Well Crap
October 17, 2013 11:12 AM   Subscribe

I live in Brooklyn with my wife. We were planning on moving to New Jersey to buy a house, and we found a lovely place, made an offer that was accepted, and started visualizing ourselves in this beautiful new house...and then the other shoe dropped.

This past weekend, we went to our new neighborhood to do an inspection of the house (this is not about the inspection - the inspection turned out fine). On our way there, we noticed a woman on the main drag shouting at no one in particular and thought "oh, this reminds us of Brooklyn." When we arrived at our house, nestled in the suburbs, we chatted with our inspector for a few minutes, and then noticed the same shouting woman coming up our street.

I figured she was just going to pass by. Instead, she went into the house directly across the street from us, and proceeded to start doing things like throwing window screens out the window and dragging the television out onto the front porch, shouting at the top of her lungs the whole time. Eventually the police were called, and she was taken away.

The neighbors all came out on their lawns and so we asked what was going on, and they told us that the house across from our new home was a group home. They had very little information about it, and assured us that this kind of thing is infrequent, but it has happened in the past.

Since then, we've gotten some more information about the building - it's a 3 person group home for people with mental health issues, and it has no on-site manager. The people who live there sign a lease and stay for as long as they choose to or until they can no longer pay rent. An event like this is not an automatic disqualification for living there. It's unclear to me if this woman is still a tenant after Sunday.

We've spent the last few days having a crisis about continuing with this purchase, and trying to get more information about it. It's not that I begrudge people their mental health, but the whole point of moving to the suburbs is to get away from this kind of thing. I don't want to feel like I can't spend time in my front yard for fear of some kind of incident. We went into this purchase with no reservations - really happy about starting our new lives there. and this event has tarnished that feeling, and left us wondering how we should proceed.

Our lawyer has assured us that we can walk away now, losing only the cost of a loan application and the inspection.

So how would you deal with this? Should we walk away? Should we ask for a significant reduction in price? Are we being unreasonable? Can you think of a way that we can make ourselves feel better about this?
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (46 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Never mind how anyone else would deal with this, you two are clearly disturbed and unsettled. That feeling will only grow in time if you live there. Move somewhere else. There will be enough issues in life, you don't need another one.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:16 AM on October 17, 2013 [50 favorites]


I work in the mental health field. I think you should walk away.
posted by jaguar at 11:19 AM on October 17, 2013 [19 favorites]


You're not being unreasonable. A home is one hell of an investment, and you deserve to derive as much enjoyment/benefit from that investment as possible.

How would I handle this? I don't know. There's not enough information here to say. I'd have the same kind of hesitation you do, given what you encountered. That said, if the home was in the right place, at the right price, with the right amenities... I might be inclined to just deal with it. Then again, perhaps I wouldn't be. There's really too may mitigating factors to say for sure, and nobody here can come to a reasoned decision for you.
posted by BrandonW at 11:20 AM on October 17, 2013


You are being reasonable. You could ask for a reduction in price, but I think you don't want to live near yelling people, so probably walking away is more appropriate than trying to get a better financial deal. There are plenty of houses in New Jersey -- you should probably find another one.
posted by feets at 11:21 AM on October 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


There's no objective criteria for comfort. Whether you "should" feel comfortable with this situation doesn't matter. The only question is whether you are comfortable. If you don't want to live there (and it sounds like you don't, and I can't blame you), look elsewhere.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:22 AM on October 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Walk. Walk walk walk. Not because there's anything wrong with living across the street from a group home, but because for you're already--in the honeymoon period of home-buying--not happy. That's not a good sign.

We bought a house about a year and a half ago and we love everything about it except the location. As First World problems go, it's a good one. We're very lucky that property values in our area have skyrocketed, so we talk a lot about moving to take advantage of that and to find a location we like more. But buying a house is such a huge process, selling a house is even more so, moving is a soul-sucking nightmare under the best of circumstances, and we've done so much work to make the house our own... The idea of going through the whole thing again feels exhausting. We feel kind of stuck here. It's not a happy-making feeling.

Don't put yourself in that situation.
posted by jesourie at 11:23 AM on October 17, 2013 [10 favorites]


The fact that there is no manager or nurse on-site at the group home sounds like a horrible thing for the neighborhood, and for the health of the patients there. Walk away.
posted by drjimmy11 at 11:25 AM on October 17, 2013 [28 favorites]


I mean, personally I think you are overreacting a bit, but honestly, as others are saying, if you feel uncomfortable about it now, it is only going to get worse down the road. Walk away.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:25 AM on October 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


And even if you were comfortable with this somehow, what if you ever need to sell the house? Would the potential buyer be comfortable, or would you end up selling at a huge loss or having to keep it on the market for years? A home is an investment too.
posted by drjimmy11 at 11:27 AM on October 17, 2013 [8 favorites]


You absolutely should only buy a house that you have NO reservations about. Because those things will only grow more pronounced, and make you more unhappy, over time. I have been there. You need to walk.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 11:30 AM on October 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Talk more with the neighbors?
posted by Lesser Shrew at 11:34 AM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I live next door to a house where people do stuff like throw TVs out the front door & scream and yell. (It's not a group home, or anything like it. It's just a private residence full of assholes.) It's terrible. Don't buy the house.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:34 AM on October 17, 2013 [10 favorites]


You have received a sign from god, heed the warning and walk away.
posted by OuttaHere at 11:43 AM on October 17, 2013 [11 favorites]


I'm wondering why your real estate agent didn't disclose this to start with.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 11:44 AM on October 17, 2013 [10 favorites]


You are seriously lucky she happened by while you are still able to walk. Imagine how you would have felt if you discovered this AFTER closing.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 11:49 AM on October 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


If this is an issue for you, it will be an issue for future buyers down the road when it's eventually time to resell. The pricing should reflect this. If it doesn't, I'd walk away.
posted by aspen1984 at 11:52 AM on October 17, 2013 [6 favorites]


For me, everything else about the house would have to be basically perfect, and the price would have to be below market value.
Be thankful you can still get out of it.
posted by mrs. taters at 11:59 AM on October 17, 2013


Don't take this the wrong way but when you were researching the neighborhood how did this not come up? I mean, maybe I'm just incredibly paranoid (I am), but I'm already doing research on streets we're interested in and things much less obvious than this have come up.
posted by playertobenamedlater at 12:00 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Are you planning on having children?

I'm from NYC, and since having a son, my tolerance for the type of thing you described has gone way way down.

There's no oversight of the residents. If someone potentially dangerous moved in across the street, it's not like you'll be notified or anything.

Walk away from this sale. It's a bad gamble.

Nthing the situation across the street will lower your investment's value and potential profit ifT you move to sell in a few years.
posted by jbenben at 12:07 PM on October 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Well, in every neighborhood there is potential for "infrequent incidents" of that sort -- even in the suburbs -- so you may want to think a bit more realistically about the chances of finding a housing situation that is not going to have that potential either immediately or down the line.

On the other hand, in your shoes, I don't know what I would do. I really don't think there's a wrong decision here. The best decision is what is right for you.
posted by sm1tten at 12:10 PM on October 17, 2013


Not sure where in Jersey, but see if there exists for your neighborhood a site like http://jclist.com/ and see if anyone there has mentioned the house before and any issues.

Another question to ask: Has the group home been there for years or is it new? If it's been there for years and your neighborhood is "up and coming", pressure from neighbors and local government may make it so that they will need to have on-site staff or push it out of the neighborhood altogether. But, it's Jersey, and I previously lived in JC for many,many years and change is slow and it's street-by-street at times.

I would pass on this house unless it was a neighborhood I see drastically changing for the better in the near future and where I could deal with this kind of stuff temporarily. While you could always get a potentially dangerous neighbor in a good neighborhood or have "incidents", right now, there's 100% chance of the place across from you is housing mentally ill folks. If you have kids or planning on doing so in the next few years, I'd walk away.
posted by vivzan at 12:13 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


That hesitation and concern you're feeling right now? The same will likely come up for future potential buyers when you decide to sell the house later on. With that in mind, do you still want to buy it?
posted by geeky at 12:27 PM on October 17, 2013 [7 favorites]


I've worked with mental health before, and our organization ran a couple of group homes that I wouldn't have hesitated to have lived near. One group home (and the residents it accepts) can vary so much from another, that this in an of itself wouldn't be a reason for me not to purchase a house. However, seeing that type of behavior from a resident of a nearby house, might. I'd think about it like any other housing situation where you see this behavior from a neighbor -- if that would make you hesitant, then this should too. If it wouldn't, then it being a group home shouldn't matter.
posted by bizzyb at 12:31 PM on October 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


Seconding St. Alia. This seems like the kind of thing that the seller (or their agent, or their lawyer) should have disclosed before they accepted your offer. Also if the neighbor shouting and throwing things into the street were the homeowner herself, you'd still probably have the same reservations.

"The suburbs" are not immune to the things you say you are trying to move away from, and they also have their own unique drama. It's going to be very hard to predict what will happen to any given street over time. Depending on what you've seen in your search so far, you might end up deciding this is the best option, or you might move on. Either one is OK. But it's sort of like a new relationship, in that there is a honeymoon period. When buying a house it's best if it lasts at least a bit beyond when you move in.
posted by expialidocious at 12:38 PM on October 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


I'd walk. I'm the most tolerant person in the world, but if I didn't feel hunky-dory in my house and I didn't feel like it was my own little castle, I wouldn't be happy.

In future, do some recon at all hours of the day and night. Drive by and see if there are any loud frat parties, call the local precinct and ask about incidents in the neighborhood. Talk to the neighbors.

People asked me in our old neighborhood and I gave them the straight poop.

Even if these folks weren't diagnosed as mentally ill, and even if they weren't in a group home, I'd have serious pause about moving in with someone who would cause that kind of commotion.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:41 PM on October 17, 2013


2 weeks after I bought my house, a family bought the house next door and promptly set up a fighting pitbull breeding operation in the backyard. They would also have regular screaming matches at all hours of the night, most often in their front yard. The cops would show up there at least once a month, only rarely called by us.

They were only there 3 years (after the cops figured out what was going on and seized their dogs, they lost their way of paying the mortgage), but those 3 years SUCKED. Your potential situation is way worse, because at least we had some legal remedies, because you're getting into all kinds of Americans with Disabilities Act protection issues in your situation. There's no damn way I could buy the house having seen what you've described.
posted by deadmessenger at 12:46 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I don't think you have enough data to make a decision here and I am sort of shocked people are leaping to the recommendation not to buy based on one incident. The neighbours have said issues are infrequent. That is reassuring. I would go down and visit the local PD and talk to them about how many incidents there have been in the past year.

It's not that I begrudge people their mental health, but the whole point of moving to the suburbs is to get away from this kind of thing.

Well, you really can't guarantee that anywhere. Any of your neighbours can develop mental health issues at any time. Regardless, there is a federal mandate for care in the community and there are more than 4,000 residential group homes in New Jersey neighbourhoods. If it were appropriate that they should drive property prices down, a huge number of neighbourhoods would be in deep shit. Luckily, group homes do not drive down property prices. Most people don't even know there's a group home among their neighbours.

The point is, declaring "not in my back yard" about group homes is both problematic and futile. You need more information about this group home, and the place to get it is from your local PD, who will be able to give you stats on callouts.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:52 PM on October 17, 2013 [20 favorites]


I have lived next door to a halfway house. It was really difficult...there was constant turnover, of course, but it was always something new. Screaming matches one month, unattended illegal pets the next month, people burning plastic and other unburnables in the fire pit the following month, back to screaming matches the next month, setting off fireworks the following month, etc etc etc.

My best window faced that house. I couldn't open it because of the noise and smell (of the fire). They parked their cars on my lawn. I could smell cigarette smoke from their porch. I'm pretty sure that, at one point, someone was going through my mail.

I called the police non-emergency line a number of times and they would do drive-bys and keep an eye on things, but with the constantly changing residents it was like starting over every month. I rented that place and was glad to leave. I would not consider buying a house next door to a halfway house - when I buy a place, I'll be looking forward to a level of stability that I couldn't have when things were so unpredictable next door.
posted by Elly Vortex at 1:02 PM on October 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


I wouldn't buy it. Of course there is no way to guarantee that any house won't have problematic neighbors, but you already know this place has problematic neighbors. You want to peacefully spend time in your front yard now? Imagine how you're going to feel when your kids want to go play out there.
posted by fingersandtoes at 1:03 PM on October 17, 2013


Echoing everyone else, I'd back out, there are lots of other houses.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 1:16 PM on October 17, 2013


If you're not comfortable there, it's not the house for you.

Everyone wants to live somewhere nice. There is nothing wrong with that, and nothing you need to feel guilty about.

I have plenty of group homes in my neighbourhood, including one notorious one of screamers. It doesn't get better over time, and you never do get used to it.
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:38 PM on October 17, 2013


Walk away, especially if your only sunk costs are a few hundred dollars from the mortgage application and the home inspection. Those realtor commercials you hear on the radio that "oh there's a shortage of available houses" are a big load of BS; we're still recovering from the housing market crash and there's tons and tons of available inventory of houses. You'll find something else that suits you.
posted by tckma at 1:39 PM on October 17, 2013


Walk away now.
Seems to me a group home directly across the street from your property should have been something that is required to be revealed by the seller and/or the listing realtor.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:45 PM on October 17, 2013


Don't take this the wrong way but when you were researching the neighborhood how did this not come up? I mean, maybe I'm just incredibly paranoid (I am), but I'm already doing research on streets we're interested in and things much less obvious than this have come up.

I'm so curious, playertobenamedlater, how this would have come up? I'm house-hunting myself and I wonder about what I don't know about the streets/neighborhoods I'm looking at. If it doesn't have a business listing or a sign and if the realtor doesn't disclose it...how would it come up?

The price is probably good on this place because of this situation. The only way I'd want to go forward with this is after a thorough thinking through of the house. The great thing is that you just met a bunch of other neighbors. Do they seem great? Do you think everyone keeps an eye on this place? Is there an overseeing agency that you can call every time something is amiss? So, in looking at the house, which rooms face this place? How private is the house? Does it have or need a fence? What is the area behind the house like? Can you increase privacy/comfort on the front and use the back as your outdoor retreat? You really never know when you're going to get a bad neighbor or a good one who turns bad. However, you now know that this is a bad neighbor so the question is, is the deal so great that you can roll with it? And will the house be able to customized to mitigate it?
posted by amanda at 2:14 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Seems to me a group home directly across the street from your property should have been something that is required to be revealed by the seller and/or the listing realtor.

Don't take this the wrong way but when you were researching the neighborhood how did this not come up?


Under the Federal Fair Housing Act, there is no obligation to disclose these homes are neighbours, and an agent doing so may be construed as "steering" and in breech of state licensing laws.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:33 PM on October 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


I don't know about your location, amanda, but where I am I can look up property owners on the county's website.

There's a website where you can put in an address and be shown all the building permits, businesses, etc. -- I'm blanking on the name, and I deleted the bookmark when I stopped househunting. Anyone? It was for the whole US.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:42 PM on October 17, 2013


Shitty neighbors like this have been a problem at several places i've lived, and pretty much ruined those places for me.

To be clear, i'm not saying mentally ill people are shitty. I'm saying people who throw tvs out their front doors and do shit like that in general are shitty neighbors. The root cause of the behavior is irrelevant, and quickly derails the internal and external discussion/thought process away to "am i being a bigoted shitty person for not wanting to live next to these people?" which is totally freaking irrelevant.

If i was looking at a place to rent and i saw this it would put me off. I wouldn't ever, ever buy a place next to anyone like this. Both times i ended up next to someone shitty i didn't know until after i had already moved in(and once, they moved in AFTER i did by a few months. CURSES!)

It makes me wonder if there was a specific reason you were drawn to this place, like it being below market rate a bit despite being in good shape. Or just seeming really "perfect" for being an average price.

Because there's no way in hell the sellers didn't know about this. This might even be the reason they're moving. Someone is trying to dump this shit sandwich on someone elses lap.

Slap yourself on the back that, at this moment, you are like han solo flying away from the death star blowing up. You got an early warning and avoided this shit. Be thankful this will never be keeping you up, and no one will ever be screaming that they know someone you've never met who potentially doesn't exist is hiding in your place while they try and kick your side door in.
posted by emptythought at 4:11 PM on October 17, 2013


I think that DarlingBri has it.

I bought a house in the suburbs (not of New York) six years ago. Two months later, our quiet, elderly neighbors moved out, and new people moved in. New people who screamed, constantly at their children. New people who we called the cops on for domestic violence. New people who had the cops at their house for other reasons multiple times. New people who would scream abuse at us when we went out on our porch.

This is the sort of thing that can happen anywhere, group home or not. If these people are well enough to live without a caretaker, I'd bet that incidents like what you witnessed are very rare indeed. Go and talk to the cops. Talk to the neighbors, and see how often this sort of thing happens. Ask for some sort of financial concession, if you feel the need. My suspicion is that after talking to the cops and neighbors, you're going to feel a lot better about this purchase.
posted by MeghanC at 4:25 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Don't buy this house. If it bothers you a little bit now, it will bother you A LOT later, once you live there. Personally, I think its the very fact that you could have turned away that will bother you MOST. You'll always wonder if you missed the chance to find a better, more peaceful home, and that will make the screaming, TV-throwing neighbors that much harder to bear. I know from experience.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 4:48 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I lived next to a bad neighbor who was an untreated schizophrenic for six months. It was hell.

Walk away and thank that in which you believe that you found out before it's too late.

Also, of course the neighbors told you it was infrequent- no one wants more empty houses in their neighborhood these days. They're not necessarily going to tell you the truth if they want that house sold.
posted by winna at 5:24 PM on October 17, 2013


Neighbors can have a big impact on what it's like to live in a particular house.
posted by slidell at 5:25 PM on October 17, 2013


Amanda - when my wife and I were hunting for our rental in Minneapolis we spent hours walking around the neighborhoods looking for anything that seemed out of place or problematic once we identified a place we were interested in. As others have pointed out your realtor won't mention things like this but if you're taking the plunge to buy a house take a day or so off and really explore the neighborhood and pay attention to anything that sticks out.

Another thing to consider is the city/county probably has stats on incidents on this street that are publicly available which could give the OP an idea if this was just a one-off incident or a regular occurrence. When we were researching neighborhoods in Minneapolis I mapped out three years of city crime data to identify streets that were "annoyance" spots.
posted by playertobenamedlater at 5:32 PM on October 17, 2013


Turns out after asking my husband, a Realtor (tm)....having a group home across the street is not considered a material fact. In other words, your realtor did not have to disclose.


If you really really really like this house what I would do is go back and talk to all these neighbors and find out whether or not this place is troubling or not. If there is no staff there it seems to me this might be for people who may be on disability but are for the most part functioning well as long as they stay in treatment. If it were me I would use this to try to negotiate the price down, if I still wanted to live there. But only you can make that determination. After talking to the neighbors, if you still feel hinky, keep looking.

But here on out, if I were you I would talk to neighbors before placing an offer. Every neighborhood has SOMETHING.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 5:33 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


4 years ago I purchased my first house. It was, and is, the PERFECT house. Except that it turns out we live next to a woman who is actually crazy. We haven't had to deal with her that much, but when we have it has upset our lives to a high degree. I've lost days of work due to being unfocused because I was so unsettled by her craziness.

Before I bought my house, I would have been absolutely devastated to give up on buying this PERFECT house. As someone who is now used to owning a home, I can tell you there are a lot of houses out there. Do I still live my house for itself? Yes. Do I realize now I can turn a lot of houses into the PERFECT house? Yes. But I can't change my neighbors.
posted by corn_bread at 7:22 PM on October 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


We live around the corner from a similar group home in a close-in suburb. We'd lived here nearly a decade before we realized it was there. I've never experienced a problem at all, and I'm pretty sure we've done things like knock on the door to trick or treat on years when the lights were on.

That said, the way we found out about it was that after the Newtown shooting, one of the residents was inspired to try to attack the four year old girl living next door, and the neighborhood rose up in a huge wave of anger and fear. (Fortunately she and her sibling were not hurt, and that resident was immediately removed from the house.)

In the midst of the neighborhood association meetings on the topic, I found out the following:
- the house was owned by a couple who moved to another state and rented the house to the contractor running the facility
- the family with the four year old has been having scary trouble for years and had been unable to get help from the county resources (police, Health and Human Services, etc) or the business running the home.
- a neighbor approximately the same distance from the home as our house had been having scary trouble for years when one of the residents would stand in his back yard and scream threats and curses in her general direction. She reported it to the manager frequently, but it never abated. He was never removed, on the basis that he has Tourette's (though he was screaming rage-filled threats rather than simply cursing).
- although a manager was supposed to be at the house 24/7, these things still occurred fairly frequently, and other neighbors had safety concerns when the residents were not in the home (for example, walking to nearby retail).
- several neighbors mentioned that they would move, but they couldn't sell their house because of the group home
- a nearby neighborhood with a theoretically similar group home had comparatively few problems, which they claimed was due to the different company contracted to manage it, and their skill at not just managing the house, but helping it become integrated with the neighborhood.

Hope this anecdotal "been there, done that" information is helpful.
posted by instamatic at 3:26 AM on October 18, 2013 [4 favorites]


You should not buy a house because you feel PC or anti-NIMBY guilt about how you "should" buy it.

Not wanting to live next to a scary lady in a group home does not make you a bad person and even if it did, buying the house anyway wouldn't turn you into a good person. Just a very uncomfortable one.
posted by French Fry at 9:48 AM on October 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


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