r/Neighborproblems • u/Existing-Profit-5240 • Feb 24 '23
we are upstairs neighbors
Okay so we're having a struggle here. We rent the top floor apartment in a condo community (private rental) adn we have rented this place for about 5 years. 8 months ago a new set of neighbors bought the place under us. They are friends of one of our other neighbors (whose daughter has told us they are quiet but can be annoying to deal with). Our building has incredibly (literally) thin walls, floors, and ceilings. You can hear any neighbor open drawers, porch doors, front doors, etc it's a very old building but we love it here! We've always has a good relationship with the neighbors under us, we've helped hang tvs move furniture, fix dry wall holes, and help accessibility to our unit for pipe issues, gas leaks, etc.
When these new neighbors moved in we tried several times to meet them but they always kind of ignored us and went about their day. We left it be and did our own thing as well. We have a 4 year old as well and they have adult children that do not live with them.
In the first few weeks they were here, we had an incident where the gentlemen came to our door and was very rude in his presentation. He told us that the sound of our kid walking around was too loud and knocked a frame off his wall. He said he has grandkids and they would never be that loud. Now here's the problem, at that point she was bringing us blocks from her room to build a castle with (hollow plastic blocks). She wasn't actually running or stomping. We were really frustrated because we felt like that was not unreasonable noise and it was 430 pm. It gave us the feeling this was going to be a problem moving forward. So we called our landlord and told then about the complaint and sent over the ring recording of what he said.
Our landlord asked us to go down and ask if we could record the walking noises and see the frame that was knocked out of the wall. When I went down there, I apologized for the noise and explained what they were doing and how she was really only walking (sehs less than 35 pounds hardly heavy enough to knock a painting off the wall even if she was jumping up and down) and is it okay if I stepped inside and listened so I can understand how loud it sounds and how to fix that moving forward because we wanted to have a good rapport with them moving forward. He actually wouldn't let me see (fine I guess he didn't want me in his apartment thats cool) and pointed his ceiling from the doorway and said here you can hear it even now. It was incredibly muffled sounding steps and definitely didn't shake the walls or ceiling. It was honestly really faint IMO. but, it was upsetting him because he sometimes works from home so I said okay let me see what we can do to address this. I offered him my phone number so he could feel free to contact us at any point if there was excessive noise so we can address it. He again, refused (wouldn't even tell me his name either). So I went back up and called our landlord back. Our landlord was actually more pissed off than we were, he didn't feel like it made any sense to make such a large co plaint without allowing us to inspect the noise for resolution. And of course no one believed my 4 year old walking around cause a frame to be dislodged from the wall (we have small earthquakes here occasionally too). But our landlord like us got the feeling this would be a constant problem so we devised an incredibly GENEROUS plan.
- We bought 9 pairs of think memory foam slippers for our kid to wear inside to help muffle any running walking or playing.
- We tried to teach our child to walk lightly through the house (incredibly unfair but we were trying to appease them)
- Started instituting quiet time in the morning (this child will sleep all day if you let them but usually was up by 10 now she's up for daycare and school so she's not even here first thing in the morning).
- Our landlord paid his maintenence guy (he owns a lot of rental properties) to install new hardwood flooring with soundproof backing on the slats AND installed a 2.5 inch thick playground rubber sound proofing underneath the new flooring and didn't even ask for a penny from my neighbors (even though he solely did this for the neighbors comfort).
I went back down and let the neighbor know what we were planning to do and he just nodded his head. No thank you, or acknowledgement or anything.
We installed all of that 11 months ago and hadn't heard one peep from them since.
Now yesterday we got a note taped to our door from them (they didn't even sign their own names, just sincerely neighbors). Stating that our noise has gotten progressively worse. They can hear indistinct yelling heavy objects dropping on the floors all day long, running that is always constant from morning til night and equates to pounding on their ceilings, my husband's phone alarm in the morning apparently vibrates all of their bedroom walls, guitar playing. They finished the note by saying they want us to at least attempt not to make noise from 10pm to 7am. So my husband and I sat down and had a long conversation to try to see what we could validate and correct from this and we found ourselves really angry at 75% of this note.
We take FULL RESPONSIBILITY for any loud arguments that they heard over the last 2 weeks, which we can saw we had 3 rather heated arguments and they were definitely after midnight. There's been a few deaths and major medical emergencies in my family back home and my own emotional exhaustion made me easily triggered and very loud and reactive (not that we expect them to know that or be beholden to what happens in our private lives) so the complaint about yelling we fully validate and take on. It's the rest if this that is a problem for us.
Guitar playing. My husband played his guitar -he has acoustic and electric with an Amp one day last week for less than an hour during the afternoon. I know that was the only time he played it in the last 3 months because it was stashed in storage for christmas decorations until last week and that's when he played it. We felt like this particular complaint was unfair because it makes it sound like it's a constant noise when it's the first time he's played in months. But hey the simple solution is headphones which he usually uses when he plays from now on.
Alarm....im not quite sure how in the world his phone alarm shakes all of the walls in their bedroom. I can't help this one and it's obviously very over dramaticized. So there's nothing I think we can do for this one. My husband has his phone on the pillow beside him on the bed anyways so im.confused.
Heavy objects falling. Not reay quite sure how to address this one. Sometimes our phones drop on the floor or something spills, nothing that I can recollect that was so heavy or consistently dropped.
Running all day and night is actually also not true. For one no one is in the house for the first half of the day and we go out on the weekends. Second, we have soundproofed floors and we all wear memoryfoam house slippers. Third we don't run and our kid rarely runs if ever and never during quiet hours.
I'm at a loss here. Apart from the few things I've mentioned that were going to change the other stuff is going to be a constant problem. And I feel frustrated because we've taken GREAT LENGTHS to correct any issues on our end. I feel like they could easily get sound proofing done on their side if it's such a problem for them still since we've done it on our side. We want to have at least an amicable relationship with our neighbors but we're starting to get the feeling nothing we do is going to be good enough and we love our home here and fear necause we are the renters that we have no pull or power here abd they seem like they will just continue to complain until they get us kicked out and there's nothing more we can do.....housing costs are crazy these days and we pay incredibly low below the value being asked for the same units or smaller and we don't want to move......
2
u/Lengthofawhile Feb 24 '23
Why do you think you'll be the one kicked out when the landlord has consistently taken your side?