My wife and I moved to a much nicer apartment a year ago. We are paying out the nose for rent, but it's a beautiful place. There is one problem. There are 3 guys (in an apartment meant for two) in their early 20's that live above us. Cue the soundtrack from 'Neighbors.' Every Friday and Saturday night, at 2:30 a.m., the stereo gets cranked and there's what amounts to a frat party above our bedroom. I do mean frat party, as just last week I heard a pledge class come up to the apartment. We have sent several letters to the management company. They have talked to the guys. It abated for two weeks, then starting several weeks ago went right back to the noise. The management company has suggested we call the police. I've gone that route in other places in the past, and it never ends well. The tenants figure out who called the cops - every time - and especially given the amount of drugs and drunkeness mixed with 20 year old testosterone, I know a confrontation will not end well. Which is why we went the management route. At this point, I'm torn between sending a letter directly to the guys politely asking them to stop and sending a letter to management asking to move to a different apartment within the building. Focus: What would you do in my situation? Alt Focus: Ever had shitty neighbors? Of course you did. What did you do? Any good revenge stories?
Fuck the letter, go up and knock on their door and talk to them. Tell them that you have to be at work and they need to keep the volume down during the week. Most people, even frat guys, will be reasonable with a request like that. Going through the management company adds a level of detachment. The management company isnt going to give a shit anyway, so call the landlord directly if they dont comply. If theres still a problem, then call the cops.
Focus: I agree with Juice, go to them directly and talk to them. I'd like to think they aren't assholes and would respect that you came and talked to them. If they tell you off or start becoming bigger assholes, then it's game on. Alt Focus: I've yet to have a problem with my neighbors although that may be changing. There are new tenants in the apartment below me and I'm afraid they are going to be a problem. Earlier this week I was walking my girlfriend to her car and as we got outside of the building I casually mention that I smell a skunk. As we're walking to her car we turn enough to notice the tenants below my apartment are on their balcony smoking (I'll get into this more), turns out the skunk smell was from their skunky weed. I don't have a problem with smokers. They have a right to smoke so I can't bitch about it if I smell cigarette smoke when I'm walking around in public. My apartment building though is smoke free. Not just in the apartments but on the whole property. If someone is smoking on the property I honestly don't really care, except when that cigarette smoke comes into my apartment when I have the patio door open. I'm thinking that the tenants below me smoking on their patio is going to be come a problem. Especially now that it's getting nice and I'll have my windows open.
Attached is a picture of my first apartment, what a dump. I was in the upstairs unit. I moved into this place from the boonies, it was quite different from the life I was used to. But, it was extremely cheap and within walking distance of my favorite bars and the campus, exactly what I needed. Neighbors... I was surrounded by crackheads. I'm not joking, I saw them smoke crack. Not every neighbor was a crackhead, but there were a shitload of them. The neighbor below was an old guy who'd done time for habitual DUI and would never be able to legally drive again in his life. He was friends with a handful of crackheads and they partied pretty hard. I drank heavily back then, it wasn't really the partying and noise that bothered me. It was the differences between what I was used to, how I grew up, and this entire neighborhood. I hired a lawyer to get me out of my lease and get my deposit back. The final straw was... during a heavy rain, area between my steps and my car on the street would flood. That little wood walkway you see in the picture, was built after I hired my lawyer and moved out.
Juice is right. go directly to them. I bought a mobile home in a park one time and right after I moved in there was a note on my door from management about unreasonable noise. I went to the management offices and was told they had no idea who it was from. I got several of these notes over the next few months and I had no idea why. Then the owner of the park started in on me, saying he was going to come by at all hours of the day to see if I was making a racket. I told him that was fine and if he figured it out to let me know. Finally, after a year of this, I walked outside and my neighbor snidely said to me "Did you learn that song on your guitar yet?" Puzzled, I asked "What song?" "The one you play over and over every night." Now I was really confused because I never, ever played my guitar without headphones. Then it hit me. At night I tended to watch movies. Movies have soundtracks. I had a sub-woofer on my surround sound. Problem solved. After a lot of pissed off and confused people that could've been avoided simply by talking to me in the first place.
Agree. Start by talking to them. Yes, they will think you're an old fuddy duddy. Doesn't matter. In my last college apartment, I lived there for three football seasons, and I think I had about 7 different people live there. The apartment building was 3 stories and the floor / ceilings were about as thick and soundproof as a napkin. I lived on the 2nd floor. One guy was a total playa and had different women over all the time. I could hear his bed squeaking and he used to shake it so hard, the ceiling popcorn on my apartment would fall. Another guy got an electric guitar for Christmas, had never played before, and tried to learn how to play it always at maximum volume. There was a nice grad school couple that lived below me for most of the time I was there. One day, the guy above me was really playing loud, and the guy below me came up and asked me if I could turn down my amp. I was like, dude, I don't have my amp here. Until that day, he had spent the last few weeks thinking it was me playing guitar. If you're playing loud and bad enough to bother the people 2 floors below . . . rock n roll! My first house was in a close neighborhood. My driveway almost butted up to the neighbor's house. There was about 10 feet between my driveway and their basement door. Their teenage son lived in the basement, and his friends would use my driveway, and park their cars in that little 10-foot space. Sometimes, they stuck out in my driveway, and it was a pain for me to back out. The neighbors were older, and actually friends of mine before I moved in. Only their teenage son's friends were a problem. Anyway, one day a HUGE oak tree in my back yard fell and landed exactly between our houses. It totally missed my house, clipped part of the neighbor's gutter as it fell. But, it completely blocked the driveway, trapping one of the kid's cars until I could get it cleared . . . like 2 days later. Oops.
how apropos; my "neighbor" across and down the hall from me has some sort of 9-12 year old girl with a developmental disability. I can't specify what type, but it involves basically cry-screaming for 45 minutes to an hour, laying down in the parking lot throwing a code-5 tantrum(at 7 am while everyone's leaving for work), and kicking their dog. I don't hear them as much, so its not my issue, but the 2 living below them have called the cops at least 3 times this week alone. To be fair, the dad/grandfather(this dudes at least 60) has something going on as well, as he will smack himself in the head while she does this, so maybe there's a genetic component.
This is why the kid is retarded. Her old ass dad. Sometimes, these situations really make a good case for a dumpster ditch.
I am pleased to report my neighbors have actually attempted to be quiet. For folks in their early 20's, I'm going to have to say that's pretty huge. Considering I know what an asshole I was at that age. Scratch that, I'm still an asshole.
I think I've posted a number of rants about my neighbors, because they are terrible. I live in a big old Victorian house split up into 4 units. The upstairs neighbors used to scream fuck at 3:30 in the morning 3-5 times per week, and would often wake us up from a dead sleep, which was initially terrifying, and then really annoying. I once left a note telling them that I was happy to know they had such a great sex life, but to please be considerate of the neighbors before scream fucking at all hours of the night. Next door there is another small apartment building with 4 units. One of them houses a group of drunks who love country music, and another has a bunch of idiots who regularly start jam sessions at 1:30am. The drunk ones are typically pretty cooperative when we go over at 2:30am on week nights and remind them that not everyone just got home from the bar and wants to keep partying, so they turn down the music and make an attempt at being less loud. But the jam session dudes got mad at us for asking them to turn down their amp and their stupid electronic drums, and proceeded to use a pellet gun to shoot out the exterior lights on our house. The only time I've called in a noise complaint was for a house around the corner. They had parties every Thursday night, typically starting well after midnight. At a certain point, someone must have decided to invest in a new sound system, because the noise level went from irritating to impossible-to-sleep-through-window-pain-shaking-brain-scrambling loud. I went over to ask them to keep it down, and had to let myself in because it was too loud for anyone to hear me pounding on the door, and then had to yell at the top of my lungs to communicate to them that they needed to turn it down. They turned the music down and then asked if I lived upstairs, at which point I informed them that I lived 3 houses away, and that I was shocked their upstairs neighbors hadn't murdered them yet. They did the same thing the following week, so I called the cops on them. Gotta love living in the student ghetto.