How to deal with an abandoned house next door
An abandoned neighboring property quickly turns into an overgrown eyesore with tall weeds and unkempt yards that go unmanaged for years. This leaves adjacent homeowners stuck living next to neglected spaces that degrade neighborhood conditions without a clear, immediate way to reach the absent owners.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Reaching out to the owner via text
- 2Checking real estate listings to see if the house went up for sale
- 3Leaving the property alone while it becomes an eyesore
- 4Dropping the asking price multiple times
- 5Considering renting out the property
- 6Waiting out the neighbor's foreclosure proceedings
- 7Building or having a fence around the property
- 8Using snake repellent products
- 9Calling county animal control or code enforcement
- 10Hiring a local trapper for relocation
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Every single prospective buyer has cited their house as the reason for passing on ours.”source ↗
“Both of us are exhausted by this and want to drop the price significantly just to offload the stress.”source ↗
“Abandoned houses are surprisingly common. We lived next to one for years.”source ↗
“Yes it does help but i cant keep buying it forever just because my neighbor couldn’t care less about the yard. I shouldn’t be wasting my money to keep the snakes from getting in my yard.”source ↗
“They abandoned the home and never sold it. The front and back yard have both become unkept - weeds and random shrubs have grown tall and taken over.”source ↗
“I’ve had an absent neighbor in the house behind me for almost two years. I never talked to them much or anything but it seemed like one day they just vanished.”source ↗
“It has grown so many trees and other things in there. It’s starting to get bad because there are snakes starting to live there and my poor animals are scared and have been killed by them already before.”source ↗
“I spoke to the owner and she refuses to clean it.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 16Neighbor is encroaching on my property line to sell their house
- 3How to fix up an overgrown, rocky rental yard on a budget
- 5Neighbor AC leak caused mold and nobody is responding
- 3How to kill volunteer trees near a house without herbicides
- 5How to fix laminate floor damage before moving out without losing deposit
- 9How to stop heavy rain from eroding yard and fence