All I have as evidence are vitriolic emails of him telling me I'm a terrible person for doing things like kissing my dog, and that I'm sexually harassing him by bending over while I'm doing yard work -- really vicious, hateful, insane things he's emailed me.

Not because a crazy neighbor clunked me over the head with a rusty shovel  and buried me in his back yard under his pile of junk cars and scrap metal.It became clear that residential real estate was no longer a good option for me so I looked for others.After doing my homework, I signed on with a business broker (see my signature). 

If it was in the middle of the yard and would result in you having to dig a trench 10 feet down in the middle of your front yard if it collapsed, then I would be more concerned.

Short term the properties stay in mint condition virtually all the time, the maintenance is half of that in long term (biggest surprise to me), all of the legal headaches of long term are gone ( no evictions, bad checks, collections, security deposit disputes, etc.).Nobody making meth in the bathtub, no tenant not cutting the grass, no cars on blocks in the front yard, etc.

I have a business partner out there and he went by the house just to check up on it and there was a crackhead in front yard saying that he needed to get into the house because his stuff was in there, he proceeded to inform my partner that an altercation has taken place inside of my house and shots were fired.

The neighbors have bordering fences that help but there are a number of open gaps in each corner of the yard.

Security cameras, signs in the yard, sit and wait for the people and take pics for evidences, ...

We have a 1/2 street improvement that requires 2 street lights from PGE (Portland General Electric)   PGE is asking for an Illumination engineer to pick the correct wattage and throw of the street lights (so they do not shine in the neighbors yard and light up the street/sidewalk correctly.  

His English seems much better than my German, and I think he's just playing games / gotten cold feet, but if I'm going to salvage the deal, I think I need to take the language barrier, and this "I didn't receive that; don't know what you're talking about" game, off the table. 

I actually salvaged flooring from the kitchen that was going to be tiled to repair the rest of the place.