This post should be titled 'Stuck in Tenant Hell!!!"
I am a tenant in Massachusetts and our landlord lives above us. The house has very little sound insulation (to the point where we can hear someone upstairs talking). When we moved in, the landlord and his wife asked us if we were going to be having children (??) but neglected to mention that they were expecting (we found this fact out a couple of weeks after we moved in). Before their child was born, we already had noise issues but we made the mistake of renewing our lease because we didn't want to spend money moving again (throwing good money after bad).
Now it is ridiculous. The landlord (now divorced) lets his child run up and down upstairs and it is really bad downstairs. If you can hear someone upstairs talking imagine how loud a 1-2 year old running up and down and screaming at the top of their lungs is.
In addition, he sometimes plays music loud or just loud enough to be irritating. Of course if I call he turns it down but it always then ends up happening again. Then to cap it off, the lease states that we have access to the the driveway tandem parking (we have a car and he has one) but I cannot count the number of times we have either been blocked in by his friends, had some of his friends park in our spot or another car parked at the front of the driveway) etc. Latest one was he stuck the wrong key (wrong make and model) into my car door to move it (car was barely 2 weeks old) and damaged the lock. Apparently it was too much to ask that he used the key that I gave him (with the make and model and even number plate). Anyway, I digress...
We are at wits end regarding the noise issue. Our lives have become hell and we hate being at home. I feel that our landlord is an inconsiderate person and just does not care as long as he gets his rent check. When there are noise issues we call and he says he will take care of it but it either does not stop or it stops and the next day. From when we wake up (forget sleeping in on the weekend, we are guaranteed to wake up to either a child running up and down, the landlord dragging furniture (thats what it sounds like) etc) and when we come back from work we are guaranteed a solid 1-3 hours of a child running up and down, screaming, banging etc (just what we need after a stressful day at work. Even as I type, I called an hour and a half or so ago about his child running up and down and it is still going on. It is obvious that he figures since we signed a lease there is nothing we can do (we even feel that he is doing it on purpose). For the longest time we have been putting in ear-plugs but the noise is loud enough that this is an exercise in futility.
We have a lease until July (it is now almost end of February) but at this point we (my wife and I) are so fed up that we are wondering what legal remedies we have and if we have legal justification for breaking the lease. We don't think we can survive until then.
ps. The ironic thing is that we are model tenants. We have never been late with the rent, we are working professionals and the whole point of getting this place was to have a nice quiet home (it's on a quiet street and when we were looking he was very emphatic he wasn't looking for noisy college kids but professionals.

