How close are your neighbors?

I live in an apartment complex so my neighbors are all around me: under, over, and across the hall, and right next door.

I am not friendly with any of them except to speak to when passing.

A balcony a way, up or next to me…. but the great thing is the apt is very quiet

5 feet between houses, on both sides. I have a side door on one side, and there is a concrete walk between the front of the house and the backyard. The walk on the side goes from house to house (no grass) and the 6’ high fence and gate are forward from the side door. We store bikes, gardening tools, etc. along the walk on the side. On the other side of the house, my neighbor has a walkway to his backyard, but it doesn’t go from house to house; there’s pea gravel between his walkway and my house.

All the houses have front porches, and the setbacks are staggered so you actually have more privacy than it would seem. Because the houses are so close, people are a little more formal. Very friendly and helpful, but more formal.

Our neighbors are pretty close in proximity. We’ve been blessed by having great neighbors on both sides, across the street and down around the corner. I think it’s mostly a matter of luck, though. Because in the neighborhood where we lived before, which was almost identical in makeup and proximity of the houses, most of my neighbors kept to themselves and rarely spoke to us. And before that, with a similar social makeup, we had great neighbors.

I’m a naturally neighborly person, so I always try to get to know people and I try to feel them out too, some people are just not neighborly and there’s nothing you can do to change that. I just steer clear of those folks.

The neighbors that we have now regularly come outside to chat (especially the men, who often borrow each other’s tools and talk about projects), invite each other in to see their new decorating ideas and to bring over a little food gifty. And every one has pets, so most of our neighbors are out and about walking their dogs or rounding up their cats, so pet talk is very common. We actually babysit 2 of the neighbor’s pets when they go out of town.

My Dad has a power washer, a tall extension ladder and a lot of odds and ends, so there’s always some fellow from up or down the street in our garage talking to my Dad or borrowing one of his tools. He also has this big digging bar for getting huge rocks and roots out of your yard. That seems to be especially popular. And my next door neighbor has a lot of weird plastic stuff, from a former business that he used own in his garage, that all the men in the neighborhood like to use to “make” other stuff. It’s very funny.

I live in a house that’s been divided into 5 apartments. I know a couple of their names, a few of them I occasionally make small talk with. I’m really, really hoping it doesn’t get any more “friendly” than that – I’d be really fine if, barring some need to talk to neighbors, we never ever talked, or knew each other’s names.

I’m in a huge apartment building. But I don’t see my neighbours very often, and I very rarely hear them. Occasionally I hear the people above if they’re moving things around, and I often hear the violin or whatever that someone plays downstairs. But aside from that, it’s pretty quiet around here, which is a nice change from the crapshack I used to live in.

There is about an acre in between me and each neighbor on 3 sides, and a large field behind us without anyone living back there. I’m friendly with all of them. In our previous subdivision we were very close and had more contact but I wouldn’t call it more friendly, just that we saw each other more often.

An acre between me and my neighbor on my left, a half acre between me and the person on the right. I don’t talk to my neighbors.

I’m with @marinelife , @creative1 and @Seelix .
Not in the same building, their answers.

@rebbel – Not in the same building…

As far as you know!

Above, below, and around me. I’m surrounded by them. Except I do live on the endcap apartment. But still, a lot of other peoples’ windows. Yes, I could.

We have almost 2 acres of land (because it’s essentially two lots), with the house more or less in the middle. Our house is on a corner, so there are two houses next to us (it’s a flag lot) and then there’s one behind us. They’re close, but not that close. The girl who lived in the back house of the flag lot went to a private school nearby; we were never close friends or anything, but my parents and I knew her and her parents. The people behind us are an older couple whom we’ve talked to on occasion and know decently, but not much else. Living in an area with big houses far apart from each other, many of them with gates and long driveways makes for a relatively impersonal neighborhood.

So far it appears that whether you live in close proximity, or have a great distance between neighbors, there’s a lot of impersonal relationships (or lack of relationships) going on. I wonder why? To me, that is just a sad and foreign concept. When you are lucky enough to have good neighbors, it’s a real joy, and it brings a certain sense of security.

I live in the boonies, so I don’t have many neighbors. However, the one that was closest to me were a couple who were dating. He got mad at her, stabbed and killed her, and hung himself behind my church.

@seelix Are you Dutch too then?

@rebbel – Aw, you ruin my fun :P

The closest is three acres away; in the summer when the trees leaf out, I can see only one house, but just barely. It is wonderful.

All told, I have four houses in view during the winter. We each have a minimum of 9 acres. I could hoof it if necessary but the ticks are an issue. We tend to drive in order to visit.

In my neighborhood the houses are pretty far apart (a few acres) with lots of trees. I could walk around my house naked and nobody will see me. The neighbors I do have are all very nice, we’ll chat. Let’s just say we don’t invite each other over for dinner.

I live on a road that goes to nowhere. The road is a 3 mile loop and there are 7 residences on the road total. We are all friendly though and watch out for each other as we live miles and miles from anywhere. It’s a great way to live! :~)

There’s about 50ft minimum between our homes at the nearest points. We chose a home on the end of a cul de sac that’s got an absolutely huge wrap around backyard. It’s as private as we can get in the suburbs.

Two miles to our west, one mile to our south, ¼ mile to our north and ¼ mile to our west.

Our neighbor north of us visited when we moved in 8 months ago and gave us her phone number in case we needed anything. We haven’t met anyone else yet.

My southern neighbors’ house is about 10 feet away from mine.
The matriarch was nasty and hated my trees, even though I paid for and provided the service to have them pruned on their side of the fence. She’s passed away and things are much more peaceful now.
I’m sure that if she lived across the street from me there would have been much less, if not zero discord between us.

My western neighbor lives across a 2-lane street from me.
She’s very nice and watches my house for me when I go out of town.

My northern neighbors live in an apartment complex across the street. Occasionally some jerk parks so that their vehicle blocks or partially blocks my driveway.
I’m sure that if the residences there were single-family homes, I’d have a lot less hassles with lazy ahole parking.

My eastern neighbor lives about 120 feet away and I’ve only seen them about once. I’ve never had any interaction with them, even though we share a fence. I guess they’re reasonable people and like me, they don’t have any qualms about pruning any of my flora that grows over their side of that fence.

How’s your neighbor sitcheeashun, Nef?

@Brian1946 typical suburbia. My neighbors are close, but not close enough to touch. We have a decent sized yard. However, it’s a historic area, so the homes are old and the zoning is wacky. For example, my neighbor’s house to the west is about 2” off of my property line.

I talk to some of my neighbors, though many of them are new and we never really connected with them. One of my neighbors is my best friend, and we have other neighbors that we invite over for barbeque’s and things like the 4th of July. It’s a nice little setup overall. Some of my neighbors are… not exactly the most appealing type of people, involved with drugs and stuff. We are just hopeful that they are weeded out and replaced with other young couples and kids.

On one side there’s a house that’s about fifteen feet away. I can see their chandelier each night over their dining table. She is in her sixties and lives with her brother who is mentally challenged and in his mid to late fifties. Once she rang our doorbell and admonished us for driving the golfcart across a strip of her side yard. Never heard a word from either of them again. I never see them while I’m outside quite a bit watering veggies and rose bushes and trimming hedges. Their house is for sale. They’ll never get their price.
On the other side are about 5 vacant lots covered with lovely hardwood trees. It makes for a great view from our screen porch. Quiet.
Behind us is our largish backyard connected to someone else’s garage and part of his yard. He has no windows on that side so that’s nice. I only see him when he’s mowing. He’s in his seventies and I say hi when I can. We have never had a chat and his house is for sale.
Behind our house is what I call the alley. It’s a paved street and some of the backs of homes are on this alley. So you just see people backing out of their garages. One of them houses a young family with two sons. They are really nice , have come over with their puppy and are about forty. If not for our dogs liking their dog I don’t know if we would have “met.” But maybe so; they know my daughter and she spent 45 minutes talking to the husband once . The wife came over and spoke to my daughter longer than that once.
The people across the street have homes set back from the street farther than ours. I have met one of them. She’s in her mid sixties, spends a fortune on her yard and seems very unhappy to me. She brought a warm cake over the week we moved in. She still doesn’t strike me as “friendly” and I get bad vibes from her. Chilly, never smiles. At least I can fake it. lol

@Seelix

Can you see Lake Ontario or the CN Tower from your window?

BTW, do you know if any streets in your city are named after Canadian celebrities? E.g., is there a Neil Young Blvd. or a Phil Hartman Avenue?

I can’t touch their house but can easily walk next door.I get along just fine with my neighbors.:)

Quite a few metres away. I live on an acre and a bit of land so there is enough space to not feel too close but near enough to not feel isolated.

Growing up we were the only house on the ‘block’. The block was a 1 sq mile section. Now my nearest neighbor is 30 ft and a privacy fence away.

Personally I preferred the former.

@Brian1946 – I can’t see either, as my apartment faces north and both are south of me :(

The southernmost block of Jarvis Street was recently renamed Ted Rogers Way, after the death of Ted Rogers, CEO of Rogers Communications and owner of the Blue Jays. For my dad, who lived in Toronto/Hamilton until he was 23, this was really confusing!

I don’t think there are any other celebrity street names, none that I can find online anyway. There might be some unofficial ones, though, kind of like the Route of Heroes.

There’s like a fifteen foot gap between houses. My neighbors were very friendly, but the street I grew up on, we were the one of the youngest families, so most of the neighbors we knew have moved to either smaller houses or ranch-style houses.

We live next to an old Indian gentleman one one side,
We see him everyday and send food over sometimes too. The houses on our street are all attached so, they’re quite close.
The other side is a house with a very noisy family. I think I know most people on our street and always smile and say hi on seeing them. I’d say I was quite close to our neighbors.

We live in a duplex. Our neighbors share a wall with us. We share a porch. Can’t get much closer.

They’re side doors are about 10’ and a 6” brick fence from our side doors. I know one set of neighbors, but don’t really do more than say hi and bye. I don’t know one thing about the other neighbors.

I live in a house. On one side, our neighbour’s home is about 6 feet ..the other neighbour is about 10 feet from us. There’s no one behind us yet, the house is just being built. We know our neighbour’s names. We are friendly with them – one more so than the other. The one’s we are closer to have left us in charge of checking their home when they’ve gone on vacations. The other neigbours don’t talk much but are friendly. We’ve been here for almost 2 years. We don’t hang out with anyone in our neighbourhood though. I like the privacy a house gives us. But I’d really like to be out in the boonies some day.

Before we got our house, we lived in a small, one bedroom, apartment. I lived there for about 9 years ..lol. Everyone seemed to pretty much know everyone. Some people came and went but some of the older residents had been there long before I moved in. I knew enough about the people on my floor. I got along with most of the people I conversed with in my building. The lady across from me had schizophrenia and would go on bouts of interesting behaviour when she wasn’t taking her meds. There were some really decent people there, most of them were elderly. Then there were always the um less decent ones.
There was only one person that I tried to stay away from the whole time I was there. The person that lived below me. He absolutely hated animals. He hated my dog and used to try to spread lies about how I neglected and abused him ..it was quite lovely. Lol once he even tried to tell the management that I had a man living with me. I was so glad to be out of there.

I have many stories of living there ..lol.

There is about 300 feet to neighbors house. In the winter I can see their houses, but from now until October the view is blocked by natural growth.
I can lay dow in the middle of the street and only have to worry about the mailman delivery as I am at the end of the road.
I am very neighborly with the residences on the road, but some are fairly reserved.
I think the contact and neighborly part is more about personality than proximity.

I am on a corner so there is a neighbor about 25 feet to one side then one around the corner behind my back yard. The house we are moving to is also on a corner, but the neighbors behind are a bit closer. Where I live now the kids play together in the neighborhood but I don’t talk much to the grown ups, just wave hello.

Through one wall we have a neighbor who is an invalid and has 3 caretakers. When she feels well enough to walk around the outside balcony, I talk with her. She is Chinese and her English is limited, but we laugh a lot.
Across the walk in front of the outside elevator is a couple we see more. We fetch the the newspapers and trade them when we’re finished with them. We’re available to each other for little things like picking up a package when they’re out of town. They’re enjoyable neighbors.

My neighbor is just a fence away. But we somehow don’t seem to get along.

I’m gonna say my house is about 15–20 feet between my neighbors houses. The neighbor on my right side seems to think we’re all just a bunch of hoodlums for some reason and likes to complain that there’s too many cars in my driveway. (too bad it’s my driveway!)
...and the neighbors to my left, I think there’s like…3 different families in that house and we’ve never talked at all. I think they own a cat that likes to use me for slices of chicken…

@stefaniebby the cat uses you for slices of chicken?? I hope not literally! Cuz you would then have to be ittybittystefaniebby

@blueiiznh Hahah, he really does! Comes over acting all hungry and I can’t help but give it some food. ;)

I have tried to be nice to some neighbors, if they speak or don’t speak it does not bother me either regardless if they say hi or not it is not gonna pay bills. I live in a major city where people are not neighborly, I bet if they need a favor they would speak it seems that people are only nice when they need other than that you do not exist. Neighbors who speak on regular basis to me would treated with the up most respect, The phony who don’t speak will be ignored.