Why can't people take a little pride in their homes?

We are not in an HOA. Some houses are pretty bad but most of them keep up the outside. There was a house that was an eyesore just as you enter the tract. It was bad. High weekds/grass and the outside just looking really. Come to find out it was in foreclosure yet the owner was still there part of the time. He finally left and they are just now rehabbing the house for probable sale again. Kind of sad though. We keep our's looking decent most of the time but our neighbor probably still wishes we had an HOA. We sometimes leave things out longer than they should but he has grown children while we still have kids at home that have stuff out and about from time to time.

I thought the point of most HOA s was to prevent problems like OPs?

I try to be patient if house maintenance suddenly slips- in case there's illness or bigger issues happening.

We have a neighbor that's showing signs of crazy, it's been growing for one year at least. I called our city's property standards office last week to ask questions and was relieved to find out they have a case open. The strangest part was learning they had originally been called about the backyard - which I'd never seen. Now I want to go in alley and peek over their fence - see what wonders lie there.

I know what you mean. 

It just blows my mind why people do or don't do what they do or don't do to their yards.  

In our Apartment complex there are green spaces for the dogs (we are a very pet friendly complex) and it blows my mind on how many people let their pets poop and don't pick it up. The complex has poop stations all over the place and they just added one to the green space by our building that we use because it is the closest to us and I don't have to walk across the complex to the other one. 

The landscapers come every Thursday and they cut the grass and walk all over the poop and make a mess with it all over the grass and then we have to take our dogs out there. 

We always pick up after our dogs. 

I just don't understand how some one can watch their dog poop with in 5 feet of the poop station with poop bags supplied and just walk away without picking it up. 

I can understand it if you are out in the woods or in your own yard but dam people think of others when your pooping dog is pooping and you don't pick it up. 

Me neighbors have nice flower beds but a yard full of grass burrs. They refuse to treat their yard because the don't want to use chemicals due to their kids. However, they sure don't have a problem with their kids playing in my yard all the time. They know I use chemicals to control weeds and don't seem to care.

Our next door neighbors are those folks on our block. We moved in 6 years ago. When we give people directions to our house, we use theirs as the landmark. "When you see the long grass and/or rusty (super rusty) garage door, we're the house just to the east of that." I've had to call code enforcement on them a few times for various maintenance problems, but usually their 12" grass (code is 8"). We don't have an HOA to make them paint or replace that damn garage door. But, I can force them to cut their lawn before all the woodland critters become our neighbors with a call. The village did it for them once and invoiced them for the labor hours. I wish I could bill them for the hours I have to spend plucking weeds out of our yard because they won't take care of theirs. The lady to the east of us is super particular about her yard and property. It's beautiful. I'll keep mine acceptable and enjoy looking at hers. She's single, doesn't have kids and is home a lot with her schedule as a flight attendant.

I'm so glad that we don't live in an HOA - because I'm sure we would be the neighbours you are talking about

It's not because we don't care - it's because we're overwhelmed and as soon as we handle one thing, three more need handling. Time and money and skill are all in short supply here.

My yard? we have four acres, 2 of which are wooded, 2 of which have 'grass' (aka weeds we mow). They badly need mowing but we weren't home last weekend (visiting my terminally ill MIL) and the push mower I use won't start (I can't manage the riding mower). Trees need trimming too and I'm doing them about one/week but it's slow going (one tree's trimming fill my two spare bins). Weeding? I'll get to it.

We've recently added a ramp to the front of the house - it looks nice - but the deck on the back needs to be torn down and replaced. The time and money that would have done the deck went into doing the ramp when we were expecting MIL to move in (she got too sick for that to happen)

My niece recently pressure washed the house for us - Bless her! It's a mobile home - nearly 20 years old. We replaced the roof a few months ago but there is a lot that needs doing still - it was bought as a fixer upper and well...live and learn but DH doesn't really have the time/skills for that and we bought right as the economy crashed so income dropped - we're doing better now but repairs cost money and hiring people costs more.

We're doing our best...but I'm glad that our property isn't visible from either the street or our neighbours' houses.

We aren't yard people and we just do the bare minimum to keep the HOA away.

I consider all the joy and happiness that I give others who get to feel smug and good about themselves when they compare their perfect lawn to mine as my personal good deed of the day!

I think a lot of people just don't have the time, resources or health to keep their lawns up as well as they should. We live out in the country. We have a HUGE lawn. Like 5 acres. My dh mows it all. There are times where it can get a big shaggy though, when we've gotten lots of rain or we've had busy wkends. I love flowers, flower gardens, etc, so We have quite a few gardens to keep up also. Sometimes I get behind. Right now our mailbox is leaning from the winter snow plow, and it's been raining all wkend, so we need to go fix that. Unfortunately there is the whole curb appeal deal. If your house looks clean, picked up, and neat on the outside, it has more appeal. if your house looks unkempt, shaggy, no appeal on the outside, most people think the inside of your looks the same.

I live in a neighborhood of starter homes, and some low income apartments, and regular apartments. Unfortunately the worst offenders are the renters. I DON'T automatically assume they aren't caring for things. In my area, it depends on the landlord if they do or do not do lawn maintenance; most do.

I also feel like you can't win. I've seen on here that some peas don't understand why people don't have flowers or do additional landscaping. I feel like my postage stamp front lawn looks perfectly fine. The area under our windows usually remains weed AND flower free. The other area has a rock area under that window. I live in a state with a desert climate. I don't want the aggravation of keeping things alive.

I live alone in a 2500 sq ft house ( it's too much space and I hate cleaning it all) with 9 cats and my son is there every-other-week. I work 60 hours a week and try to find time to work out after work plus DS is involved in multiple sports/activities. I am barely keeping it together INSIDE the house. I don't have time to give a flying fuck about the outside. I pay my neighbor to mow it in the back but in the front I have a bunch of ivy and I don't keep up on pulling weeds that grow in it. My house needs to be power washed and I need the gutters cleaned out. I'll get to it when I fucking get to it. Anyone who doesn't like it can kiss my ass.

I live in drought stricken California in a non-HOA community. I had all of the grass ripped out and replaced it with cactus, succulents, and other drought friendly plants. It is so low maintenance I don't even water the plants that often. I love it.

I honestly don't know. When we bought our former house, it needed a lot of help. We spent a lot of time (and money) systematically redoing just about room (some of them twice) in the 20+ years we lived there, plus we finished off the 1/2 story attic, added a 2.5 car garage, put in new steps outside in the front and back, worked on the landscaping in the front, a new retaining wall and a new asphalt driveway. Then we sold the house to my brother on a contract for deed when we moved here.

In spite of putting a decent chunk of money down on it, he has really let the place go to the point where it looks like homeless people are squatting in the back porch. His cats trashed the vertical blinds in the living room, so he hung up some big flags in the front window. There is junk mail a foot deep littering the entire floor of the front porch, plus some old carpet from a different brother's house rolled up in there that should have gone to the dump a year ago. He let that same brother park his leaky junk camper in the driveway for a year which ruined the new asphalt where it leaked fluids. When I stopped there around Christmastime there were at least a dozen of the little free neighborhood newspapers laying scattered in the front yard. How hard is it to pick stuff like that up and throw it away or recycle it? As far as I can tell it's mostly just laziness.

The house is small, and I lived there myself so I know it isn't that hard to keep that particular house looking halfway decent. It's just sad that for whatever reason some people are simply unable to keep their stuff nice. What's really stupid is that if he would have even kept it looking even the way we left it, he would have been able to turn around and sell it at a profit when the market turned around. The neighborhood it's in is highly desirable because of the location and close proximity to many things, so I'm sure it would sell quickly in today's market if it wasn't so rundown looking. I don't even want to know how bad it looks on the inside.

Now if he defaults and we end up getting the house back for whatever reason, we would have to spend every dime of his down payment (and countless months of time) just getting it back to the way it was when we sold it to him. We're just praying that he will continue to make the payments on it long enough to be able to get a traditional mortgage on the place so we can cash out our interest in it and run, and if he does lose it it won't be our problem. 

It makes me sad to see that little house that we loved and took such good care of looking like a dump. 

I actually love the look of fields of green grass dotted with yellow dandelions.  Because people where I live have large yards (many acres each), you see a lot of that, and I just think it's lovely.

Our gems have four dogs and don't pick up after them. Wait until the grass is about too high and never trims. We are looking at a 6ft privacy fence. Wish it could be taller. My concern once we install it is they will take down their chain link and their beasts will destroy our fence. Ughh no HOA here.