There goes the neighborhood, or are we just grouchy retired people?

[Route246]

Pride of ownership is something that can be very tricky these days in NorCal. The highest priced areas get chased and inflated due to school test scores. It becomes irrational exuberance at some point and those that buy in have no funds left over to do much except pay on their $800K mortgage (whatever the IRS limit is these days), hence pride of ownership suffers.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

It's because "net worth" isn't an engine of spending. It's a statement of our accumulations, of our lifetime achievements. If my net worth is higher tomorrow than today, then it means, that today I accomplished something. One reason that I loathed and despised my former house, is that it refused to appreciate in price. It did nothing for my net worth... between the capital losses and the taxes, it only diminished my net worth. It was a horrid regret, over which I'm still traumatized, years later.

A pot roast with onions, potatoes, carrots and gravy. I’ll eat it year round, but we tend to eat it more often in the winter. Even then, it’s not often so always a treat. Generally, this time of year, we’re eating some hearty soups and chili’s. I always like a nice salad but the ingredients look pathetic through winter so we get our vegetables from the types that can canned or frozen.

Ask your agent.

Interesting .... I talked with my agent about a later claim being made after I had dissolved my LLC and subsequently let my policy lapse. I was told that I would be covered by the policy as long as the claim made was concerning an issue which occurred during the time my policy was active.

I will check again later to see if I get a consistent story from them. I also plan to check with my state regarding liability lawsuits.

I was told I need not save a lot of money since I'd inherit (no amount specified) but it was implied it would be a few bucks. . .

I did not get a dime so it is is a good thing I didn't listen. . .

I'm old now but both parents could have easily afforded to pay for things like grad school (I was a very good student) and help on things and I got. . . nothing . . .

This is one of the topics that makes me feel sort of bad cause though at the time I didn't expect anything now I wonder why I didn't get it. It wasn't like I was out robbing 7-11s or something. . .

The upside is I can be proud of supporting myself I guess.

It is, but not all carriers offer it and those that do, may only offer a lower amount.

A big misconception about the coverage is that claims are easily settled in your favor when you have it, and that isn't the case. Progressive got a ton of bad press over what the uninformed would have deemed a simple case.

Essentially, when you make a claim against your uninsured motorist coverage, YOUR insurance company steps into the shoes of the person you had the accident with, and defends them (essentially) against your claim. Its one of those times when the company with whom you have a contract and with whom is supposed to owe you a duty shifts, and becomes adversarial.

So would investing in lumber companies, drywall companies, shingle companies, copper wiring companies be speculative or investing, considering the recent fires in LA?

It's because "net worth" isn't an engine of spending. It's a statement of our accumulations, of our lifetime achievements. If my net worth is higher tomorrow than today, then it means, that today I accomplished something. One reason that I loathed and despised my former house, is that it refused to appreciate in price. It did nothing for my net worth... between the capital losses and the taxes, it only diminished my net worth. It was a horrid regret, over which I'm still traumatized, years later.

Off topic, but how does one generate $60K in annual rent from a mere $1.5M farm? If the rate of return were that high, why not buy millions of acres, and forget about the stock market (or at least, the bond market)?

I never took pride in former property... regretted buying it, about 15 minutes after receiving the front-door keys.... but wasn't willing/able to sell it, for 20 years. Eventually sold it at a loss.

Why "no pride"? I had distaste for the state, locale and neighborhood. It was a foolish purchase. I now realize that buying a house is an intimate statement, like pledging for a fraternity, or even getting married. It's NOT merely a financial transaction! It's a huge disservice by the housing and real-estate industry, to regard buying a house as merely (or even primarily) a financial decision.

Off topic, but how does one generate $60K in annual rent from a mere $1.5M farm? If the rate of return were that high, why not buy millions of acres, and forget about the stock market (or at least, the bond market)?

I never took pride in former property... regretted buying it, about 15 minutes after receiving the front-door keys.... but wasn't willing/able to sell it, for 20 years. Eventually sold it at a loss.

Why "no pride"? I had distaste for the state, locale and neighborhood. It was a foolish purchase. I now realize that buying a house is an intimate statement, like pledging for a fraternity, or even getting married. It's NOT merely a financial transaction! It's a huge disservice by the housing and real-estate industry, to regard buying a house as merely (or even primarily) a financial decision.

I paid $1.5 million for the mere farm, I didn't say when. It has increased in value to approx. $2.600,000 value today. $60,000 of rental income amounts to 2.3% annual yield on its present value. Not hard to beat. Investors have quit buying farmland in our area, they can earn more elsewhere.

 

[yhoomajor]

Back in 2021 the HOA in my neighborhood decided that all the houses had to be repainted by January 2023 (unless they had been repainted earlier) as all the houses were now ~20yr old and the paint had deteriorated. Nothing wrong with this in my view. My house didn't look bad but many did (the amount of paint deterioration seemed to be dependent on the color of the paint). I complied, getting my house repainted in October of 2022. Now in March of 2025, over two years after the deadline, several houses are not repainted.

Out of curiosity I visited the assessors website. Almost all of the non-repainted houses are owned by private equity as rentals. As the HOA is quick to threaten for trash cans and weeds, I can only assume that they are terrified of the attorneys that the private equity companies have and so just let them go.

Just venting

Are we in the same HOA? Timelines match about the paint job.

 

[PlayinwithFIRE]

We've had a mixed bag on neighbors at our various houses over the years.
As much as I've considered what makes a good neighbor or the other side of that coin, there seems to be larger factors afoot that determine those outcomes than I am willing to understand or have the hubris to assume I know.

many times, its not a flagrant disregard for standards, but something more insidious like impoverishment.

pwf

 

[Turbo29]

Are we in the same HOA? Timelines match about the paint job.

I'm in Arizona but I'm sure that there are numerous neighborhoods built ~20yrs ago and that many HOA management companies use the same playbook. There are probably hundreds of HOA's that sent out the painting notice in 2021.

 

[Semi-Retyrd]

Our last house was in a gated community in SW Las Vegas with armed guards at the gate entrances. We had a strong HOA that enforced all the covenants and we were required to fix several items over the period we lived there. It was a five minute walk to the golf course at the center and to the rec club with a fully outfitted gym, meeting rooms and several large pools. The overall feeling was of an Oasis in the desert kept up to snuff with a grounds keeping crew paid by the HOA. They planted and rotated flowers near the street intersections every three months. The guards had patrol cars roaming the community each night, so there was no vandalism and there were speed cameras on the main roads. You had to notify the guards via an online app prior to any visitors coming to let them in.
For me it was a fifteen minute drive to the casinos on the strip where I played low stakes poker with a bunch of older friends. All in all I loved that place except our 3700Sq Ft house was just too big for two people to maintain.
Soooo.. we sold it and moved to Korea where we bought the top floor of a four story apartment house that is new and at 1500 sq ft much easier to maintain. More on that later.
Cheers, D

 

[Koolau]

Our last house was in a gated community in SW Las Vegas with armed guards at the gate entrances. We had a strong HOA that enforced all the covenants and we were required to fix several items over the period we lived there. It was a five minute walk to the golf course at the center and to the rec club with a fully outfitted gym, meeting rooms and several large pools. The overall feeling was of an Oasis in the desert kept up to snuff with a grounds keeping crew paid by the HOA. They planted and rotated flowers near the street intersections every three months. The guards had patrol cars roaming the community each night, so there was no vandalism and there were speed cameras on the main roads. You had to notify the guards via an online app prior to any visitors coming to let them in.
For me it was a fifteen minute drive to the casinos on the strip where I played low stakes poker with a bunch of older friends. All in all I loved that place except our 3700Sq Ft house was just too big for two people to maintain.
Soooo.. we sold it and moved to Korea where we bought the top floor of a four story apartment house that is new and at 1500 sq ft much easier to maintain. More on that later.
Cheers, D

Been meaning to suggest you slow down on posting. 5 posts in 17 years must be nearly a record!

But seriously, I look forward to your Korea story. Sounds very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Luvtoride]

We are very fortunate in regard to our home. We live in the same town my DW and I grew up in, and in our house of 44 years. Our neighborhood of 8 homes on a cul-de-sac street has remained as a typical suburban enclave with a mix of young families and old-timers like us and our next door neighbors who have lived here longer than us (and we’re still friends). Yes, we’re close to a train line and a highway but we got used to the noise decades ago while raising our 2 daughters, one of which lives a mile away in the same town with her husband and two of our grandkids.
We’ve considered moving into one of the many apartment complex’s going up in the area, but the living space is too small and they are very expensive! Instead we have doubled down on staying in our house, doing major decorating and upgrade improvements the last two years.
I feel for those whose neighborhoods have changed as there is not much you can do when neighbors sell and the new owners are not in keeping with the vibe of the neighborhood.

 

[Tdoug58]

We can relate lived in new 4/2 house with pool, lush landscaping etc. for 40 years, raised 3 great kids in a great neighborhood. But we somehow got the worst on each side. One was a hoarder house with drugs and a mess the other was a bunch with abuse and a visit from the SWAT TEAM!
SOLD it and built in a gated 55+ community where the big issue yesterday was a neighbor complaining about dogs peeing in his yard.
Works for us.

 

[yhoomajor]

I'm in Arizona but I'm sure that there are numerous neighborhoods built ~20yrs ago and that many HOA management companies use the same playbook. There are probably hundreds of HOA's that sent out the painting notice in 2021.

Arizona here as well

 

[Lewis Clark]

Back in 2021 the HOA in my neighborhood decided that all the houses had to be repainted by January 2023 (unless they had been repainted earlier) as all the houses were now ~20yr old and the paint had deteriorated. Nothing wrong with this in my view. My house didn't look bad but many did (the amount of paint deterioration seemed to be dependent on the color of the paint). I complied, getting my house repainted in October of 2022. Now in March of 2025, over two years after the deadline, several houses are not repainted.

Out of curiosity I visited the assessors website. Almost all of the non-repainted houses are owned by private equity as rentals. As the HOA is quick to threaten for trash cans and weeds, I can only assume that they are terrified of the attorneys that the private equity companies have and so just let them go.

Just venting

We all know what they say about assuming anything.

Depending on state laws, HOAs have limited powers to enforce their own rules. As one lousy example, Florida keeps changing its HOA laws to make it harder for an HOA to enforce its rules, and in some cases intentionally changes the laws to invalidate an HOA rule.

Florida permits implementing fines, but the fining process is long and it requires a committee independent of the Board to assess the fine. Some communities cannot find volunteers to serve on a fining committee, so fines are not possible.

In some cases, if sending a "pretty please" letter does not solve the problem, the only next available step is to initiate a lawsuit. That's a huge expense and time sink. Your Board may have considered lawsuits. Choosing to avoid the costs (in time and money) of a lawsuit is not the same as being afraid of attorneys.

 

[Gumby]

In my experience, the reason most lawsuits settle is because litigation through trial is incredibly expensive, and the American rule is that, except where provided by contract or statute, each side must pay its own legal expenses. That means you can win in court but still lose economically.

 

[marko]

OP, I could have written your post!

DW and I bought the family homestead that had been in the family for over 100 years. It was a large oceanfront property with a private neighborhood beach and other similar homes. It was to be our forever home and over 35 years we had put a few hundred thousand dollars into it.

Our do-gooder neighbor decided to convert her house into essentially a low income rooming house. Overnight we became an undesirable area with pit bulls, drug busts, people with full-face tattoos, more drug busts, loud music and people coming and going at 3, 4 and 5 am every night.

Five years ago this month we decided that we were too old and too rich (DWs words) to put up with this crap.

We bought into a gated community, yes with a blessed HOA, and could not be happier! Best decision we ever made!

OP: Life is too short. Get the heck out of there and into someplace nice that you deserve!

 

[HFWR]

I vote grouchy… No HOA in my hood, but I have one neighbor who is the neighborhood busybody, and a lovely man who regraded his foundation just enough that rain pools in my yard now… I avoid him at all costs, rather than be subjected to his in(s)ane bullsh!t…

 

[kilgore]

If I lived in a "convent controlled" neighborhood, I would expect it to be really quiet .

 

[Happy30]

We have 2 homes and both are wooded lol! Our main home is in a suburb on 2 acres. Our lake home is in a rural area on 10 acres and I love it there! I wonder if a smaller home with a lot more property might be worth the move for you!

 

[meleana]

We lived on 10 1/2 wooded acres with barely a neighbor around, but when we retired we moved out of state to an 85 home HOA community in a vacation area into a little cottage on .2 acres. Less then half are full time and the rest part-time snowbirds. Lakes region.

Things are kept nice. A lot of people are on vacation or a weekend getaway so they’re happy. It’s in NH so winters are quiet here, even though there are a few skiers. It’s a nice balance.

I’d say the average age here is 60’s and 70’s, but many in 50’s, a few in their 40’s, a couple in their 30’s with little kids, and Others in their 80’s.

 

[meleana]

Our neighborhood, thankfully, has not declined. We have a lot more rentals now, but not too many. And there are some HOA heroes that managed to get the covenants changed so new home buyers can't rent if the % rentals is over a threshold. But existing owners are grandfathered and can rent irrespective of the %. So we solved that problem, and although the neighborhood has turned over (new crop of little kids running around), it beats the cranky teens and boomerang young adults that dominated for a long time. Unfortunately quite a few friends sold and moved to retirement pastures. We might too, but it's pretty cheap. 2 people in this huge house seems inefficient, but there's nowhere else we want to be bad enough to move...30 years in one house... moving would be a nightmare.

I wish our HOA would do that- change the bylaws regarding rentals- but they won’t. More and more since COVID new buyers are renting out.

But they don’t seem to want to pay an atty and yes, current owners would be grandfathered in even if they did.

 

[YB88]

Moved to a community recently with an HOA. Only positives so far, at least --- very tidy, nice neighbors, dues aren't that high, especially for what we get. If there's a downside it's perhaps that the people who maintain everyone's front yards are around too often so it's a bit noisy with leaf blowers and the like occasionally. I can live with that.

 

[M Paquette]

DW and I moved to easily the worst home in a very nice neighborhood, and lived out of her old apartment for 6 months while we and contractors worked over the property. It was a fixer-upper, and for the difference between what we paid and what other homes were selling for, we figured we could make it a very nice place indeed.

The house went from a 3 bedrooms 2 1/2 baths to 4 bedrooms 3 baths with a relatively minor reconfiguration, turning an office with 1/2 bath (yes, in a residential neighborhood. Fixer-uppers…) into a second master suite for my sister-in-law. New paint, repairs to a set of rotted beams on the porch, new roof, overgrown landscaping cleared, trees pruned, sidewalks uncovered as we ripped out old bushes, and now the property looks totally different.

Here comes the neighborhood?

 

[MichaelH13]

Yes, we went through something very similar. We lived in our family home for over 25 years—beautiful lot, great memories, and a yard we poured our hearts into. But slowly, the neighborhood changed. The sense of community faded, the pride of ownership wasn’t there anymore, and honestly, we felt like strangers in a place that used to feel like home.

It was a hard decision, but we eventually sold and found a place on the edge of town with more space, fewer neighbors, and the peace we were craving. I won’t lie—it was emotional to leave. But once we settled into the new place, we felt like we could breathe again. We started fresh with the garden, and I found it surprisingly healing.

If your home no longer brings you peace, it might be worth exploring what's out there. You don’t have to settle for condo life—maybe a smaller home with a big yard in a quieter area is out there waiting for you. Just take your time and listen to what your gut is telling you.

 

[mickeyd]

We have several hundred retired neighbors here @ our CCRC. Never a dull moment and many options to choose from. I hear that you can also choose to do nothing at all, if you want.

Oops....time for pickleball, gotta run.

 

[HFWR]

My hood is pretty good. Mostly quiet except for the ever-present traffic noise from without. Biggest peave is parking in the street. Every home in the hood has at least a two-car garage and a driveway.

 

[CO-guy]

Our neighborhood has changed in the past two decades we've lived here from a (relatively) LCOL area to a (shockingly) HCOL area. It has done wonders for our home's value. Same with our neighbors. When we arrived, there were 2-3 burger/steak/brewery places in town along with a greasy spoon that served breakfast. Now there's more than a half-dozen coffee shops as well as juice, smoothie, and kombucha bars, and another 15-20 additional dining establishments serving all kinds of cuisine from ramen and sushi to tapas and wood fired flatbreads made from locally ground flour.

Thankfully, we've had nearly all of the same neighbors for the entire time we've owned our home; watched their kids grow up, gathered for pot-lucks and block parties. We talk regularly over the 3' fence that we built together to separate our yards, as opposed to the 6' fencing that surrounds them to keep out the deer. No HOA and an annual property tax rate below .2% of the home's value. Similar annual cost for homeowners insurance.

 

[indiajust]

I took photo of my grandparents house in PA. Crime scene tape, murder on porch, hot tub full of trash and weeds, duplex covered in antennas and cable tv cords, abandoned. Nearby lots vacant after houses torn down. Great grandmother brick house still there, harder to chop up into rent a dump.