Has anyone ever vetted potential neighbors?

If the reason you are meeting the neighbors is to gauge their craziness, then, yes, it's rude. However if you are trying to gauge the neighborhood safety, the landlord's rep, the building's heating, etc, then no, i think that is smart and reasonable.

Now, if you happen to learn your neighbors are bat-s*** crazy during this process, then it's a win win for you.

While I havnt ever met neighbors prior to moving in somewhere, I have been asked multiple times by my old landlord in bedstuy to speak to other young, single women moving into the building (I guess to give them a sense of the safety level of the neighborhood and building neighbors) I never thought it was rude but they never asked me personal questions beyond where I worked in the city and how long my commute was. I think its ok to scope out a place, plus if you find a cool neighbor you can ask them about the building (if its noisy, if anyone has lots of pets, etc)

It's a good idea. Talk to them about building issues (noise, infestations, heat, water pressure, etc.) for a few minutes and you'll hopefully at least be able to tell if they're total sociopaths. I'm with EmmaViz in that you shouldn't be overt about it.

I doubt you can really tell if they'll be good neighbors by meeting them, but when we moved into a building with lots of units, I went back without the person showing it and talked to the current tenant and a few neighbors. I was able to find out how long previous tenants had been there (if there's high turnover, there may be problems of some sort) and ask several folks about issues like heat that are a major concern to me.

I think it helped me get a sense of what we were getting into (ie, we knew that the LL wasn't on top of repairs and got some useful building gossip that helped us take care of little problems.)

Good luck with that. . .if you've ever read the Sociopath Next Door, or any other books about the personality disordered among us, you would know that they present very well. The facade is the most important thing to hide their disorder and they are usually quite charming and frequently accomplished. Just bear that in mind. However, talking to neighbors is good to check out a place.

its not a good idea...

If you are RENTING and feel the need to go about "vetting" neighbors, you need to get a fucking life.

This is why people think Park Slope is full of self-righteous snobs disconnected from reality.

You are seriously considering vetting your neighbors? How about not having a stick up your ass, finding an apartment to RENT, and go about your business like everyone else? If you have a problem with a crazy or noisy neighbor that requires intervention, then do something about it. But not giving other people the same benefit of the doubt (or appreciated indifference) your potential neighbors offer you comes off as being intrusive, pretentious, and completely unnecessary.


If you were PURCHASING a place it would be a different story given that it would be a long term investment and you have a vested interest, but if you are just renting, then you need to get a life.

japes317 wrote:
I am moving out of my current place (had to break my lease) due to an insane neighbor who I've had to call the police on in the past... She has been harassing us for months over completely ridiculous things such as walking across the floor ...my apartment has a high turnover rate. Wonder why..

The reality on the ground, I live in rent controlled building in the Slope where I am the only tenant who pays what I do -- the rest of the tenants are paying under $400 a month and they are disrespectful, rude and downright nasty. I've gotten into fights -- had a settlement awarded to me by a 32 year old man who was jealous I had the downstairs and broke my peephole. When I confronted him him and his "local" boys attacked me. Eggs have been thrown in my yard continually to annoy, a mess of local hoodratz run the property constantly vandalizing and smoking shwag weed (as I write this it reaks of garbage weed.) You can only fight so much before it's time to move on, but you move on and it's the same sh*t. SO HELL YEA KNOCK ON DOORS! Had I known going in the neighbors were jerks and bullies in the high-school sense, I would never be here. We're talking about 12 year old minds in adult bodies. So knock on doors, ask the landlord if there are nutjobs than hold him accountable when you discover their are and he didnt tell you. Look for losers -- and I mean generally profile the building for "rent-controlled haters" who lived in the slope for 20+ years. They are the most problematic and insane. Generally, these "old skoolers" will talk to you but they hate you (it's the truth kiddies, rent control breeds hate.) It's not being narcissistic or whatever these commentors call you, it called doing what you got to do to maintain a healthy peace of mind. Nothing worse than someone telling me I don't have the right to peace of mind and I pay $2000/month, while those affecting it are paying nothing and getting away with everything. Cops will always side with the rent-control "old skoolerz" even allowing them to vandalize and smoke pot because you are seen as a 1.a colonist and 2.undeserving because of your class (which is nonsense, we're all screwed.) So imagine you do have a nutjob in the building, and you do get into some beef and you end up calling the cops -- and nothing happens. Than what do you do? You stress out, get sick, spend months trying to tell yourself its not affecting you -- total waste of chi power, man. KNOCK ON EVERY DOOR.

The lesson is work hard, work all day and get screwed because you don't live with your entire family in a 2br apartment for the last 40 years.

That's what you take into account.

Subject: whoops

I vetted a neighbor once who wanted to join our co-op. She was originally from Alaska, and she had a really funny accent. I didn't do a thorough background check, but I figured her good looks and folksiness would appeal to the other co-op members and voted "Yea". As I was president of the co-op board, no one wanted to disagree and she was allowed to live in our building. For purposes of not revealing her name, let's just call her Ms. Alaska.

At first things were great. She moved in and was really chatty with all the people in the building. But after a couple weeks I began getting worried calls from neighbors. A man who lived on the first floor told me he was missing half his library, and that it started to disappear as soon as Ms. Alaska moved in. A woman on the second floor said her son began tying all his action figures to his dinosaur collection because Ms. Alaska told him they "used to play together". And a 5th floor neighbor said that late at night she could hear hammering in Ms. Alaska's apartment. I went to go inspect and found that she was building a staircase in her 1-story apartment.

Something was wrong with this woman, but I couldn't make it appear as though I made a bad decision. So I did what anyone would do, and in our next co-op meeting openly acknowledged that I believed Ms. Alaska was the right fit for our building. But sadly my neighbors did not agree. They unanimously voted me out as board president and I had to leave altogether. I am still trying to figure things out, but at this point I might just move back west.

h0h0h0 wrote: Can I vote the post above for "most unusual"?

If this were Craigslist it would be a best of