I now live in a rowhome but my next door neighbor (another Philly native) cringes everytime I refer to it as such. Del Mar snob!

Sorry to go off topic but I thought Ardell would enjoy the humor

I grew up in an attached house and nothing that happened in the neighbor’s house ever bothered us or vice versa. When I managed townhomes and condos, we had more problems with the stacked condos than the townhomes.

And single family homes have neighbor disputes likely just as often, which isn’t every day. Trees uplifting a neighbors fence, somone expanding the paved patio area and creating water runoff wet basement next door. My experience says the issues are about equal.

People who want to run to a lawyer to sue the neighbor live in all kinds of homes. As in “Their bushes are getting so tall that they are now blocking my view” for instance. Now THAT can be a multi-thousand dollar problem with no resolution available.

We can’t eliminate risk in real estate, just help minimize it and manage it.

I may be missing the boat, but it seems to me you may oversimplifying a bit. Owning a SFH and a townhome are definitely different. If my neighbor doesn’t paint her house/scatters car parts on her lawn/lets her fence rot, it may affect my resale value but does not affect the physical integrity of my home (like a leak from a neighboring townhome could) – something much more urgent and immediate in my mind. You saying that your “world is full of reasonable and rational people” reflects the reality you’ve created for yourself – but sadly this reality is not universal. As was mentioned above, we live in a hyper-litigious society where most seem happier hiring a lawyer than talking to their neighbor. Though I think you’ve hit the mark by saying affordable housing in Seattle is now limited to the attached roof/no HOA model, expecting “neighbors to be neighbors” and to work things out may be a bit of a stretch. I guess educating our clients about the potential pitfalls is really the only thing we can do.

Have an offer in on one now which is a group of four, two on each side. At least there is only one attached neighbor. I did tell them all the pros and cons, including sometimes one owner has the money to do the roof and does both at the same time. The neighbor pays what he can, and makes payments to his neighbor for the balance. A lien for the balance is attached to the property so that if it is sold, the roof is paid off at closing.

There’s nothing a Court can do that the neighbors can’t work out for themselves.

My world is full of reasonable and rational people. When the neighbor’s roof leaks into your house, it us usually a homeowner’s insurance claim. There is no way to eliminate any and all risk of homeownership…even those which HOA dues often have unforseen events and special assessments.

Whether you own a single family home or a townhome or a condo, one day it needs a roof, and you have to deal with that.