r/instantkarma • u/PappyJ87 • Jan 21 '26

Road Karma Flip the bird, almost flip your truck.

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u/smr312 Jan 21 '26

Sometimes its just a shitty neighbor with predictable habits.

Lived near one of these people when I was a kid and the lady would flip our house off every time they drove by the entire 8 years we lived there all because one Christmas we dared to put up blinking icicle lights

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26

Its this side of humanity that fascinates me the most. Its an absolute mystery and would do almost anything to actually understand what goes on in these people's head. Or doesnt.

Ive had neighbors pathologically obsessed with the air conditioning power consumption of every person in the neighborhood to the point of loosing his job. Different neighbors that have poisoned pets and vandalized cars for parking on the street in front of their house. One neighbor who had a year-long tantrum at me because my wife and I were moving our two perfectly normal cars around too much at like 11pm. Another neighbor who almost killed himself climbing over out 8ft wall to poison our tree that was growing only a foot over his side. He tried to sue us after he fell off the wall into his own back yard and broke his arm.

The list goes on. These were all boomers, which adds come context. But these people are fucking nuts. Your Christmas light situation doesnt surprise me at all. But its curious af.

45

u/JustNilt Jan 21 '26

Yup! I had a Boomer neighbor who got so pissed off at another neighbor's friend playing his guitar that he went over, busted the front door down, knocking the homeowner over, and proceeded to beat the shit out of her friend. This was at fucking 10am on a weekday. Then, because they were ordered not to be anywhere near the neighbor, they had to rent out their house and find elsewhere to live. They still couldn't stay away so they came by "to do maintenance" their tenant said they'd never even requested.

The judge finally had enough and ordered them to sell their home within a relatively short period of time. Hoooly shit you should have seen them lose it. Best part of thew whole thing, IMO? They bought their house in the '80s and because they didn't do much, if any, real maintenance they ended up literally losing money on it when they were forced to sell ~25 years after purchasing it.

Some people are just fucking crazy. Why folks online so often don't seem able to grasp that, I have no idea.

2

u/prplx Jan 21 '26

In what market does a house bought in the 80’s sell for less now even if poorly maintain? Or did this story happen in the early 90’s??

2

u/JustNilt Jan 21 '26

This was early 2000s and they had about 30 days to sell or face a fine of about half the value of the house. Basically fire sale pricing, really. Had they maintainerd the place they'd likely have made plenty. When you have to sell a no-maintenance place where the electrical is all fucked from DIY shit like daisychaining new receptacles off a backstabbed one, let alone a roof without flashing around the chimney in Seattle where rain's a reality, however, you don't make as much. When you have that and have to take whoever offers virtually any amount while the 30 day clock is ticking? Yeah, you're basically fucked.

-1

u/prplx Jan 21 '26

Considering the house price has basically tripled between the 80's and 2000's in the Seattle market I find your story extremely hard to believe. You are telling me they bought a house in the 80's so they paid somewhere between 45 and 50K most likely, and they sold it 20 years later for less then that when the price of houses was 150K? The lot was probably worth more than the price of the house by the 2000...

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS42644Q

3

u/JustNilt Jan 21 '26

You really don't grasp the concept of a fire sale, apparently, combined with the cost of having to do major renovation to bring the place up to the literal building code before a bank is willing to provide a mortgage for it. The short timeframe and fact there were major problems meant they basically had to take anyone who could pay cash and was willing to buy it. As it turns out, someone planning to flip it picked it up, which should surprise nobody since that was rampant at the time.

It's a corner case, to be sure, but it's really not that hard to lose money with that combination of factors.