Buying a House

As we are growing up, most of us dream of having a family and a nice comfortable residence. Buying a house is a big and difficult decision; most people go through a lot of planning when they do it. Besides financial support, they also need to spend time searching for the right house. When they find the house they really want, the next step is to investigate the neighborhood. Many people omit this step, but it may be the most important step before deciding on a house because the neighborhood as a whole is the place in which people invest, expect to raise children, and plan to live for a long period of time.

When I bought my house in Eugene, Oregon in 1992, I was in a rush to buy a home for a family of six. I was in my early twenties, and I did not have experience buying a home. After a couple of months looking at houses which were shown by a real estate agent, my mom and I found a beautiful 1500 square foot house with three bedrooms and two baths. The house was located on a small and quiet street at the end of a cul-de-sac of average-priced homes. We fell in love with the place instantly because it met all of our requirements. It seemed that there were no reasons not to buy it. I signed the buyer agreement within two hours after seeing the house. Unfortunately, I did not check out the neighborhood, and I had no ideas what I would be getting into with my future neighbor. Having an unreasonable, greedy, and trouble-making neighbor next to me created miserable conditions, and I had to figure out the solution to our problem.

A few months after we moved into our new home, we started to notice our neighbor was giving us problems. He parked his truck across the sidewalk on the front of our property. I asked him nicely to move it because it is illegal to block a sidewalk. His response was that if I wasn't happy with the way he parked, then I should call the cops. I notified the authorities, and they came to my home. When they gave him a parking ticket, I thought that would teach him a lesson, but I was so wrong. The next day when I was getting ready to go to work, I noticed that there was engine oil all over my car. I suspected my neighbor and called the authorities again, but they just took the report over the phone because I did not have any specific evidence to prove that my neighbor had done it.

My mom and my grandma suffered under these poor conditions too. They love to work in the yard in the afternoon. When they were out in the front yard, my neighbor would release his dog, which would chase them away. To avoid the dog, my mom stayed in the backyard, but he put his dog into his backyard, and the dog tried to jump over the fence, barking at my mom whenever she made a move, biting a big hole in the fence trying to get over. I could have called the animal control, but I didn't want something else to happen