Maybe you think back to the moment you said “yes” to your New Jersey home purchase as a near-magical memory. The house is perfect, you told your spouse. Quality schools are within walking distance. Lakes and parks surround us. The commutes to work are a breeze. Crime seems off-the-charts low. And the price turns out to be less than what we expected to pay.
And maybe you remember saying this, too, as you closed the deal: “Too bad we didn’t get a chance to meet the neighbors.”
Well, now you have. Maybe they’re your best friends. Or perhaps you have been reaching for the Advil regularly since your first encounter.
If the latter is true, don’t feel as though the high emotions you harbor are at all rare or unusual. Not everyone gets along with the folks residing on the other side of the fence line.
In fact, a somewhat vintage though still relevant real estate survey revealed that more than 40% of American homeowners have had disagreements with their neighbors.
Many of those are resolved without undue fanfare, of course. A simple, “Hey, can your kid please turn the music down?” or similarly voiced request in some other context often does the trick.
Not always, though, which can materially escalate matters and make home ownership a true ordeal for some families.
What can you do when civility fails and some next-door nightmare persists that is making your home ownership experience untenable?
You might reasonably want to contact an experienced New Jersey real estate attorney with a proven record of client success in handling neighbor disputes. We’ll have a bit more to say about that in our next blog post, as well as the types of issues that often lead to serious disagreements.