Rotten Neighbor - Find The Bad Neighbors Before You Move
by
on September 08, 2007,
RottenNeighbor.com is a fairly new web service, launched in July, that is out to provide web users with insight into the which neighborhoods around the United States have experienced reports of bad neighbors.
To do this, the website implements Google Maps to provide users with where unfriendly neighbors are located, as posted by other users.
The layout is simple and easy to use, but Rotten Neighbor does have its flaws, beginning with the seemingly excessive use of Google Ads on every page.
Starting at the homepage, users can search for any area by the zip code. It would have been nice to see the ability to search by city or at least county, but ZIP is the only option.
Once a zip code is entered, users are taken to a page with a Google Map with small pink bubbles around it, graphically notifying users of the areas where postings have been made. Beneath the map is a scrollable text area that provides a title and clickable link for each of the listings, which, when clicked, displays the entire contents of the post within the Google Map above.
The bad news, though, is that it seems that the system has already been flooded with a variety of useless messages and spam which has yet to be removed, most likely meaning that there are no moderators at Rotten Neighbor.
Just look at this simple search for the “90210″ area code. There are hundreds of pink markings covering the map in the screenshot.
In one posting, entitled “sam cassady, like to get renters to drive out people who help the cops,” the following statement was left:
“In the past years in the Ventu Park area, there has been a rise in crime rate. After a recent attack on local residents police arrested Michael Messner regarding terrorism acts and vandalism. He attacked a family on 188 elm road and when he attempted to break in the house. The owner used a gun to drive the attacker away. Also Sam Cassady along with his various tenets in his 15 houses is under investigation for their involvement. Also a Lisa Messner and an Arda Manokian are the center of attention due to acts of witness harassment and purgery acts in court. The police are looking to see if this is an ?organized? crime or a petty act to get revenge. There is currently a civil and criminal case against him and his tenants. His homes have had a lot of criminal activity with renters requiring police action against them due to prostitution, tax evasion, and other criminal acts…”
Not only was there this listing about Sam Cassady, but there were at least 8 others, all with different titles, but the same message contained within. I am not saying that this information is not true and I can't be certain, but I would assume that most (if not all) of these postings came from one person who seems to have a grudge against someone. How beneficial is that in getting help finding the right neighborhood to move into.
Rotten Neighbor has developed an interesting idea with its service, and one that could potentially be very useful to the real estate market, but it is flawed in its underplanned community aspect. The lack of some kind of monitoring and removal of pure spam from the system leaves it littered with useless information.
There is a lot that needs to be learned from YouTube's current troubles and the mass editing conspiracy going on at Wikipedia. It is great that web 2.0 brings the community to the forefront, but there is a limit and there should be (at least) moderate oversight, because there are spammers, hackers, and the like, who do attempt to abuse the privileges that these services provide.
With that said, RottenNeighbor.com has some replanning to do, if it wants to be the “exceptionally smart assistant” that it wants to be when people are looking to move into a new neighborhood.
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Bighorn
kalipso
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
I saw this website on Good Morning America, I live in Grand Island Nebraska, and my neighborhood is wonderful. There are no probs at all. How about the good with the bad?
This site does not seem to work…have tried all morning to no avail. Can someone let me know what the problem is with the site?
Thank you in advance.
I just tried myself, and the website appears to be down..
I am not sure if they are just experiencing downtime or if the site has been taken down though.
We moved because of two neighbors in the Willows area of Menlo Park, the 100 block of Laurel AVENUE. Two of the guys were nuts. One calls the police about everything from the color of my house, to being parked two inches over the driveway onto the sidewalk. He lived with his “friend” and they were always complaining about something. The other neighbor came running across the street and threatened my husband because our gardner was trimming a tree! He said, “Come on, hit me, come on hit me!” His eyes were red and he was foaming at the mouth. All because of the noise of a tree trimmer! Don’t move to the 100 block of Laurel Avenue in Menlo Park, California. These neighbors have serious mental probblems. Not to mention around the corner is a registered sex offender.
If I had rotten neighbors like these, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKckQ4REU7M I’d surely add them into the site…these people are a nuisance
We too lived not far from that Willows Neighborhood, in Menlo Park, California that Kathy spoke of. I am so happy to hear that someone else shares the same view as we did about the 100 Block of Laurel Avenue! Pay over a million dollars for a home and get a million dollars worth of jerks for neighbors. One neighbor took out their front door (no front door) and painted their home baby puke yellow.
Go elsewhere people, go elsewhere if you are buying a home! Your million dollars will give you a million dolars worht of headaches and unhappy people.
I’ve lived in Carmel Valley for about 11 years and have enjoyed the area. Even though they put in a freeway behind my house, the house is still great…but the neighbors that moved in are mental, refuse to smile back and sadly uninformed on the social skills required to be a neighbor.
I came home one day to find they took out all the trees and plants, large and small that filled the strip of land between our properties. We each own half of the strip between our driveways, but only one of us has access to water..them. The previous neighbors agreed that if I paid to put in the trees, plants and irrigation, prune, weed, worry and work on the plants they would allow water to flow regularly costing them maybe $1 a month, tops! Great deal, for them…but I agreed to have nice plants there. Years later, they sold the home and weird guy moves in. I told the real estate agent the deal to disclose it to the buyer and later took over a warm peach pie the day he moved in. Then, came home to find blomming daffodils, trees, roses, etc. ruined on my driveway w/ workers banging up my jaguar, also in my driveway. He said he’d only water if it had trees and plants he wanted. Mine looked dead or dying so I agreed, as if I had a choice! Then he refused to water those and said underground water would take care of them, overwaters his lawn on other side of driveway and leaves dead branches on the palms for years, and I have to prune the sago palm that will poke or shred you as you go to the mailbox as it reaches past the sidewalk. I do this hoping he will be grateful, nice, or water the plants in the drive. He’s only told me he will probably sue me if the trees he put in get too large and crack the drive if I water them. UGH! Yes, I now have Bad Neighbor Syndrome! And want to move!
A family lived down the street from me here in Albuquerque that has many children. The father of the children, Chris Perez Mayes, is an extremely rotten neighbor. He used to beat his wife/girlfriend. Beat their dog with a 2 by 4 and in the past had bragged to me he lived in Washington state where he would take geese into his house, and kill them in front of his 2 year old little girl. He would come outside at times with a gun and threaten all of us, his neighbors. The police finally took him away one day and his ex moved out and took the kids. As she was moving out, I spoke to this woman and she told me all about him. He is also a theif and dead-beat father who never provided for them. If this guy moves in next to you. Call the police and turn him in for not supporting his family. He may be in Texas now.
I am amazed at the response to this web site. THANK YOU. The Willows area of Menlo Park, California is known for inexpensive homes that have the address that says you live somewhere expensive. I’m not saying the houses are cheap, but in comparision to other areas in Menlo Park, it is very cheap. Along with cheap - come the cheap neighbors - who are SO mean and nasty you just want to pull your hair out and scream, “Get real.” I know this because I too, lived there and I moved for the very same reason the other people did. I lived around the block and I hope if you are considering buying a home on the 100 block of Laurel Avenue in Menlo Park, California you don’t.
i think this is a good idea because people should know before they move so they can find a good place and a safe place to live i know i would want to
I am someone that got all their rights taken from once I started working midnights. My neighbor for 10 years died, and the house was sold to a Real Estate agent named Sheila Krause (727)343-6037. Her husband is a cop for St. Pete Police. They put in a renter, Johshua Reilly (727) 539-4429 who’s a jerk. I work midnight shift and have a handicapped son, and a wife who’s diabetic. He is a handy man that doesn’t have a license and does work for the RE agent under the table. I know that because he told me. He has this beat up truck with squeeky doors. The house was built in the 40’s and has an illegal driveway that connects to my house and there is less than 15 feet between houses. He pulls up next to the window and has to slam all 6 doors when he comes in. My wife, after being awakened for 2 days straight after he moved in, yelled out to please be a little more quiet. I decided to go over and have a talk with him, when he started strutting like a peacock, and whining, “My mother doesn’t talk to me like that..etc.”
I explained my situation to him, in a neighborly way and actually apologized if he was offended by what my wife said (man was I a fool). Since then, its gotten worse. He told me he has a son that plays basketball at the local high school and will be visiting him (since Josh’s wife left him, I wonder why?) and he had a portable basketball hoop (which he conveniently set up right outside my son’s window (my son has Cerebral Palsy and has enough troubles without this guy adding to them. I went into his room after the excessive banging of the ball on the hoop rocked my house, and my son had his head covered, his hands over his ears struggling to sleep). The irony of it is, there is a park only 2 blocks away that has 2 very nice basketball courts, and the high school this kid goes to is about 5 blocks away, and I’m sure they have access to the courts. So its mostly out of spite that he’s doing this. He has friends come over and has them slam the doors as well. On Sundays he takes about 2 hours to do his lawn. He comes and goes between 2 and 3 hours at a time and makes sure he slams as hard as he can (every door) everytime he leaves and returns. I’ve called the police, but there is no such thing as a noise complaint before the hours of 11pm and 7am. He’s the type of guy who likes the feeling of power, and taking advantage of people. I have no recourse than to live with the abuse. Anything I do will be considered an act of aggression.
this website is unreal,just like the internet,just lies and rumors
I was told when I posted to be notified if someone has added a comment to a post. The last post by unanimous was rather vague, so I’m not sure if he was commenting about MY post or not, but my answer is this; anyone can post anything on the web. Everything is left to interpretation, and if you’re looking for something to put all your trust in, it is definitely not the internet or blog post. But the post I made is completely 100% true, written out of frustration after the ignorance of my neighbor got to be too much. I could have taken other steps, but fortunately (for him) it hasn’t come to that. Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. It was meant as a venting solution. Don’t like the site, don’t visit, as simple as that. There are plenty other sites you can go to.
I agree with nightworker, unanimous posted, “this website is unreal,just like the internet,just lies and rumors,” so how is the internet unreal? It got unanimous to post a comment in a very weak attempt to deflect attention and an obvious attempt to invalidate this site. This is typical of people who are guilty of being bad neighbors and in general bad people/Amerians. I also posted 100% facts because that is all I can do. It is supposed to help the people who come into contact with him because he is such a loser who endangers himself AND those around him.
I appreciate the support albu neighbor, I really do. He was out there again today, first at 2p and then at 4p (got 3 hours sleep, have to go in tonight). He does woodwork of some kind, so what he does is, takes it home and works on it in his garage, then goes back to work. Yeah, like you said “LOSER”
You’re welcome nightworker. I’ve worked nights too so I know how it goes. I’ve worked everyshift, lol… but I had a neighbor not so long ago make noise at all times of the day and night. I lived in an apartment so we shared a wall. She literally hammered on the walls driving in nails to hang things, ALL the time. I talked to her, called the police on her, yelled at her, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” is all she ever said and she just kept doing it. I finally had to move my bed to another room. It was the best thing I did. Slept like a baby after that. Hey, if you have to move your house around to be able to sleep more, than do it. Sad to say, your neighbor will not change. She never did.
What happened after 4 months of this was poetic justice. She was selling drugs and got busted. They took her away and on top of it, her mom came to move her stuff out and I helped her and she gave me lots of it so I sold it! LOL, nice huh. She’ll be locked up for over a year! Good riddence.
So move your bed to the other side of the house if you have to or find the quietest spot and put it there. Take care.
I live in Chicago and I am a professional mediator and executive life coach. I run across rotten neighbor complaints all the time in my line of work and I have had quite a few myself. I think Rotten Neighbor is a good concept and I like the fact that the site does offer a chance to point out great neighbors as well. I also like that they offer dispute resolution advice such as referring to mediation as a good alternative to court. Mediation is much less costly and less time-consuming than going to court. Furthermore, when you do go to smalls claims, many judges will now hold neighbor-to-neighbor and other pro se cases for referral to mediation anyway. Probably the best thing about mediation is that there are NO losers. The point is to come to a mutually satisfactory agreement for both parties which also helps to promote better relationships between the parties in the long run. If you want to no more about mediation or live in Chicago and wish to pursue mediation, feel free to email contactme@niquenyafulbright.com or call 773-368-3575. Rotten Neighbor does have its flaws but I think it is a very interesting and useful tool.
Happy Living!
Niquenya D. Fulbright
Executive Life Coach, Management Consultant, Mediator & Motivational Speaker
Building Bridges Between Your Dreams & Ultimate Reality
http://www.niquenyafulbright.com
3500 Block of Hazel Street in Erie Pa has a person who is clearly a Drug dealer and is growing Pot
and who knows what else in their home.
THESE STORIES HAVE A RESONDING RING OF TRUTH. I HAD A BAD NEIGHBOR GROWING UP AND THE DAY THIS RENTER/DEADBEAT/MISERABLE SADIST MOVED, MY FATHER THREW A PARTY IN THE BACK YARD AND HE NEVER THROWS PARTIES. YES, THE INTERNET IS FULL OF LIES BUT WHY WOULD ANYONE LIE ABOUT BEING VICTIMIZED BY A NEIGHBOR?! THIS IS THE BEST WEBSITE I HAVE EVER SEEN. ANYONE WHO IS POLITE AND KIND UNDERSTANDS THIS WEBSITE, THOSE WHO ARE NOT DON’T.
IT’S FUNNY TO SEE THESE SAME DICKHEADS HAVING TO DEAL WITH ASSHOLES THEMSELVES AND HOW FAST THE DICK MORPHS INTO THE
MEEK VICTIM THAT SAID DICK HARASSED FOR SO LONG.
I saw this website on today shows this morning but I’m trying to open the website but never get thru can someone tell me what is going on with this website maybe the webiste doesn’t work and Ilive in Texas…Thank you
I guess this website unreal , cant even open it ….
Soto your right, This Website does not work in Texas…
@Rosie: The thing is that after the website was featured on TV, their servers went down and they were unavailable for some time. From what I can see now, they are up and running again - and I can even read reviews and use it from Russia (though it does not make sense to me).
Gee, do I post about my neighbor before or after I move? I don’t want to lose a sale! The new people can take over the fight if they want. Actually, after reading some other’s horror stories, mine doesn’t sound as bad. I had gone to my city’s planning department to ask about whether there is a license for home day care centers. There was and my neighbor didn’t have one. A letter was sent out to them and what do they do? They lie to the city and say they ONLY have four children which is one less child needed before a license is required. I slept in my tent trailer that night and video taped from 3am to 9am(after that I needed to get some work done) and there were 16 cars showing up. It was dark and if I assume each car only brought one child, that was 16 children with one caretaker. I wanted to show the city my video, but they just didn’t want to deal with it! The whole reason for the license is to insure that the neighbors are not adversely affected. Slamming doors all night, bad running cars, loud music, etc. Then the kids sit on the swing set so they can watch me gardening. They aren’t being watched and I had to go out one day because they were yelling “fire!” We’ve tried talking to them and once yelled at them from my front door to turn off their badly running car that was idling in their driveway at 3am, 15 feet away. 12 hours later I get a policeman at MY door. Of course to weight their side, the neighbor said that I swore and threatened, so I got a talking to by the police. It didn’t matter when I told him that I didn’t swear and didn’t threatened. All sorts of garbage, rocks and toys end up in my yard. Now they have two little dogs that run the neighborhood and friends a family stepped in the poop in the yard when coming for Thanksgiving. I got evidence by photos of their dogs and cited them, so I’ll see them in court. Would you believe that their dogs STILL come in the yard after being cited? Sometimes the bad neighbor is also your city government.
I can’t seem to get this site to work…have tried several times to no avail. Can someone let me know what the problem is with the site?
Thanks
I heard about this site on the 11pm news last night. I can’t get this site to open up either, but at least it lets me post. My family & I live in a townhouse…so I have neighbors attached to both sides of my house. Well, it used to be that we never ever had a problem with hearing anything from either of the neighbors or anyone else in the neighborhood. Unfortunately for us, one neighbor got re-married & moved away so a new family moved in. It’s been a nightmare ever since. They moved in in January 2007 and as of Dec 07, they had the police called on them 4 times….only one of the times (the first time) was by us…..and that was because they had been arguing very loudly for 3 days straight & we got tired of it. My husband told them to keep it down & they yelled some unkind words back to him, so we called the police because the guy then threatened my husband with bodily harm. The other 3 times were by other neighbors - tho I/we get blamed for calling those times too. I sympathize with Nightworker!! These people that moved in are awful! There’s the young parents and 2 children. Plus someone else stays with them often…another relative. There’s been drinking & drug use in that house by the guy & sometimes by whoever stays there. You can tell by the way they’re yelling when they’re on something. Anyway, these people do not have any consideration for anyone! They constantly yell (every day)…..extremely loud!…..and stomp up & down the uncarpeted stairs all the time (every day) - I think out of spite….they slam all the doors in the house (every day) - again out of spite….they yell not only inside, but outside as well AND they have arguments - loud arguments - where the whole neighborhood can hear them plus they have extremely bad foul language. I don’t need my children listening to that. Apparently, they don’t care if we hear it, the neighbors hear it or their own children hear it. They do not discipline the children….they only yell at them. The kids are very disrespectful to the parents. But what do the parents do? Yell. Try paddling their butts for a change….maybe that will get thru to them, tho I kind of doubt it. They even keep my one child awake late at night with their yelling….her bedroom is on that side of the house so unfortunately she hears it all. I just don’t know what can be done about them, if anything. I really just wish they’d move back to where they came from. I’m really very embarrassed to be next door to them & hear all of this & know that all the other neighbors can also hear. The house on the other side of them is up for sale….has been vacant since before they moved in. I hope no one moves in….I’d hate to have them hear all the stuff we do. I’m glad this site is here! Thank you for taking the time to read my posting!
Yes there are rotten neighbors out there. What saddens me is that the cops do not want to do anything about them until it’s to late.After the rotten neighbor commits a crime then the cops will do something.
I would like to see this website expanded to include lousey tennants. When I evicted my tennants over the summer 2007 I really wished there was a website out there to warn potential landlords of my LOUSEY tennants such as mine!!! They stuck hooks to my walls (had to repaint two ), scratched up my hard-wood flooring (needed brand new floors), destroyed the stove, had a dog when they were not supposed to, and even stored gasoline by the front door after being warned about it several times. They were always at least 2-3 months behind on the rent and never seemed to have a working phone, so it was very hard to get in contact with them. Although they did give me a deposit, they refused to pay last month’s rent because they knew they would not be getting it back because of damages!!!
So, whats up with the site??? Is it going to be working anytime soon? Reading through the posts it seems that it has been down more than up???
From what I have seen so far, there marketing potential is much higher than their servers’ potential - they arrange for appearance in various TV shows very often and can not cope with all the traffic and users’ interest they get as a result. I guess they should do something about the application scalability if they want to continue to promote it like this.
You could probably cut and paste that comment into articles about most Web 2.0 companies.
@Svetlana, is it running on Rails?
@Cyndy: No idea actually, I have only seen this site once and did not really pay attention. Could very well be
@Grendel: I don’t think that it can be true for the most web 2.0 companies: the majority of them do not have enough marketing resources to ensure downtime for their servers
Calling all good neighbor, My neighbor was parking her 25′ R.V. on the street for years, she moved the moster every three days so she wouldn’t get a ticket. But the City passed a new ordinance last year (no parking R.V.’s in the street). So now she parks the moster in the driveway, I tried to talk to her about been a Good Neighbor and parking her R.V. at the new R.V. storage yards a block away from her house. She said no way! PLease call Jody at 1- (805) 469-5100 and Tell Jody to move her Moster R.V. to the storage yard across the street. (BE A GOOD NEIGHBOR AND MOVE IT!)
my neighbors mike and renne leadingham 855 snavely rd, 5026956986, have very little respect for anyone including their poor kids. my 16 yr old neighbor came to me upset, and if she could talk to her parents she would not have came to me, she didnt know her father and asked if i could help. i didnt see the harm in that. i have two children that have a step father as well. i dont like their father but would never keep my children from him because i hold a grudge, for thier sake. anyway, i found him. i told the girl i will leave unnamed, she was so happy. her father was so happy. renee told unnamed that if she looked for her father that she could pack her bags and leave!! who would do that to their child??? so dad and daughter got to talk on the ph. he is a very nice man and so is his wife. mom and step dad found out. keep in mind unnamed is 16 she is almost ready to leave home for goodness sakes. i would never ever put any child in harms way or help them do something wronge or agianst the law ever!!!! she simply wanted to find her father thats it. renee has been holding a grudge for 11 yrs toward the dad.. get over it!!!! she did some pretty sneaky things to rid of him. what she doesnt know is that every time he sent a card or letter or gift she would take the money send the card back to him, but he kept everything that was returned. he triyed and she kept her kids hid from him basically. anyway the point is mike came to my house with my two small children 6 and 7, and brought a big flash light over shaking it at me and getting up in my face saying F___ you to me over and over, my husband of course stopped that and told him that he would not talk to me like that and took him outside and of course mike says to my husband i am not going to do anything because he knows better. my husband will not hesitate to take care of him for doing that to me and doing it in front of my two small children all because they have something to hide about this whole situation. they are rude people any way but they showed their true colors last night. this boy mike, i cant call him a man because he isnt, yelled and cursed me threatened me with a huge flash light and did it in front of 2 small children, and let that poor girl have it over there that justy wants to find her father because she has a whole in her heart because her mother is pissed!!!! i just want everyone to know so they dont rent his little house from him and to keep away, the bad thing is he works for the sate here in frankfort ky. who wants someone like that working for the government??? i hope many people dont have to deal with him. and as far as you go mike and renee you better get a grasp on reality. i did nothing wronge and gopt treated that way and your poor daughter, i feel so sorry for her!!!!!!!
My neighbor is at it again, this time jody called the cops on me because i washed my truck in my driveway and got a drop of water on her R.V., she called the cops at least 5 times for a drop of water on her R.V. and she has called code enforcement about 5 times about my wall. So i took her BIG ASS to court to and got a restrining order on her. CALLING ALL GOOD NEIGHBORS! PLEASE CALL JODY AND TELL HER TO BE A GOOD NEIGHBOR AND MOVE THAT MOSTER R.V. to the new storage yard across the street. (805) 469-5100 CALL HER EVERY HOUR. THANK YOU.
Die Grundidee von rottenneighbor.com find ich voll toll…
rottenneighbor.com
Ich habe mich jetzt mal mit der Seite rottenneighbor.com auseinandergesetzt. (Wie ich jetzt technisch auf die Seite gekommen bin sag ich an dieser Stelle nicht, aber man findet Wege)
Die Grundidee hinter rottenneighbor.com wa…