Homeowner's Attempt To Build Fence Turns Into Petty Dispute With Neighbor

Navigating neighborly relations can be a real balancing act, especially when property lines come into play.

In a viral TikTok, homeowner Juniper Pearl (@my_socalled_life) finds herself entangled in a dispute over where her yard ends and her neighbor’s begins.

All she wants is to put up a fence, but her entitled neighbor and his constant encroachment and reluctance to communicate make things complicated.

Juniper tries to speak with her neighbor, but is given the cold shoulder

After trying to be considerate and offering to accommodate him, she’s met with condescension and dismissive remarks.

I’m having a dispute with my neighbor, and I want to know what you guys would do. So you can see, this is my lawn here. This is my neighbor’s lawn.

I want to have a fence put in, the back of my house. I knew that this was not our boundary, our property line, but he kept cutting over and over and over closer into my yard. And so I asked to meet with him before I have the fence built so it would give me, like, an extra foot.

He was very condescending and very rude, he kept telling me to get a survey because I think he believed that he was gonna lose space. I knew that wasn’t true.

Deciding enough is enough, she hires a surveyor and discovers she actually has more land than she thought—much to her neighbor’s dismay.

I kept trying to work it out with him. I told him I didn’t want to pay for the survey if I didn’t have to. I was happy to give him some space because there’s not a whole lot of space in his yard to begin with. I was trying to be kind, right?

Nope. Now I wanna be petty, and I need somebody to either give me permission to be petty or tell me that that’s bad karma. So I did call a surveyor. I had the surveyor come out today.

There’s my lines. There’s my boundary. That’s his driveway. That’s my boundary line. You can see it all the way. So I ended up with multiple feet more than I expected. Multiple. And he’s very unhappy, which I don’t blame him. He’s very unhappy with how close that is.

Tensions rise when he removes the survey stakes, leading her to question how to proceed.

I wasn’t home when the surveyor did this. The surveyor sent me these pictures. I have him on my ring camera at, like, 2:06PM, putting my paperwork in my door. By 2:16PM, these stakes were out of the ground.

The neighbor came and pulled them out of the ground because he didn’t like where they were. So he picked them up and threw them on the ground.

I did send my neighbor a message and told him that he cannot do that again. That’s destruction of property. If he doesn’t like where the boundary lines are, he’s more than welcome to get his own survey that he pays for.

He’s welcome to call my guy to come back out, that he’s gonna pay for, but he cannot move these again. I put them back where I could see the stakes had been. Put ’em right back up. So anyway, he just kept saying that I was wrong. The surveyor was wrong. He’s going to the city.

I’ve been asking this man for two months to talk about this whole issue with me, and he kept just putting me off. He wouldn’t do it. He was not amenable. He wanted me to pay for everything, to have it done, and I was fine doing that. He doesn’t want to split the cost of the fence? No problem. He doesn’t want to pay for the survey? No problem. I got it.

Juniper turns to the internet for advice

Should she stick to her original plan or adjust to keep the peace?

It’s a situation many can relate to, and it raises the question: What would you do in her shoes?

She hopes her fellow TikTok users can offer advice.

So now I have two options. What I’m thinking is either have the fence coming to the property line, or I can cut in where the tree is and kind of do an angle, if that makes sense.

So if this was you, what would you do? Would you be petty or would you be kind about it? Because right now, I’m just so irritated. If this is the kind of temper tantrum he’s throwing over just the stakes being put in the ground, what’s he gonna do to an actual fence? So anyway, I know that’s a lot, but what would you do? Give me your thoughts.

Watch the full video here

@my_socalled_life

I want to be petty, but i also have to live next to this man🙃#neighbordrama #neighborfromhell #greenscreen

♬ Lo-fi hip hop – NAO-K