Buying a house brings a certain sense of achievement as you finally have a corner on this Earth that belongs only to you. For a lot of people, it marks the moment when they ‘made it’ in life and it’s a place where they can feel safe and totally free.
The thing that can cloud the happiness of owning a house is the neighbors. The experience of living in your own house is much more pleasant if the people who live nearby are friendly and greets you with a smile when you meet them down the road. But if you don't get along with them, all of the great feelings of owning a home may become less rewarding.
Like for this 20-year-old woman who started to settle in her new home when a neighbor called the police on her because the old lady thought the young woman couldn't possibly be the owner of the house as she was not of the age when people usually are.
More info: Reddit
A 20 Y.O. woman bought a house, but her neighbor thought she was too young to be the owner, so she called the police, accusing her of being a squatter
Image credits: pxfuel (not the actual photo)
The story takes place in a small town with about 500 people in southern Illinois. A woman of 20 years old who chose to call herself Most_While_8500 on Reddit managed to buy herself a house for $15k and she says that it was in quite good condition for being so inexpensive.
The previous owner was no longer alive for quite some time and the house was for sale. The Original Poster (OP) said in one of the comments that she wanted to rent at first, but it was difficult finding anything online because people preferred putting signs up in their yards. When she saw a good deal, she took it.
Image credits: Most_While_8500
The house was being sold for $15k and was in decent condition, so the OP bought it
Image credits: Most_While_8500
The OP moved in a couple of months ago and started working on making the place her own and started fixing what needed to be fixed. She was planning on tidying up the garden when her next door neighbor, a woman she called Jane for the sake of story and was about 50-ish years old, came to get to know her.
Jane mistook the young woman for a tenant and Most_While_8500 explained that she is actually the owner of the house. Not having any reason for it, Jane didn’t believe her, but went home without causing any incident that time.
Image credits: Most_While_8500
She was cleaning up and trying to make the house her home
Image credits: Most_While_8500
The OP continued sprucing up the old house and decided to paint the front door—a seemingly innocent task that provoked Jane to lash out at the OP, saying that she'd better have the owner's permission to paint his house because as mentioned earlier, she didn't believe it was the redditor’s house, which she repeated again.
Turns out, Jane didn’t believe that it was the OP’s house because she was too young and she would be contacting the landlord about her misconduct. In one of the comments, Most_While_8500 mentioned that she didn’t think to inform the neighbor that the old owner was dead, because at the time, she was just getting angry and anxious and wanted Jane to go away and leave her in peace.
Apparently, the fact that she was tidying up really hit a nerve for her neighbor as she thought the OP was fixing the house without the owner's permission
Image credits: Most_While_8500
The neighbor didn't believe the OP was the owner as she was 'too young' to own a house so she called the police
Image credits: Most_While_8500
The neighbor was so convinced that a young woman couldn’t possibly be a homeowner, she wanted to see proof of ownership, but the OP wasn’t willing to show Jane anything.
The situation escalated and the older neighbor called the police, reporting that there was a person living in a house illegally. When the police showed up, the young woman cooperated, she showed the paperwork and wanted Jane off her property.
Image credits: Most_While_8500
The OP's dad thinks she could have handled the situation better but she thinks that she didn't do anything wrong
Image credits: Most_While_8500
What urged the OP to go to the internet and ask for people’s opinions was that when she told her dad about the incident, he thought she shouldn’t have made her neighbor angry.
What is your take on this situation? Do you think that all this commotion would have been avoided if the redditor had shown the documents to Jane? Or would you side with one of the commenters who thought that Jane would have claimed that the documents were fake? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
People in the comments are siding with the young woman and think that it was not the neighbor's place to be so nosy
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