How to stop a neighbor’s annoying home alarm
Few things are more disturbing than a house or car alarm that constantly blares when no theft is detected.
Q. We live in a nice community that is mostly crime-free. The problem is that a few of my neighbors have alarms on their homes or cars that are always going off, often for several minutes, and many times in the middle of the night. We have talked to these neighbors, but they won’t do anything because they say the alarms are needed to protect their property. What can we do?
A. I have had that same problem too, and it is a difficult one to resolve.
If you live in a community that is governed by a homeowners association, you can file a complaint with the HOA’s board of directors and ask the board to send a warning letter to the owners who have the offending alarms. That is sometimes enough to make a neighbor adjust the sensitivity of the siren so it does not start screeching every time another car goes by or a dog starts to bark — especially if the owner can be fined by the association if he or she ignores the board’s warnings.
It may take a little more work to squelch the hyperactive alarms if you live in an area that is not covered by a local HOA.
You certainly did the right thing by first talking to your neighbors about the problem. Shame on them for not taking action to solve it by simply adjusting their alarm’s “sensitivity” lower.
Call your local law enforcement agencies to see what can be done. Most cities and counties across the U.S. now have ordinances that require both car and home alarms to automatically shut off after a specified period of time, such as five or 10 minutes after they first begin sounding: If the alarm does not shut off, the homeowner can be cited or fined. Do not hesitate to call the cops if your neighborhood is covered by such an ordinance, but your neighbors choose to ignore it.
Also start making a list of the dates and times when each offender’s alarm sounded for no apparent reason. Include their name, their address and the names of any other neighbors who can attest to the disturbance. Laws in all 50 states entitle owners and renters alike to the “quiet enjoyment of their home,” so the list could come in handy if you must eventually file a disturbing-the-peace or public-nuisance complaint against an irresponsible neighbor.
Should worst come to worst, you could even file a lawsuit and ask a judge to issue a restraining order that requires the offending neighbor to either lower the alarm’s sensitivity and sound level or to disconnect it altogether.
REAL ESTATE TRIVIA
Most home burglaries occur between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., according to the U.S. Department of Justice, because Mom and Dad are at work, and their kids are at school. That means that no one is there to report a break-in.
Q. On our summer vacation, we drove past a sign on Interstate 476 in Pennsylvania that gave directions to “Jim Thorpe.” I think the sign indicated that Thorpe was about 10 or 11 miles away, but we didn’t have time to check it out because our relatives were waiting for us in Philadelphia. Is there a city named after Jim Thorpe, who I believe was the greatest athlete ever?
A. Yes, although Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, (pop. 4,700) is not an incorporated city but rather a borough of Carbon County. The eastern Pennsylvania town is about 80 miles north of Philadelphia and roughly 100 miles west of New York City.
To be sure, Jim Thorpe was one of the greatest athletes of all time. Born on what was then considered part of Oklahoma’s Indian Territory in 1887, he became the first Native American to win gold medals for the United States when he competed in the 1912 Olympics, then became a star in both professional football and Major League Baseball.
The history of the Quaker State community that bears his name is not quite as gilded. When Thorpe died at only 65 years old in Southern California in 1953, he was broke. The people of Shawnee, Oklahoma, paid to have his body sent back to them, but a measure that would have provided funds to build a memorial in his honor was vetoed by the governor.
About that same time, according to published reports, Thorpe’s wife read a newspaper story about two small communities in eastern Pennsylvania that were struggling to recover from the collapse of their once-prosperous coal-mining industry.
Various accounts state that the athlete’s widow essentially sold his remains to the twin Pennsylvania towns, without the consent of other family members. The two communities then erected a monument on his new gravesite and legally merged and officially named the newly unified area Jim Thorpe.
Although it is unclear whether the great Olympian ever set foot in the small Pennsylvania borough that now bears his name, his grave rests on mounds of soil from his native Oklahoma and from Sweden’s Stockholm Olympic Stadium, in which he won his gold medals.
Q. What does the term “effective age” mean when it comes to the real estate market?
A. A home or other building’s effective age is basically a professional appraiser’s estimate of a property’s current physical condition. The effective age can be much shorter or longer than its “actual age” — a number that reflects the year that it was built.
For example, I toured a 110-year-old Colonial-style home several years ago that an appraiser deemed had an effective age of only 40 because its loving owners had restored the home’s entire electrical, plumbing and even framing systems.
The next year, I visited a house that was built in 1982 but was found to have an effective age of 50 because the owners had never repaired the roof that was leaking and the ancillary damage that the roof’s failure had caused, including wet carpets in two of the four bedrooms and mold that was growing on some walls.