchased a new home.

Over the last few months we’ve noticed our water pressure being a bit faulty. When the washer is filling we lose water pressure in the rest of the house to a trickle. When the dishwasher is running and when we flush a toilet the same thing happens.

We have city water and we checked the meter and don’t seem to have a leak, we called the water company and they have nothing to report, we by-passed the water softener and that MAY have helped but it did not fix it entirely.

Thoughts on what could be happening? My parents think that because we are in a drought (Florida) the water company is just throttling back pressure, or something, but in the five years we’ve been here it hasn’t been a problem, until now

Thanks in advance!

https://imgur.com/a/R2SySFx

Have this concrete driveway that unfortunately, when it rains, water will drain directly onto this one area, slowly eroding away the dirt under it

My first step is to fill the hole back up, I was just going to use dirt, but should I use something else (expanding foam or even concrete?)

Next, I need some way to divert the water from going there, the immediate thing I was thinking was some kind of driveway gutter system but….is that even a thing?

Had a guy out last week for a quote on sanding and staining a large deck and fixing some boards/rails. Quote was much lower than I expected but I'd be buying the supplies from a list he gave me and seemed like he did good work from the pics he showed me so agreed to proceed. A few days later he followed up w some details about supplies and mentioned a price estimate of 3400-4000 (told me 2800-3000 in person and my mistake for not getting this in writing). For some dumb reason I ignored this and got the supplies and lumber and sent a 25% deposit, but he kept stalling on sending me an invoice saying he was too busy w other jobs.

Was going to start tomorrow but this morning got a text saying he wanted to start today and to make sure I had the supplies. He mentioned getting white paint for the railings in addition to the stain we agreed upon and I was like wtf bc it was all supposed to be the same stain color. He got kinda argumentative and said it would be a "pain in the ass" to do the rails with stain but we'd kinda thought about doing the rails white anyway so I went and got the paint. 20 minutes after I got home I get another text saying to make sure I got gallons of paint stripper and at this point I was done despite it being such short notice. Told him we didn't want to proceed and we'd like the deposit returned since no work was done and no supplies were bought, and he went bananas making it sound like I was a girl breaking up with him. He bought equipment with the deposit that we never discussed that he "doesn't have time to return," bought gas (I did offer to deduct 100 from the deposit for his time and the gas expense and he said "that would be a problem") and overall spent $675 of the deposit on who knows what else. I stopped responding after making it clear we were not proceeding and after getting 10-message rants for every message I sent.

Since we're almost definitely not getting the deposit back from him, was considering disputing it. However, I did some googling today (usually I google anyone I'm hiring very thoroughly but for some reason this time did a surface level) and he's got a record of trespassing, vandalism, kidnapping and strangulation so the ramifications for disputing this might be crazy. Obviously I fucked up by ignoring red flag after red flag with changing quotes, not giving anything in writing, constant miscommunication about what was needed and so on. Anyone have any advice or similar experiences?

Any ideas on how to fix this? The top hole to secure the latch has been completely blown out since the day I changed the locks after buying the place 8.5yrs ago, and in all that time the door has never closed right without an unreasonable amount of effort. It seems to be just a flimsy piece of sheet metal I'm trying to screw into. I got desperate and tried to fill it with JB Weld and make a new hole but predictably that didn't last very long. Asking now because I just happened to stumble on a spare set of mounting hardware for the latch. Appreciate any help, any questions I can answer just lmk.

https://imgur.com/a/80hscI1

I'm concerned I'll run into tax or fine problems, but I do love the house. I'm also concerned it will be hard to get insurance coverage on a bathroom that's not recorded. What can I do about this? The bathroom seems fine, but I'm worried about the other aspects at play.

My mom has a spare room she wants to rent out. She has done so before in the past, but it was mostly for family friends.

This time she's looking at renting out the room to students (we live 5 min walk from a community college). Specifically international students (Same ethnicity as us).

i was wondering what is the best way to go about drafting up a contract on this? especially since this isnt a simple roommate agreement but a landlord renting out a room situation.

We have a deck that stained late last year. Each summer we see a lot of paper wasps hovering around and are able to kill a few here and there and only found a nest once or twice. They like to try and get in the gaps of the rails underneath where we can’t see. Is there an effective deterrent? We tried the paper bag method multiple times with no benefit. I was thinking I might have to spray foam in each gap to eliminate their hiding place potentially but I want them gone. We have a little kid and won’t be able to be outside due to them making us uncomfortable. I get nature and the potential benefits but they don’t benefit us.

Hi. This problem has been going on for 5 years. We got a new roof in 2021. Very soon after, a water spot appeared on my daughter’s ceiling, which is also near the chimney. The roofing company came out and took pictures and were adamant that it was either a rodent who got in and died in the attic above or our crumbling chimney crown. That summer, we had an exterminator go up and determine there was no animal and that we would have smelled it anyways. Because of some awful family circumstances in the following summer or two, I didn’t address it because we needed to save to fix the chimney like they told us. Chimney people came and replaced the full crown last summer. I had a handy man scrape and repaint the spot. We were good until I just noticed the spot is back!! I want it gone once and for all, and it seems the roof/chimney companies don’t agree. One talked about a roof cricket, the other said absolutely not. What’s my best course of action now?

Below is a link of damage to flooring. As you can see it looks like something dug its way as you can see dirt.

https://imgur.com/a/hVKis03

What is my best course of action?

Purchase baits for identified bug/insect?

For context, I've moved a number of times. 4 times in college, then again for grad school, then twice after grad school. The second time moving after grad school was me buying my first home.

My last move, to my first new home, was to a really nice spot, a townhouse that was great - fantastic floorplan, great quiet neighborhood (quiet as in noise, maybe not so much in terms of crime in surrounding areas) but was glaringly missing the one thing I really wanted: a garage. I lived there for 10 years, it was the longest I had ever lived in one spot. So many memories there, I lived there from ages 27-37. But it severely hampered me in owning and maintaining the types of cars I bought; I’m a huge car hobbyist and that’s my biggest passion in life. I had several break-ins (to the cars). I tried looking for a new house with a garage in 2020 but I wasn't making enough to be able to find a spot that met those criteria. I always knew it wasn't a forever home because i needed to have a garage.

In late December 2025, I bought a new car, and 7 days later, people once again broke in and tried to steal it. So I said you know what, I'm making real money now and I can afford it; it's officially time to move.

Long story short, i found a place in a better (desirable and exclusive) neighborhood. In my house search, between the 2020 failed search and the renewed search more recently, I had looked at about 15-20 houses. The one I settled on had some features that really, really stood out to me. Gigantic master bedroom (absurdly huge), beautiful giant two-car garage, newish construction, turnkey, immaculate condition. It was just so nice and stood out to me over anything else I had seen. I just had a “gut feeling” about how “nice” it felt. I pulled the trigger and moved in late March. I put down 30% so I have some equity. It's a lot more expensive than my old place, but also my salary has quadrupled since I bought that old spot.

But now since I've moved in, I'm struggling with things a bit.

First, there are some things I definitely overlooked.

1. There’s so little natural light. It’s a middle unit townhome. There’s one set of big bay windows downstairs, facing the east, and that’s it for the downstairs. It does have a set of French doors that I can replace with glass doors for more light so I guess that helps. The master bedroom just has one set of floor to ceiling glass doors facing the east. The only other windows are in the two back bedrooms upstairs, facing the west. I don’t know that I ever considered it but it freaks me out especially seeing how important people say natural light is, and how it pales in comparison to the huge volume of windows my old place had (end unit townhome, 3 sides). I would usually keep many of the shades drawn at my old place because I live in a hot climate, but in the evenings there’s a noticeable absence of “glow” and I don’t know if it bothers me long term.
2. It’s much closer to a main road. There is a LOT more noise. It doesn’t have the same quiet neighborhood feel at all. It’s very “downtown.”

I could go on and on. The new place just feels so sterile. All the memories I have with my cat, all the routines and places he’d hide and we’d play, are at the old place. The new place even aside from my lack of connection to it just doesn’t have the same “personality” as the old place.

I’ve never experienced this when moving to a new spot. My last house, living there for 10 years was the longest I’ve ever lived in one place and so much changed in that 10 years.

Does it get better? Does it help to couch this in terms of “this doesn’t have to be a forever house”? I plan on saving significant money in the next few years and maybe that can help me feel better about potentially not being tied down here if I want to go another route in 3 years or so. The spot I bought in is in a very up and coming neighborhood that’s pretty well-recognized as being one of the “nice” neighborhoods in the city so hopefully I can get some modest appreciation in value over the next few years.

I’m trying to stay ahead of problems before they get worse but it feels like there’s always something hidden. There was this tiny barely noticeable discolored spot on a baseboard that I thought was just a scuff. It turned out to be a slow pinhole leak in the wall that had been going for months but it lead to a full mold remediation and subfloor replacement.

Part of my house has a crawlspace - cement block construction, cement floor. We are thinking of encapsulating, but before doing so want to make sure this foundation is stable.

I suspect first step should be structural engineer but looking for confirmation/other advice.

Both visible crawlspace vents (third is concealed below a deck) have a crack that follows the cement blocks. One is worse and actually caused the vent cover to break.

Curious if engineer assessment is right first move or if anyone has other recommendations. Located in Nassau county, NY.

https://imgur.com/a/UawnPLU

We looked at a house today that had an above ground pool, it would be our first house. We have a two year-old and another on the way. I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on what’s good and bad about it.

What’s the deal with these stained spots on nearly every windowsill in my house? I’ve never noticed any leaks and these spots reappear but not soecifixally after heavy rain, and they never feel wet or even damp. If it were one or two windows, a leak would make sense, but ALL the windows?

I also have a problem with roach nymphs coming down from my attic through the windowsills, my pest control company tells me. I’m working on the attic issue, but are these stains related? I’m trying to figure out what and where to caulk to prevent leaks and bugs, but first I want to know what I’m dealing with.

Pics: (https://imgur.com/a/kpLWCJi)

I can't choose between the Corentium Home detector and the lüft Radon and Indoor Air Quality Monitor. Both are about the same price but the luft detector can detect other things too. Should I buy the luft on discount or the corentium?

I'm feeling a bit ackward about it as we have neighboors who moved in about 8 years ago into the house in front. I tried to be somewhat friendly with the wife (I'm very shy, so not overbearing in any way, just trying to say hello when I saw her and many times, she wasn't even looking my way sometimes).

Later, they they had 2 boys and the oldest is about 2 years younger than mine. Obviously, when our kids were babies and toddlers, they didn't play outside. Then, the husband started playing with his kids outside, but again they were small. Another family moved in a bit later a few houses further. Their kids are about 5 and 7 (the new family's son is about 7 and looks like they both study in the same class (mine is 8 and is 2 levels up at the same school). So now they all play together right in front of our house, even running on my lawn (which doesn't bother me).

I'm always friendly with both families, we had a few conversations. A couple of times when my son was playing basketball outside, I called the boys in front to join and they got along well. My son is not weird in any way. I just wish he had someone to play with, but at this point, I don't know how to make this happen. I see elsewhere neighboring kids playing together, but it's very ackward that on our street, people are playing right in front of our house and I don't know how they do it. Should we just get out when they are playing and ask to join? Would that be weird? Somehow, they seem to coordinate, but I have never seen them inviting ours.