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 the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- This comes up 28.5× more often in r/homeowners than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Reaching out to the owner via textDid this help you?
- 2Checking real estate listings to see if the house went up for saleDid this help you?
- 3Leaving the property alone while it becomes an eyesoreDid this help you?
- 4Dropping the asking price multiple timesDid this help you?
- 5Considering renting out the propertyDid this help you?
- 6Waiting out the neighbor's foreclosure proceedingsDid this help you?
- 7Building or having a fence around the propertyDid this help you?
- 8Using snake repellent productsDid this help you?
- 9Calling county animal control or code enforcementDid this help you?
- 10Hiring a local trapper for relocationDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Abandoned houses are surprisingly common. We lived next to one for years.”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 ↗
“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 ↗
“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
- 32Neighbor is encroaching on my property line to sell their house
- 2How to talk to neighbors about lawn care debris without starting a fight
- 13How to fix up an overgrown, rocky rental yard on a budget
- 3Should I buy the empty lot next door?
- 5Neighbor AC leak caused mold and nobody is responding
- 2How to stop neighbors from interrupting yardwork