Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at war with neighbors over fears of raw-sewage explosion around couple’s new $5.35m Ohio home

Published: 06:35 EDT, 9 October 2026 | Updated: 06:37 EDT, 9 October 2026

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have been blasted as ‘absentee’ owners by a furious neighbor trying to block them from erecting a 6ft fence and planting scores of towering trees around their $5.35million Ohio mansion, the Daily Mail can reveal.

The A-List newlyweds are currently embroiled in an extraordinary showdown with locals in a quaint Lake Erie village as they seek to create a private oasis for their newly purchased luxury estate.

But longtime residents have pulled out all the stops in recent weeks to thwart the plans, raising everything from deer potentially being impaled on the fence’s spiked railings to drone fears and the threat of raw sewage backing up into the house next door.

Clash: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are embroiled in a showdown with locals in a quaint Ohio village as they seek to create a private oasis for their newly purchased luxury estate

Furious: Neighbors have been trying to block the A-list couple from erecting a 6ft fence and scores of towering trees around the $5.35 million mansion

Dispute: The singer and Kansas City Chiefs tight end have been locked in talks with Bratenahl’s Architectural Review Board since Kelce bought the property in March

At a planning board meeting last month in the village of Bratenahl, just outside Cleveland, the black aluminum fence was unanimously approved after more than an hour of objections from the people living on either side of the famous couple, newly-released records obtained by the Daily Mail show.

Since then, though, the row has only escalated, proving the singer and Kansas City Chief’s war with locals is far from over.

A furious Katherine Bolton, who has lived next door for the past 35 years, told Bratenahl’s Architectural Review Board at last month’s meeting that news of her new neighbors was a ‘tremendous blow’ to ‘the peace and quiet in Bratenahl.’

‘There’s a new owner, who is an absentee owner, who is not going to be here,’ she said, according to a recently published record of the hearing.

Remarkably, not once in the 72-page transcript of the showdown does anyone name the power couple.

But at a hearing on Tuesday night, Bolton finally said out loud what the whole village had been dancing around, telling the board the house next door had been ‘recently purchased by Travis Kelce.’

The 21,000-square-foot house has eight bedrooms, 11 bathrooms and a two-bedroom guest cottage. Built in 1895, it features a ballroom converted into a game room and home theater.

Aerial photographs reveal the inside of the sprawling estate for the first time since Kelce purchased it, including its manicured lawns, stunning lake view, winding driveway, and cottage built from the same red brick as the mansion.

During the meeting, Bolton said that she was locked in talks with the couple’s attorney over a century-old clay sewer pipe that the mansion shares with her home.

She said she had been quoted a staggering $75,000 to line the pipe to protect it from tree roots after learning Kelce and Swift wanted to plant scores of trees around their estate.

Work: Pictures taken at the estate show that trees have already been ripped out along the border, and yard renovtion is under way, with turf lifted and bare mud underneath

Luxury: The 21,000sq ft house has eight bedrooms and backs on to Lake Erie

‘Planting 50 evergreen trees just ten feet from a 100-year-old clay sewer line is virtually guaranteed to cause severe root intrusion, pipe structural failure and catastrophic sewage backups,’ Bolton told the meeting, citing research she conducted using artificial intelligence.

She also suggested the new owners would not be around long enough to care.

‘This applicant may decide to sell her house next year, maybe move on and buy another house,’ Bolton said, according to the transcript.

‘What am I going to do when I have 50 evergreen trees on my sewer line, and they’re gone? And I’m still living here in Bratenahl.’

The most striking objections came from Chuck Bauernschmidt, who has lived two doors down for 39 years.

He criticized the new owners for the state of the grounds, brandishing photographs of what he called ‘the total clear-cutting of the shrubbery and everything else.’

‘It’s now ridiculous,’ he said, according to the transcript. ‘All the trees are gone.’

Bauernschmidt also warned that the fence’s spear-topped design endangered wildlife, telling the board that deer have been known to get caught on the points.

Asked whether that was true, village official Mary Ranney replied: ‘Occasionally.’

Bolton’s husband, Bill, a former president of the Bratenahl village council, also chimed in, noting that a fence would not keep out paparazzi.

Despite accepting that ‘the applicant has higher security needs than many people,’ he scoffed that ‘either five or six feet’ in fencing would not ‘slow down a motivated able-bodied young person’ from potentially peeking in.

‘I think that the greater security threat for the applicant is from drones and the water,’ he said, urging the village to start planning for them now.

‘Are they going to be able to shoot them down?’ he added. ‘Do they have the right to shoot them down? I don’t know anything about that, but I do know that all over the world the paparazzi are pretty aggressive.’

Hitting back: Jacob Kutz, who is in charge of construction for Swift and Kelce’s home, said they had bent over backwards to keep the peace amid the ongoing saga

Meeting: Chuck Bauernschmidt and Katherine Bolton, who have each lived in neighboring properties for more than 30 years, were among those to object to the couple’s plans

At Tuesday’s hearing, the board approved the landscaping at the front of Kelce and Swift’s estate, but only on the condition that the trees on the south side are spaced far enough apart to mature properly.

It held off on approving the planting of a wall of saplings along the shoreline, ruling that the trees would stand too tall even if pruned.

Instead, the famous couple must now return a third time with a new plan.

Pictures taken at the estate show that crews have already ripped out trees and yard work is underway, with turf lifted and bare mud underneath.

A ‘no trespassing’ sign has also been posted at the front of the property.

Swift and Kelce’s side, meanwhile, pushed back, insisting they bent over backward to keep the peace amid the ongoing saga.

Their team of planners told the board they originally wanted an eight-foot fence to snake 1,190 feet around the lakefront estate, but they talked them down.

‘The house was one of the largest sales in Cuyahoga County, so the homeowner is looking for privacy and security,’ said Jacob Kutz of Tiny Construction, who is running the project.

Proposal: Jacob Kutz of Tiny Construction, who is running the project for the A-list couple, laid out plans for the property at a Bratenahl Architectural Review Board Meeting

Border: Kelce was initially lobbying for an 8ft fence around the property, but was convinced to lower the height

The 6ft fence that was finally approved will replace an existing five-foot one and has been shifted two feet farther inside the boundary. Crucially for the neighbors, it stops short of Lake Erie.

Property manager Patrick Hyland told the board at last month’s hearing that the owner had agreed neighbors could keep cutting across the back gardens with permission, ‘ after what happened… over the weekend ’.

That seems to refer to prior reports that a neighbor who got too close to the house was met by a recorded voice warning them off the property.

Hyland also told the meeting that his clients paid $7,500 out of pocket to replace a broken section of the shared sewer and had the whole line jetted and cleaned two weeks earlier,’ without asking for any help, just to show that we’re good neighbors’.

Kutz said Kelce andSwift’s side moved the fence two feet inside the property’s own boundary and added two gates so Bolton still has access to the sewer; dropped the plan to run it down to the water; and cut back trees on the Bolton’ and the Stephensons’ land at their own cost.

A survey showed they could have claimed four extra feet on the far side, according to Kutz.

Meanwhile, they added a gate for Bauernschmidt after he complained he felt ‘closed off ‘. ‘We went ahead and did that for Chuck,’ Kutz said.

New: Planners in Bratenahl approved the black aluminum fence last month, but a neighbor expressed concerns that deer could get caught on the points while trying to leap over it

On the sewer issue, Kutz turned the accusation around, telling the board Bolton had ‘planted some Arborvitaes on the sewer line, basically directly on it,’ far closer than anything the couple is proposing.

As for the stripped grounds, Kutz produced his own photographs of what he said the estate had looked like before.

‘This is no‘ an open field,’ he told t’e board, describing heavy overgrowth that ‘just hasn’‘ beenhasn’tained.’

Despite the objections, not every neighbor was against the famous couple.

Victoria Broer, who chaired the village’s planning commission for almost 20 years, told the board she was relieved the fence stopped where it did, noting: ‘I do appreciate that the fence is not going all the way to the lake, because that would be in my view.’

Property’records show an LLC linked to Kelce bought the mansion in March. It was incorporated in Ohio on February 26 of this year and used to buy the property seven days later.

The Daily Mail reached out to Swift and Kelce for comment.