Neighbor Keeps Driving Across Homeowner’s Grass to Reach Their Driveway

A homeowner who moved into a new house back in July says one of their neighbors crafted a convenient route out of the neighborhood… directly across the homeowner’s new property.

The homeowner described the situation in a Sept. 12 Reddit post under the username u/Valdeloboz. U/Valdeloboz describes their house as having a long private driveway leading to a detached garage, while two neighboring homes to the right share a different driveway.

One of those neighbors, according to u/Valdeloboz, apparently parks a large truck in the backyard. Rather than backing the truck out through the driveway it entered from, however, the homeowner says the neighbor crosses onto their property and uses their driveway to leave.

At first, the poster said they “don’t necessarily mind the fact that they do it.” However, they added, “My girlfriend does. and we both don’t appreciate that they never asked or told us that they use our driveway.”

The Truck Is Not Staying On The Pavement

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WIBTA for telling our neighbors to stop using our driveway?
by
u/Valdeloboz in
AmItheAsshole

After receiving some replies, u/Valdeloboz updated their original Reddit post with some clarifying details.

“They do not park their truck on our concrete driveway,” u/Valdeloboz specified, later outlining how “the truck parks in the backyard on the grass, to where they then drive onto our part of the grass then onto the concrete.”

The repeated trips have already “killed off some grass” and left muddy tire tracks, the homeowner said.

The homeowner emphasized that the driveway is not shared.

The Bigger Problem is That Nobody Asked

The poster said they are not particularly confrontational and could understand someone seeing this as “not being a huge deal.”

What continues to bother them, however, is that “although we got a chance to meet our other neighbors. neither of us have had a good chance to introduce ourselves to them, or them to us.”

So, this would have been done without touching base with the affected property owner—and newcomer to the neighborhood.

When Reddit user u/bythebrook88 asked about building a fence, u/Valdeloboz replied, “unfortunately i believe the property line is literally the edge of the driveway, so i dont believe so.”

U/ Analogue2000 suggested that the original poster “consider that the previous owners might have had no problem with this arrangement” and if it is a problem, better to address it sooner rather than later. They responded by saying “i have no idea as our house was vacant for 1 whole year before we bought it so there wasn’t anybody for them to have to speak to in terms of that.”

The original poster was advised by u/GoFigure844 to get a survey “so you have weight in pushing this issue,” adding, “With survey, you may find better approaches to block inappropriate intrusion of your property.”