Invite the landlord over on a typical evening for dinner. Wear shoes. Live a normal life. Let the landlord deal with the jerks.
The neighbours would probably complain about the crunching noises.
Is this a normally quiet building? I find that I get irritated at what are really normal noises (kids playing, etc.), but it’s so quite the rest of the time that I can’t help but notice (and seriously, what do you say about a squeaky bed–stop having sex?).
I’d be tempted to just tell them they need to stop this behaviour in the next four months, because you have a child coming and you don’t want the thumping to wake the baby. If they persist, let the thumping wake the baby 
Oh, I am all smiles and waves to them, believe me. I know I have the higher ground (so to speak). It especially seems to bug their son, who is in his twenties or thereabout, and really gives us the evil looks.
Our entire apartment is already carpeted, with the exception of the kitchen and the bathrooms. The banging happens about once a week on average, maybe less. It is somewhat erratic. Sometimes they don’t bang for weeks, but this week they have already banged twice.
These people may already hate us because when they first moved in, I complained about their dog. They would let it hang out in the front yard and yap, yap, yap - super high-pitched, super loud, for an hour or more at a time. I asked the landlord to say something to them. Well, it turned out they hadn’t told the landlord they even had a dog. Whoops. I haven’t seen the thing since. I honestly have no idea if it even still lives with them. It is a dog-friendly apartment building so I can’t imagine the landlord made them get rid of it. But that probably started things off on the wrong foot.
I’m thinking a letter to them and the landlord with the following points:
- Wait five minutes when there’s a noise. If it is still loud, then come upstairs and let us know. We will do what we can.
- If it is later than 10 PM and perhaps they don’t want to go outside, wait five minutes to see if the noise continues before banging.
- If there is more noise than we think, to let us know and let the landlord know to discuss further soundproofing.
- If the unreasonable banging continues, I will call the police.
My suggestion would be to invite your landlord over and just do normal things for a little while, when they start banging let the landlord come to his own conclusions. Most likely it’s an acoustics thing. The landlord can then go and deal with them. Alternatively you could just start filing noise complaints on them. Hell, call the police. Tell then you were trying to sleep and they keep banging on the celiling. From what you explain, I’m willing to bet just the noise of one or two officers walking around (make sure you invite them in) will get them to start banging. The officer can then go and explain that all you guys were doing is walking around, NOT being noisy, not having a party etc…
But I’m passive aggressive like that.
Do they know you’re pregnant? If they don’t, any possible solution you work on now will go right out the window when the baby is born. And realistically, when the baby is crying, you probably won’t even notice that when they start banging on your floor.
BTW, are you planning on naming the baby Leto III?
Tap-dancing lessons.
Seriously, your downstairs neighbors have no business living in an apartment. Don’t be passive; tell them straight-up to stop the banging and behave like adults, and don’t mince words. I don’t know how your building works (before I owned, my landlord was a corporation and the super, while good about fixing stuff, couldn’t be bothered with neighbor complaints), but if you’ve got a landlord you can complain to, now is the time to start. Not in 4 months when the baby arrives.
As an aside, if you have any speakers with a subwoofer on the floor, for the PC or TV, you may want to elevate them. For the rest, lay down the law, start your trail now (keep a diary). If they don’t change and you end up having to get outside help, at least you will have documentation about how you tried to settle issues.
As a general rule, I think such letters are a poor idea. Not to mention near impossible to write without coming off in a manner you may not intend.
Clog dancing is good but I found the 1812 Overture (with full cannon) to be effective as well.
I agree.
Here’s a draft of the letter I wrote. I’d like to get some opinions:
I sure wouldn’t want them coming to knock on my door “because it is too loud” after five minutes! Especially not with a baby! (Whom you might have just gotten to sleep, as the knock on the door startles them back wide awake.) I dunno what I’d do instead, but I wouldn’t ask them to “come knock on our door” if it is too loud. Is there a way that you can have your husband walk around up in your apartment with his shoes on, while you are down there and hear him to better gauge if the problem is crappy flooring transmitting sound? They might think you are a herd of elephants, and not realize you are really churchmice.
Until I looked at your location, I wondered if the people below you were the people above us. One evening (I don’t think it was past 10), my husband and I were talking. In bed, ie close to each other. In normal voices. And they started banging on the ceiling. Similar things have happened, but not as bad as you have it.
I would see if your city/state/municipality has an tenant laws regarding reasonable levels of noise. I know that something I was looking at for somewhere (clear, I know) quoted allowable decibels for certain times of day. City noise ordinances might also contain that information. I’d know the facts before you talk to your landlord.
I will never understand while people that picky live sandwiched between other people. It would have to be jackhammering at 3 am to make me knock on the ceiling, and probably only if I was feeling bitchy.
tl;dr
Kidding, but really. Too long. And you use words like ‘harassed’ which are overblown.
If you have to write to them, rather than talking to them, be brief, offer only one or two examples and try not to mention ‘screaming baby’ because that’s not going to get anyone on your side.
I like the letter.
When I lived on the fourth floor of a walk-up building in Manhattan, I had an unreasonable neighbor move in downstairs. I can be loud, but not usually after 10 PM or before 9 AM. And I rarely threw parties at that place - usually I’d throw them at my place on Long Island where I had more space.
After the first few bangs, I went downstairs. I was very polite. I installed thicker carpeting than what I had.
After that, all bets were off. “Sorry, dude. You live in an old apartment building in New York. Call the landlord or call a cop.” Whenever Mr. Oversensitive banged on his ceiling, I’d simply turn the music on to drown him out. He came upstairs once to scream at me to stand in his apartment and listen to hear how badly I was torturing him with my noise. I did. All I could hear was a quiet muffled sound coming from upstairs - less than what I thought was making it down to his place.
So I called him an effing baby and told him to call the cops if he was so pissed off. Never heard from him again, and I never heard anything from the landlord. So either he got tough or he got out.
I think part of my problem is that I am really pissed off and so I am writing an epic saga rather than trying to be concise. I also don’t really want them to come knock on our door, but I feel like that’s better than the passive-agressive banging! Also, I think if they wait five minutes every time, they will NEVER come to the door because we never do anything loud for that long.
The baby thing is an unknown. If the baby is screaming and they knock on the door, at least I can say “I’m really sorry, we’re doing our best, what more do you want?” Right now that seems preferable to what is currently going on.
Maybe someone can suggest a shortened version? Believe me, if it were up to me right now this letter would be five pages long and laced with expletives. My husband is doing his best to keep his angry, rabid, pregnant wife from beating down their door and spitting in their faces. And on top of all that, he won’t let me name the baby Leto! What am I doing with this guy?
I think that letter shoud be replaced by a talk in person. Such a talk is way overdue. But do it at a moment when nobody is irritated or cranky.
On another note, here is my own experience with soundproofing your apartment. We were in a situation very similar to yours. The soundproofing solved all problems for a measly 2000 dollars a person. Moving alone is probably more expensive.
I’m surprised that nobody has raised an eyebrow at the dog-wrestling. This is the one area where I have an iota of sympathy for your downstairs neighbours. That’s kinda not cool when you live on top of someone, no?
Doesn’t justify wall-banging, of course.
For sure try to get your landlord involved as an arbitrator. I understand that San Francisco has a rent-reduction recourse for unreasonable noise. Dog-wrestling aside, I think the kind of noise that is drawing the most complaints is reasonable, unavoidable apartment-living type noise. It’s in your landlord’s interest to get your downstairs neighbours to come to terms with this.
Dear Neighbor,
Fuck off. If you don’t like the noise, move.
Ghanima, Mr. Ghanima and soon to be three
No, there is a very obvious option. The OP should start complaining about the neighbors. Their behavior is aggressive and very noisy.
Mediating tenant disputes is part of a landlord’s job. You have to know when to say, ‘I’ll get rid of them’, ‘I’ll talk to them’, or ‘Hey, you have neighbors; suck it up and deal, or buy ten acres somewhere else.’ Well, you want to be a bit more tactful with a ‘good’ tenant, but you just can’t let one tenant try to play alpha wolf in the building.
:dubious:
Get real.