When You Love The House – But Not The Neighbour’s!
You’ve been traveling around Calgary looking for the perfect home and have finally found it. Everything looks great from the basement to the second floor and you can just imagine you and your family living there for years. You look out the back window and the backyard looks impeccable with a lawn that looks like a picture from a landscaping brochure. You know that this is the house you’ve been looking for and head outside to get a closer look at that perfect backyard.
You stop in horror as you gaze into the backyard beside the home and see that it’s something that should be included on the show about hoarders. It’s a terrible sight with junk and clutter lying on a neglected yard with weeds growing helter-skelter at every angle. Your dream home has just been crushed by the sight of the neighbour’s backyard and you don’t know what to do about it.
While this is an extreme situation there will be times when a prospective buyer is disillusioned by something that’s off in a neighbour’s home. When this happens buyers will be left with a decision to make and in many cases they will just leave the residence and scratch it off their list.
Tall hedges may help
If you’re not ready to walk away from the property quite yet consider whether a row of very tall hedges will work to block the view and whether you’d be willing to live with that as a solution. Working with by-law officers to correct the situation will probably just end up being a long and arduous affair that won’t really lead to a successful conclusion.
You can also try talking to the current homeowners to find out if they have ever discussed the matter of the backyard with their neighbour. Perhaps they have never broached the subject for one reason or another. You can always try talking to the neighbour yourself to see where he stands. Perhaps there is a logical reason for this build of clutter in the backyard and it is yet to be addressed.
Sometimes you just have to leave this perfect dream home and look for another. Although it may be difficult, there are a lot of other homes available that you’ll probably fall in love with that have neighbours that upkeep their property perfectly. It’s all a matter of what you feel you can live with and what you simply won’t be able to stand for many years to come.
