r/homeowner

My toddler moved the handle on the stove without me noticing for about 3 minutes. I’ve aired the house out and I can’t smell it anymore but can I use the stove now?

Hi Everybody!

I just had an offer accepted on my (potential) first time home purchase. It’s in the exact neighborhood we want, the characteristics we want, at a price we want. We are going through the inspection phase now which has come back good so far.

The only issue is that in the seller disclosure, it states that the neighbor has built a fence 12” into our yard, which is therefore encroaching on our property.

What happened is that our garage is directly adjacent to the neighbor’s property. Instead of building a fence around his back yard, the neighbor extended the fence between his house and our garage. He is effectively using our detached garage as one of the walls of the fence of his backyard. This has apparently been there for almost 20 years.

The problem is that it prevents access to the exterior of one side of our garage, requiring us to ask him for access to his backyard for any maintenance we do to our garage. It also appears that he stores things in his backyard against the garage. I do not believe it has caused any damage but apparent he is an eccentric character and stores lots of “treasures” in his backyard.

We close in less than 30 days and do not see being able to make him take a fence down that’s been standing for over 20 years. That being said, he is clearly encroaching on the land and would be preventing access to a garage that is my responsibility to maintain and the land around it.

What experience do y’all have with this?