We know all too well at this point that HOAs are full of obnoxious type-A individuals who will stop at nothing to make your neighborhood experience a living nightmare. No HOA is immune to these extremes, so it is up to homeowners to find some level of healthy distance from them so that life in the neighborhood is at least slightly bearable. Now, as someone who lives in a city, my personal encounters with HOAs are nonexistent, but I also know full well what it's like to be taken advantage of by…

Imagine paying a premium to work your way into this crazy housing market, purchasing a house from someone who paid a quarter of that amount for it 15 years ago. You're probably still going to be coming to grips with the weight of your new mortgage when you're confronted by your new neighbor, a “lifetime” resident, who regards you with disdain because, for one reason or another, they don't think you're worthy of replacing their longtime neighbors whom they had grown fond of. The reality is that…

It doesn't matter how old and grumpy your entitled male Karen neighbor may be. Make no mistake: he does not write the rules. As someone who cannot afford to live in a residential neighborhood, I can merely compare this incident to one that happened to me in a communal laundry room in my apartment building. When I first moved into what is now my current place, there was this older lady who claimed that I could not use one of the washing machines because “everyone knows that it's her machine.” Ev…

In life, it's not worth worrying about the little things, especially when there are much bigger things to worry about… Yet, each neighborhood somehow manages to have that one neighbor who has nothing important to worry about and spends their days obsessing over petty details and perceived slights, plotting about how they're going to hold their neighbors accountable for that single blade of grass that went unmowed, or that leaf that blew over the property line that one time three summers ago.

HOAs are determined to keep their neighborhoods looking pristine , no matter what. If you happen to live a neighborhood rules by a home owner's association, you don't always have a lot of choice about how to keep your home. For example, you might want to paint your home a nice warm yellow color, but lots of HOAs have a strict color palette you need to choose from. So the HOA could easily reject your request , and insist you paint your place a boring gray color instead.

It's fairly perplexing when a company is particularly bad at providing a service, especially when that company's sole purpose for existence is to provide that service. When you're a leaf collection company, that kind of implies that you're going to be collecting a lot of leaves, and it would be fair for people to expect you to be adept at doing so. Well, it turns out that while a lot of companies brand themselves as providing such-and-such service, really, their main priority isn't providing go…

Moving house is a stressful affair that is capped off by the uncertainty of who your new neighbors will be. It's like you're spending your entire life savings to get a single roll of a D20, which could very well end up in a critical failure. After all, nothing makes or breaks the enjoyment of a peaceable existence like ending up next to the wrong people; you could have the most perfect abode that you'd ever dreamed of and still be more miserable than you were in your little old decrepit one if…

When you come home to find a strange car parked in your driveway or assigned parking space, there really isn't much more to be done than to go through the proper procedure for having that car ticketed and towed. Of course, if you're feeling generous and know your neighbor owns the car, it might be the neighborly thing to do to give them a heads-up or a reminder that they've parked in your space. You never know. There could be some kind of emergency going on, like they could have really needed t…

This person couldn't have undecorated fast enough for one of their neighbors. It seems like every year people debate how long it's okay to leave holiday decorations up until. Is it okay to leave a Christmas tree up until February? What about leaving holiday lights up year-round? And when exactly should you switch from Thanksgiving decorations to Hanukkah or Christmas ones? It varies differently from family to family. Plus, people set up their decorations at different times, too. Some love to st…

Sometimes, your petty actions go much further than you had originally intended, and without realizing it, you're pulling on a thread that will continue to unravel, causing a cascading effect that knocks over the first domino in a chain that "Rube Goldbergs" into a house of cards and sends the whole thing crashing down. Well, it turns out that when you accuse your terrible neighbor of being a serial cheater, sending anonymous messages pretending to be his mistress, that might be pretty upsetting…

As we age, we have a tendency to become less tolerant of those around us. We might even feel bad about that waning tolerance, yet we find it happening all the same. For example, I, now in my 30s, don't care at all for the screeching sound of children. Am I a Karen? Maybe—but regardless of that, it remains a certain fact that I would never intentionally buy a house adjacent to a park or a school as I can not abide by loud noises like the screeching of children. But here's the trick when it comes…

Every so often, you come across a story where a board member of a local HOA actually turns out to be a three-dimensional human with a soul and a conscience. If this story serves as any indication, sometimes it really only takes one good person to uncover silly systemic issues, to identify real solutions to try and fix said silly systemic issues, and to essentially get something done.

This dude has many problems, the first of which is the fact that he bought a house with a two-car garage despite owning six cars. What was he thinking? If it's a situation where that was the best he could afford, then this dude needs to sell four of those cars. Personally, I cannot wrap my brain around someone who feels the need to own that many vehicles in the first place. If it's your “hobby,” it sure is an expensive one that you cannot afford, sir. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/pettyr…

They say, “You are what you eat." Who are they, you ask? What do they want, and why are they saying this? What are they eating? And what does that, consequently, make them? While all these answers remain unanswered maybe they should change what they're saying from “You are what you eat” to “You are what you throw over the fence into your neighbor's yard.” Still, whatever you're throwing, and no matter what that makes you, throwing something over a fence is always going to make you trashy .

There's no greater nightmare than purchasing what seems to be the perfect home only to move in and realize the reason the previous owners wanted out… The neighbors. The realization might dawn immediately on the first fateful meeting, or it might be a slow burn, with the realization dawning over time.

Some people don't know how to pick their battles, like these next door neighbors . U/PipeOrganTransplant shared their neighborhood drama , which all started with a hedge. The OP loves their forsythia hedge, while the neighbors think it blocks their view . But the rules and regulations around them state that the neighbors can't do anything about the plants. So instead, they got creative, and tried to find other ways to bring the OP down a peg. There are some people in life that you just can't pl…