Rotten Neighbor

(CBS) In today’s weakened housing market, even the smallest of factors can have an impact on your home’s future worth and your own enjoyment living there, not the least of which, your neighbors.

The Early Show national correspondent Jeff Glor reports on one man’s hi-tech way of dealing with a rotten neighbor problem.

For many folks location is key when looking for a new home. But it’s not just where you live, it’s also who lives next door.

Whether it’s noisy toys, or bare knuckle brutes, no one wants to be stuck next to the dreaded bad neighbor.

Brant Walker and his girlfriend Kendra Kadas moved into their San Diego apartment this summer only to discover a daily assault on the senses. “You come home from work, start walking up the stairs, you smell it a little bit, and it just starts stinking,” Brant remembers.

Day after day, Brant and Kendra’s neighbors were cooking. The smell, they say, was unbearable. “The smell’s just right in our apartment and it makes it hard to want to cook or eat your own food with this smell in the air,” Kendra says.

Rather than talk to his neighbors about the odor, Brant smelled an opportunity. He launched a Web site – rottenneighbor.com – and posted his grievance to the world.

“Anyone has the right to know what their neighbors are like before they move in so they don’t regret it the very next day,” Brant argues.

Brant opened the site for anyone to post about anyone and right away hit a nerve. Each day, the site gets thousands of postings about neighbor horror stories.

Neighbors being tattled on generally aren’t identified by name but their home, right down to the street address, is. Experts say the site can seriously impact a home’s worth.

“The question is how far would you have to drop your house in order to make it saleable if everyone knows you have bad neighbors? It might be you know a third. It could easily be a third. It’s hard to calculate but I’ll tell you, it could definitely be a lot,” Phyllis Rockower from the Real Estate Investment Club of L.A.

Brant says protecting people’s privacy isn’t his concern. He believes he can help save home hunters from making uninformed decisions. “You have so many real estate engines out there helping people find out where they want to live. This is the first one of its kind helping people find out where they don’t want to live.”

Rottenneighbor.com recently launched a beta version and has gone world wide. The site, which is being supported by private financers, has received millions of hits since launching.

Rotten Neighbor was last modified: January 22nd, 2008 by Admin

5 Responses to Rotten Neighbor

  1. I don’t like my neighboors They don’t know how to be kind to other neighboors. They speak loudly so i can heard them in my room at home. This situatin is awful!

  2. Ever seen Beavis and Butthead? Remember their hippy teacher who played the guitar and sang? I’ve been listening to something that sounds exactly like that over and over and over for the past 3 1/2 hours. Ear plugs don’t even block it out. I should be thankful though. This is mild compared to usual around here. I live in Germany and don’t speak well enough to tell these ******** to shut the **** up. My (German) husband is out of the country right now. Normally he takes care of this. But we live with this and much worse daily. Cooking smells? **** YOU! It’s 10:15 at night. I’m not necessarily ready to go to bed, but when I am ready in an hour or so, guess what. I won’t be able to thanks to my f***** up neighbors. I WISH all I had to deal with were cooking smells. I hate you guys as much as I hate my neighbors. And yes, I know this is not their actual site, but I will never ever go there and give them that one tiny extra little “hit”. Brant and Kendra SUCK! As much as my neighbors.

  3. Those two whiners need to SHUT UP and live in my neighborhood for a day. I’d trade anything to just have to deal with neighbors who ‘cook every day’. Grow up! No matter what it smells like, that is a ridiculous complaint! I googled “neighbor horror stories” and clicked on this because it helps me with my own situation to hear about others. But THIS is insulting to people who really do have bad neighbors. Here’s a suggestion for Brant and Kendra, get a life. I am not even going to click on their website so I don’t know if they told their story first and then invited people to tell theirs, but I doubt it. Cooking smells. B-o-o H-o-o.

  4. Me insurance agent buys property’s and uses insurance office to get them bad reported so she can buy them cheaply when you know be able to afford insurance when reguired to because of loan.Sandy and the Praks Dowagiac, michigan 49047

  5. I have three neighbors in the same building as me that are very rude and just bad news.There’s a couple that are suing a company over something that’s their own fault.Basically the man walked infront of a moving vechicle. The woman is a known drunk and has been a problem for the other tennants when drunk.
    The man who lives on third floor has been known to cause problems when he feels like someone has insulted Islam and hasn’t quite gotten a good understanding of live and let live.

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