Renters Upstairs Have Waged War
My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Massachusetts
Hello folks. I'm new here and looking for some information. My wife and I own the first floor condo of a two-family house and the second floor is a rental unit. It's an old house - built in the 1850's - and there is zero insulation between floors and the shared wall between their front door/stairs and our living room. I've owned the property for almost 4 years and there have been 2 sets of renters up there in that time. Whenever new renters move in, we introduce ourselves, make them some food, and kindly remind them that they've moved into a very old house and that if there is any noise issues that they should feel comfortable coming to us and vice versa. We've always had minimal problems and nothing we couldn't work out; we've always been on friendly terms with upstairs tenants.
Let me start off by saying that I'm very realistic about what we can expect and not expect from our upstairs neighbors. If they walk with a heavy foot, I cannot re-teach them how to walk. If they want to play music, I cannot tell them not to. If they want to slam the front door, that's their inconsiderate nature and I can let it slide. I'm ok with all of that. It's what happens after midnight that creates an issue and severely affects our mental health.
Currently, we have been experiencing a lot of impact noise and door slamming between the hours of 12-4am. After repeated wake-ups after midnight and as early as 4am from door slamming and impact noise, and a few attempts at constructive conversation, we have been informed from the upstairs tenants that they do not have to consider us and instead, stated, "You think you had noise? Now you'll get noise."
The tenant has effectively threatened us at this point. So what can we do folks? Does anyone have any solid input on next steps we should take? If there's nothing in our condo docs about this sort of thing, how would we go about modifying that? I appreciate your input greatly and will certainly update this thread as the issue continues...
Re: Renters Upstairs Have Waged War
Quote:
"I'm in law school... I know my rights... You can't tell me what to do... What goes on upstairs has nothing to do with you and you can't stop me from slamming the door at 4am..."
His law school must really suck, then, because I'm NOT in law school, and I know most communities have ordinances prohibiting loud noise between the hours of 10PM and 8AM. (In my community, the hours are 9PM and 8AM)
Quote:
I'm also in the middle of reviewing our condo documents and trying to see what rights we have to force him to move out and I'll need to review his lease to see if there's anything covering this issue.
Look for clauses mentioning "quiet enjoyment".
The next time he starts slamming doors and making a deliberate ruckus, call the police. Invite them into your unit so they can listen to the commotion upstairs, and ask them to have a chat with your neighbor. They won't be terribly interested in his knowledge of his "rights", and if they have to come out enough, they'll cite him under your community's noise ordinance. Shelling out cold hard cash for his loud shenanigans may well be what he needs to learn the fine art of not being a mannerless git.
Re: Renters Upstairs Have Waged War
well, I have had similar issues & handled it in a mature fashion. I called those folks when they were sleeping to discuss how my sleep was disturbed by the noise they made several hours earlier. And called, and called, and called etc.. Now they may have issues with the association, if the assoc. does not allow renters. I would also call the owners of the unit as well & call them in the middle of the night. The police will be useless (as they always are) in this case.