It's possible I overestimated, but it has to be at least over two dozen trees. And these are not small trees. There's of course smaller ones but others are easily over 40-50 feet.
If someone planted 50+ trees that are a terrible fit for the lot, well that's a good reason to take them out too, hopefully with replacements.
Personally, I live on a large lot with hundreds of trees, and it would be easy to select 50 trees that would be reasonable to cut down, and you'd hardly notice. But the only large tree we cut down was a (non native) cottonwood planted near the house that had bifurcated and was likely to fall on the house in the foreseable future. When we thin the forest, it's mostly younger trees in thick growth that don't have room to grow well.
Also wanted to mention the importance of diversity. Everybody thinks trees trees trees but, at least where I live, native prairie plants are just as, if not more important, and are unfortunately largely ignored.
The plants are really fun because you can just basically plant them anywhere and see how they do. They take quickly and don't pose any harm to infrastructure.
We're in a cold climate, so one of our goals is to have more deciduous (leafy) trees on the southern side. This provides shade in summer but solar heat in winter.
Right now in that location is an overgrown ~60 year pine replant. Bad for sun, bad for fire. After taking down a total of 50 (!) dead spindly pines, the building now gets noticeably more sun, but you can hardly notice a difference in forest density. But it gave a lot more room (and sun) for the maples and oaks already coming up.
To choose trees, I took a sun path app and walked back and forth along the south wall. This let me choose only dead pines that were shading the building in winter.
I avoid burning. The pine logs now rot peacefully (waterlogged) on the forest floor, feeding fungus while they buffer rainfall and cover chipmunk holes. Don't worry, there's still abundant dead stand habitat as well.
For ticks, you might consider chickens and/or ducks. Note that they will eat and scratch everything, so you might get one of those cheap solar electric fence enclosures. You can enclose a large area for little cost, leaving some habitat areas where toads and salamanders won't get gobbled up!
So sad to hear about thoughtless clearcutting. I cringe every time.
Cheers and good luck
Be careful doing this with any tree that can potentially fall on your home or one of your neighbors'. You will have a lot more trouble getting insurance to pay out if they find out you knew the tree was dead.
Another house that has sit empty for a year and a half recently cutdown all its trees. Literally all the trees. All that's left is a graveyard of stumps, which makes it look like a warzone from WWI or something. There was probably 50 trees cutdown.
There's no way I'm cutting down the oaks, and I'm unlikely to cutdown any tree, even if it's dead since even those support insects, owls, woodpeckers, and other birds.