I live in a four apartment building, on the second floor. My downstairs neighbor, who actually DOES hear every little noise, has never complained, because he is a reasonable guy who understands that the place is old and not soundproofed, and that walking around and talking in a normal tone of voice (which we can totally hear each other doing, depending on where in the house we are) is not making an unreasonable amount of noise. I was in his apartment once for a few minutes while my washing machine was running, and I was horrified by how loud it was. I apologized profusely and he said “Hey, you’ve gotta do laundry, you never do it at unreasonable hours, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about the noise. Don’t sweat it.” For the record, I hadn’t been doing laundry at “unreasonable” hours, but since then, I don’t do it after 8pm, or during Big Games.
My next door neighbors, on the other hand, are the sort of people who are at their happiest when they can find something to complain about. Now, there’s a firewall between our apartments, so we really don’t hear much from each other (or at least I assume they don’t hear much from us. I only hear them when they’re either vacuuming or screaming and throwing things at each other, as they occasionally do). Their solution to this problem is to sit out on the front porch that we share all day, and complain about the noise they hear while they’re out there. Seriously. They once told the landlord that we sit in the window and “spy on them” while they’re ON THE FRONT PORCH. My office window opens onto the front porch, and they apparently feel that I should close it and draw the shades so as not to infringe on their OUTDOOR privacy, on the porch THAT WE SHARE. They also like to sit out there while my daughter (not me, just my daughter) is in the office, and make snide remarks about us. Made of class and courage, those two. Fortunately, my landlord takes them with a grain of salt, since they call her every time someone farts around here.
Who knows what kind of nut is going to bear a grudge against you. Next thing you know they put roaches under your door, (or mice), they key your car, they do all sorts of things.
I think it’s tacky of the landlord to say “the tenent below you,” it should’ve been, we’ve had noise complaints.
For music I live by the rule, I turn on my TV, then go out in the hall, take one step back from the door and if I can hear my TV, it’s too loud so I turn it down.
My flat is a noise magnet, not inside but because the outside is only 4 feet from the next building. At night when the window’s open I can hear people’s phone convesations. I can actually hear and make out everything they say, it there’s only one of them. If I close the window I can barely hear but, with no air conditioning that is only a winter solution.
Picard Kills Kirk, do you live upstairs from me? I had to file a noise complaint against my neighbours of the flat upstairs. Chaps would play music all through the night on weekends - up until 5.30am friday of last week. The thing is, the flat upstairs apparently has a high turnover and very bad soundproofing at the same time. So I’d get new neighbours, they’d do something noisy - say, watch late night TV very very loud, or play music very very loud, or, in one case, bring in your band and start jamming (honest to God, I could hear them stopping, arguing and restarting). So I’d go over, knock and ask to stop. After some time, I’d get a new set of neighbours and I’d have to start again.
Whenever I knocked, I got the same range of reactions the other posters described: the jamming bands never were a problem any more after asking once; the TV watching people kept it down but made a point of stamping their feet whenever they got excited, so if The Doctor saved Rose (or whatever they show at 3am) we’d hear “Yeaaah! THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP”. There was a stupid kid that got angry at me because “I can do anything I want in my house, dude!!!”, but luckily he didn’t stay long.
Some time ago this couple moved in, but we never met them, and if I knock they don’t answer the door, whether it’s day or night. Tapping the ceiling with a broomstick made them raise the volume. Charming. Filing a noise complaint was the last resort. Is that you, Picard Kills Kirk? If so, I’ll give you some advice.
These threads make me glad my apartment days are over. To answer the OP’s question: no. I wouldn’t approach a neighbor to ask them to be quieter because when I did live in apartments I made contact with a few truly nutty people.
Talking to the management would be my way to go, always. That way things are settled in an “official” way.
Sorry, I wish it would be that easy for both of us. My wife and I don’t watch TV or listen to music.
When the landlord told us of the noise complaint Markxxx, I guess they could have pretended it wasn’t the people below us, but we are on the third floor and the only people that share a wall with us moved out just a couple weeks ago.
I used to have a roommate that screamed while she watched TV. Loud, unnecessary screaming. “Ooh, Sawyer, why’d you do that?!” or “Don’t you kiss her McDreamy!” or other things like that were very common to be heard coming from our apartment by our neighbors or people walking around on the street outside. I asked her at least 4 or 5 times to keep it down because we have neighbors but she just didn’t get it. She also didn’t seem to understand why I wouldn’t let her do aerobics at midnight either because apparently not wanting to be stabbed to death by your downstairs neighbor is not reason enough to save aerobics for an earlier hour.
I wish I had the music issues. I have a neighbor that BEATS HIS DOG. I’ve called the cops, other neighbors have called the cops, and nothing is done. This poor animal starts screaming (punctuated by the jerk cursing at the poor animal at the top of his lungs) at 6AM in the morning because apparently the idiot doesn’t know how often a 6 month old puppy needs to go out. I can’t confront the idiot who abuses animals at 8.25 months pregnant. Who knows what someone like that will do?
You can’t leave a dog along for hours or all night* at that age. He’s going to mess. So dude apparently gets up every frickin’ morning, notices the mess NEXT TO THE DOOR, and abuses his dog, waking up all of us neighbors. He’s literally had the cops out every day for the last two weeks. They examine the dog, see no damage, and give him a warning. Why yes, he moved in two weeks ago. I’ve called a few times, the neighbor to my right has called, the people below me, below him, on his other side… What does it take? The complex has finally consented to “investigate” the situation.
*(He takes out the dog at 7PM, and expects to not have to do it again until morning? It’s just a baby!)
Yes, I would talk to my neighbor in person before filing a complaint; I think that’s common courtesy.
Frankly, I would consider a noise complaint that “it sounded like people were walking around above them” to be the property management company’s problem, and that’s what I would tell them. Well, yes, we do actually walk around in our apartment, and it’s possible we might do so at any hour of the day or night. We really can’t avoid walking, in fact. So do you have any suggestion for how we could solve this issue? IOW, if “walking” yields a noise complaint then the apartments are not sufficiently sound-proofed or the tenant below is being over-sensitive. Either way, the problem is theirs, not yours.
Yup. This is just the way it is in the exciting world of apartment dwelling. I would just let the apartment manager deal with it - that’s why they get paid the big bucks. It’s the same deal as calling the cops on neighbours - if I hear someone getting beaten up in another apartment, I’m not going over there to add to the clusterfuck - I’m going to call the trained professionals and let them do their thing.
In my first apartment we had the good fortune to live above a couple(of what, I am still unsure) that felt it prudent to spend more time on the phone with local police about our raucous behavior and constant decibel infractions than minding their own child, who would oft times be found wandering in the hallway and on the stairs outside of our apartments.
The police informed us that they had never actually heard us being loud, but were required by their job to check out every complaint, even if they were daily and unwarranted. This continued for two months almost (no exaggeration) daily receiving that knock on our door until Halloween of all dates when they knocked on a door to an empty apartment and realized we hadn’t been there for a couple of days. Then our wonderful neighbors themselves were suddenly subjected to the same sort of knock, though for different reasons.
After that we were mostly left alone.
Some people really don’t do well with confrontation, my girlfriend is one of them. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if the apartment managers recommend going through them.
This is what made me have to reply. I am in the same boat as your downstairs neighbors. My upstairs neighbor’s walking around can be really over-the-top at times. They literally rattle the window frames. I realize however, she is not being malicious. She has a tendency to walk on her heels rather than on the balls of her feet (which turn her floor/my ceiling into a drum); the fact that she lives on the top floor and has no idea what it’s like; and that the apartment construction is particularly piss-poor.
I’ve lived in apartments from the past few decades and NOTHING has been like this place.
So anyway, if you ever feel like being amenable, try to use the balls of your feet, not the heels.
Wanted to pop in and say the the neighbor that beats his dog has now had his dog confiscated and is facing criminal charges. (He’s not, however, in any sort of police custody at this point.) YAY! Hopefully the puppy gets a better family soon.
Wow, are apartments made out of studs and drywall like stick-built houses? I never realized it was such a problem. I’m living in a work-provided apartment for the time being. The floors are solid concrete, and the walls are concrete blocks. However, the front door is hollow for some reason (we have excellent security, though), and so the only possibility of hearing our neighbors is if they’re at their front door making noise, and we’re at our front door making noise. I guess if the vertical neighbors have their windows open and I blare the stereo on the terrace, they’d hear that, too.
Oh, and I had a downstairs neighbor who complained in writing that the walking sounds were too loud at night. Specifically, Lenny’s footsteps were too loud. Lenny was a cat. I can say confiently that he never wore shoes or clogs and rarely stomped.
This was back when I was building sets, so occasionally I would have a really late night. I came home at 3 a.m. once to see her lights on and it looked like she was spamically dancing around her living room (drapes were open). One weird lady, I tell ya. Luckily, Ms. Cranky’s apartment was right over the superintendent’s and she was keeping him up all night with all sorts of noise. so that he was begging our landlord to evict her. “She’s crazy! She’s crazy!” He would say. She moved out because the building was too loud.
My wife and I are planning to move from North Cackylacky to a much larger city once we finish our MBAs. She’s angling for us living in an apartment, preferably actually in the city. Having been born and raised in the country, with my only experiences of apartment living being in college and briefly afterwards, I’m not so keen on the idea.
This thread has made me less keen. In fact, bordering on the ‘no fucking way’. Do ‘luxury’ apartments/condos have these same issues? Or are they sufficiently soundproofed and the expense high enough to make a barrier to the riff-raff? Or is it the same story?
Modern buidlings made of poured concrete are usually quite sound proof. My old apartment building had concrete block hallways and walls separating the units, then the internal walls (for example separating the bathroom from the bedroom) were plaster and lath. It was an old building, I think from the 1920s or 1930s. So it was very quiet as far as soundproofing from hallway noise and the adjacent units.
Unfortunately, the floors were just very heavy wood materials. So while you could practice your electric guitar with an amplifier and not bother the neighbors on either side of you, sound would go up through your ceiling and floor annoying the neighbors above and below. The same problem occurs with apartment units in renovated houses.
More modern concrete buildings are far, far better for sound insulation. My ex’s step-dad lived in a modern building made of poured concrete. He could have murdered an entire family with a chainsaw and no one would have heard a sound.
Looking at apartment reviews helped me when I was looking for an apartment. If the apartment building does have thin walls/noise problems, there will be bad reviews/poor ratings. I mainly used Rent.com when looking, but if you find a place you might like, just google it and you should be able to find any complaints.
Also, it depends on the type of people that the apartment complex is aiming towards. In college I lived in an apartment complex that I think was 100% college students, so there was a lot of noise and I just got used to sleeping in ear plugs. But now I live in a complex that seems to be mostly families and I’ve never had any issues.
I hear your pain.
When I was living in Berlin, and earning a lot of money, I got a really great apartment but seem to have pissed off others in the building who were hoping to get that apartment for friends/family etc.
I hadn’t been there a month when I was getting all kinds of complaints. One morning, the woman upstairs was beating on my door, indignant that I would play my stereo so loudly all night!
I was in a mood, so I told that woman to come in. I took her through my entire apartment and said, “Do you see a stereo? Do you see a television?” (I owned neither at the time, as I traveled a lot for work and hadn’t had time to buy either yet.)
She left, quite embarrassed, and I said, “Would you mind telling the other neighbors that whatever loud music/noises they claim are coming from my apartment are not from me?!”
It worked. I never got another complaint after that.
(I think a part of the problem was that they knew I was American, and it just galled them to think a “foreigner” would get the apartment they all coveted for someone else they knew. Apartments were hard to come by back then.)
