What can I do about my loud neighbors

David. said:

Attorney for 3 and 2 are not necessary. You are not even allowed an attorney at small claims court.


1. Can absolutely curb behavior. I found a video of a guy who set up audio to play back whatever noise his upstairs neighbord made and put it on delay and to play 3 times loud as shit. They stopped.

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If this was an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the guys' upstairs would use your noise to break their lease and move into an apartment next to the babes from the office. Happy enough that the nightmare is over, as you are finally nestling into bed for some much delayed sleep, you hear the elephant steps of the new tenant upstairs- a 400 lb man who is hard of hearing and has prostate problems. The credits and music immediately start rolling.

The Oi said:

So bottom line...1 isnt working. 2 seems like the best course of action to me. I have no idea how or why they’d give rent back. You could guilt them into 4.

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They would give rent back because they'd be required by law should I win my suit as they have not been giving me enjoyment of a quiet living space for the past 3 months even though I have been paying for it. They are conctractually required to provide that and the same way a landlord would sue a Tennant for not paying rent and fulfilling their contractual obligation, I would sue for complete lack of provision of the good/service promised in the contract I signed and have been paying for.

I've used the air horn 3 times and haven't for a week until this morning as previous nights weren't unreasonable behavior on their part but encouraged them to get incrementally louder. It has though, scattered them, when used at night.

macbdog said:

If this was an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the guys' upstairs would use your noise to break their lease and move into an apartment next to the babes from the office. Happy enough that the nightmare is over, as you are finally nestling into bed for some much delayed sleep, you hear the elephant steps of the new tenant upstairs- a 400 lb man who is hard of hearing and has prostate problems. The credits and music immediately start rolling.

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Almost happened. Someone else is moving out and the second loudest Tennant lives directly under them. I would have taken it if it wasn't a 2br and they required me to sign for another year

David. said:

They would give rent back because they'd be required by law should I win my suit as they have not been giving me enjoyment of a quiet living space for the past 3 months even though I have been paying for it. They are conctractually required to provide that and the same way a landlord would sue a Tennant for not paying rent and fulfilling their contractual obligation, I would sue for not provided the service promised in the contract I signed and have been paying for.

I've used the air horn 3 times and haven't for a week until this morning as previous nights weren't unreasonable behavior on their part but encouraged them to get incrementally louder. It has though, scattered them, when used at night.

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That's actually pretty funny; although giving them a noise complaint (and any other attached apt) may not be a good idea. If they time you up they could get a recording of the airhorn.

You mentioned needing a certain decibel level to break the lease- have you thought of adding enough background noise to your measurements to get it over the threshold? Just enough to give you your #s without it looking fibbed?

macbdog said:

That's actually pretty funny; although giving them a noise complaint (and any other attached apt) may not be a good idea. If they time you up they could get a recording of the airhorn.

You mentioned needing a certain decibel level to break the lease- have you thought of adding enough background noise to your measurements to get it over the threshold? Just enough to give you your #s without it looking fibbed?

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it's unreasonable to think they would record it. They would need to have a. Recorder on at all times to catch me and are not going to set it up before they wake up. They also won't have it on while partying and should they, it would support my claim for them being to loud on that same recording. They would also not be able to provide that it was me should they even have the recording.

I'm not going to lie about the recordings. It's fine as it is. I'll even go into the fact that I'm not including the dB measurement under the max reading because it'd normally not them, it's me setting up the recorder. Would make me look more honest and woild be the right thing to do.

I've got a good recoding.. Fully illustrates what happens. I set up recorder, fall asleep. You CAn hear me snoring for 20 seconds and then it sounds like an atom bomb from above. Could be useful when they bring up the noise level has to be an average over that 4db limit. "it doesn't take an consistent constant noise level-esp at 65db- to wake someone up and for them to stay up. It's intermittent throughout the night and frequently recurring to the level of inhabitability of my living space."

David. said:

They stopped when I broke the door for a few weeks and they've incrementally gotten louder after getting more and more comfortable (seeing what they can get away with) . They still run away when I come out to the courtyard when they're being too loud. I think applying more pressure would get them back in line.

The biker chick yelled at her next door neighbors who weren't as close to my neighbors as I thought.

Complex. Says they are writing a other warning and I'm going to follow up on that and make sure they did

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You should have a lawyer write them a simple letter to follow this up.

I know you want to go to small claims court, but, rest assured, even though an attorney cannot represent the Landlord's company at the proceedings, their counsel will have put their entire case together for the landlord to present.

If you lose, you will owe them legal fees and various other court costs on top of your own court fees.

A lawyer's letter is cheaper than all that and has a decent chance at resolving the matter because they Landlord doesn't want the heat from corporate and corporate doesn't want to pay their retained attorney any more than they have to.

Also, local news fixer.

I honestly think you are being a bit naïve. A major complex doesn't really care about 1 lease so getting them back in small claims is like no big deal to them. Best case scenario they let you break the lease, I doubt you get any money back, most courts are owner friendly although you are in cali.

This is why I wonder if there is some level of masochism here.

If you REALLY wanted out of this situation, you’d call a good attorney and see what they can do. You keep seeing this advice over and over from us and instead are repeating behavior that is getting you nowhere with these people.

Lee said:

I honestly think you are being a bit naïve. A major complex doesn't really care about 1 lease so getting them back in small claims is like no big deal to them. Best case scenario they let you break the lease, I doubt you get any money back, most courts are owner friendly although you are in cali.

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Also I don't think a small claims court can force the landlord to break his lease. Everyday he waits will be used against him as a defense that it's not an untenable situation. The judge or the landlord just has to ask why it took him so long to file. It's pretty easy to come up with a line of questions after that.

The Oi said:

This is why I wonder if there is some level of masochism here.

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I agree with this. I have been in a similar situation where I couldn't sleep because my roommate in college snored like a freight train. It took me no more than a couple day to find a friend's couch to sleep on. I slept there for the rest of the semester.

Trying to break the lease with a lawyer or going thru and seeing if he can sublet the apartment seems like the easiest option. He is in San Diego, it's a city that gets alot of transplant residents. That makes it a prime place to sublet because people want to get on short term leases so they can feel out the area. I bet he would have people replying to a ad today if he put it up on the sublet part of Craiglist.

Lee said:

I honestly think you are being a bit naïve. A major complex doesn't really care about 1 lease so getting them back in small claims is like no big deal to them. Best case scenario they let you break the lease, I doubt you get any money back, most courts are owner friendly although you are in cali.

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Your first line is an insult and the rest of your post doesn't really justify it.

If they don't care about small claims court then I'll win, andx they will care, because 3 months rent is about 5 grand. And that's typically about 2 years profit on a single unit.

If best case scenario is I break my lease then I'm not being naive, I get my main goal. You also haven't explained why my case won't win.

The Oi said:

This is why I wonder if there is some level of masochism here.

If you REALLY wanted out of this situation, you’d call a good attorney and see what they can do. You keep seeing this advice over and over from us and instead are repeating behavior that is getting you nowhere with these people.

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This is the thing with advice. You come jn and give it as if it wasn't the very first thing someone woild do, in talking to attorney. Like no shit I have dude.

Ibe spoken with my defense attorney and he recoed me to another attorney and I've talked to a state provided attorney and long story short the answer is not an attorney.

If you have a reason for the rebuttals I've given for your last set of arguments please give them but at this point you're just calling me masochistic and naive and insulting rather than addressing my points, and moving on to different argument for me to waste time on when you've already come up with your opinion, which is apparently unswayable, even if the foundation is directly addressed

inliner311 said:

Also I don't think a small claims court can force the landlord to break his lease. Everyday he waits will be used against him as a defense that it's not an untenable situation. The judge or the landlord just has to ask why it took him so long to file. It's pretty easy to come up with a line of questions after that.

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Because the complex promised to take care of the situation and have provided several warnings which worked temporarily until they didn't. It's now been three months

"The penalty to break A lease is 3 grand so while the situation is hardly a good one, 3 grand would be such a significant amount of money that the best course of action is to continue to press the complex.it hasn't worked and upon advisory, the best course of action is this one."

Every night of proof that they are making too much noise and that anh And every idea they have to resolve the issue does not work is another night against their case.

David. said:

Because the complex promised to take care of the situation and have provided several warnings which worked temporarily until they didn't. It's now been three months

"The penalty to break A lease is 3 grand so while the situation is hardly a good one, 3 grand would be such a significant amount of money that the best course of action is to continue to press the complex.it hasn't worked and upon advisory, the best course of action is this one."

Every night of proof that they are making too much noise and that anh And every idea they have to resolve the issue does not work is another night against their case.

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Have you gone into the office and just straight up asked if you can just break the lease with no penalty? Say something to the effect that "you probably don't want to deal with me anymore and it's been 3 month, let just part ways"

Also you have never answered the question of if there is language in your lease about subletting? Like I said above, that might be the simplest way of getting out of this situation.

inliner311 said:

Have you gone into the office and just straight up asked if you can just break the lease with no penalty? Say something to the effect that "you probably don't want to deal with me anymore and it's been 3 month, let just part ways"

Also you have never answered the question of if there is language in your lease about subletting? Like I said above, that might be the simplest way of getting out of this situation.

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I did answer that question, you cannot.