Noisy Neighbours

SnowyOwl_2

Yonks and yonks ago when I first moved to London I rented a room, with the landlady having the rest of the house to herself. She seemed nice and quite ordinary. However I got a bit of a shock when I met her boyfriend...he would just blow smoke in your face, ignore you etc etc, just plain rude and dismissive. Then he got his stereo on full blast...loud, loud LOUD thumping reggae music at any time of the day or night, so loud you couldn't hear the tune. Don't know what the neighbours thought, but I was p*ssed off big style so I'd put my Blondie music on full blast (though couldn't hear it over his half the time) and leave it on for at least 30 mins after he'd shut his up.

I stuck it there for quite a while...but the crunch came when one day I returned to find my room open (my landlady liked me to keep my room locked). When I went in it was obvious that all my stuff had been gone through...wardrobe, boxes, bed, chest of drawers...the whole lot moved around though nothing gone. I sat and cried (everyone was out) but eventually the landlady came back. What had happened was that the house had been raided by the police for drugs as this boyfriend was a suspected dealer... So my room got done over too. Imagine how upset I was, with absolutely nowhere else to go and knowing hardly another soul in London. That was the point I decided I should try living alone...some neighbours since then have been overbearing twits, but at least there was always a solid wall between them and me...

beachbeth

plasma258 wrote:

I dont think these peolple have any self respect or respect for others, if the want people to hear them shag and argue they may aswell go do it in the middle of sainsburys!

I think this is the trouble. They just haven't a clue and seem to think everyone else is interested in what they are doing and thats why they have to shout and make as much noise as possible.

Sofa_Sogood

Grrrr, noisy neighbours

We lived next door to a lovely girl and her sons, then her boyfriend from hell moved in. The son's reacted badly to it, became a terror, and a few neighbours were actually frightened of them, but rarely said anything.

When they decided to have a loft conversion it was fine by us. What wasn't fine was when the boyfriend decided to take over the work after the loft converters left at teatime. We don't know what he found to do that wasn't being done already, but he'd be drilling and banging until the early hours. Grrrrr.

Eventually it all came to a head when they complained about the noise we'd made at 7p.m. and, unfortunately, I resorted to giving them a bit of verbal back. My nerves were shot, and it made me feel worse for a while, but eventually I realised it was the only thing they understood. We'd have confrontations weekly.

This carried on for quite a while, and other neighbours would complain to each other but not to the family concerned.

It all came to a head when yet more banging started at 2 a.m. in their shed.

I donned a coat over my PJ's and asked them to pack it in. I was met with a barrage of excuses and accusations like "we know we're not liked in this avenue" Huh? Too right lol. So I asked why they didn't move if they felt so bad about it.

Two days later a For Sale sign went up!

So, realising that the same situation could happen again, we put ours up for sale and, without a loft conversion, made more money than theirs! Rofl.

I realise it's not funny and it became like a living hell at times. The only way out that we could see was to downsize but to a better area, which is where we are now.

Now all I hear are horses hooves, and ducks quacking, and although it can be a bit isolated, we could never go back to how we lived before.

My sister's just encountering problems with noisy neighbours and I really feel for her (and all you above that have problem neighbours), and although complaining to the people concerned personally can inflame an already bad situation, I think you have to eventually. Enrol the help of other neighbours that might be going through it with you.

You're not living a peaceful life otherwise. But I do realise not everyone can just up sticks as we did. But I'd still look at ways and means of complaining.

Good luck anyway.

RedOnRed

Not sure if someone has already mentioned this but it's worth noting that if you do make a formal complaint about noisey neighbours to the council or police, then I believe you have to legally declare it to your new buyer if and when you decide to move house.

Of course your new buyer might not be too impressed by the news, but if you don't knowingly declare it I think you can be fined a hell of a lot of money. Possibley up to the value of the property - depending on how serious of course.

student100

I know this thread seems to have gone a long way from the inital "neighbours had a party late one night" but anyway, no-one has mentioned it yet...living in halls of residence I find it very useful to keep a pair of earplugs handy in case I get woken up by loud music at some unearthly hour. It's just easier to go back to sleep with earplugs in than to lie awake getting very frustrated with the noise. Fortunately it doesn't happen very often.

and of course if I know which room it was coming from, I might accidentally bump into their door on my way to breakfast in the morning

beachbeth

student100 wrote:

and of course if I know which room it was coming from, I might accidentally bump into their door on my way to breakfast in the morning

We did this once. We were staying in a holiday chalet and two young couples arrived in the chalet next door late one night and woke us up with their loud talk, music and laughing. So the next morning (we had to get up earlyish because we had young children) we banged doors, put the tv on loud and my husband stood right outside their window shouting at the kids to "stop that!" even though they were inside quietly watching tv!

reen_3

i'm on the other end of this.

my husband and i moved into our flat 3 years ago. we both work late nights and often don't come home til 3 or 4 in the morning. from day one, we've done our best to minimise the disturbance to our downstairs neighbours, closing the door softly, etc. despite this, they're constantly calling up our landlord to complain about us. he's getting fed up with these calls (can you blame him?), and is threatening to evict us. i would understand if their complaints were reasonable, but they're not. they want us to stop walking up and down the stairs at night. what? the stairs are within our flat. our bathroom is on a different floor from the rest of the rooms. are we not allowed to use the bathroom anymore? they complain about us playing loud videogames at night, which is a load of bull. we don't own any videogames. recently, they've started blaming us for the cracks in their walls. they say that us walking up and down the stairs has caused them. my husband and i each weigh about 8.5 stone. there's no way that we could possibly be responsible.

this is really !!!!!! us off. we don't want to move, but one more complaint from the neighbours and we might have to. in the 3 years that we've lived here, we haven't had a single party because we don't want to risk getting kicked out. in the meantime, the neighbours have people over on a regular basis. we go to sleep to the sound of grown women's drunken giggling. there's no worse sound i can think of.

so what do we do? our landlord knows that they have no real cause to complain, but he's tired of having to deal with them.

any suggestions?

jockettuk

so why doesnt he evict them for harrasment .. if you have proof that he knows there complaints are rubbish then he cant really evict you? Why dont you tell the neighbours who are complaining that if you leave mabey the family from hell might move in.. make them realise what they have and what they might get..

reen_3

jockettuk wrote:

so why doesnt he evict them for harrasment ..

he's not their landlord. he only owns our flat.

Savvy_Sue

plasma258 wrote:

I have a ground floor 1 bedroom ex council flat and the woman upstairs has a baby, its bedroom is above mine and when it cries it wakes me up! Also the Druggie unemployed guy next to me has had a gurl for about 6 months now, and boy is she a screamer! when they argue she screams and when the shag she really screams. This all mainly happens at 2-3 am, and i have to get up for work at 4am a lot of the time.

I dont think these peolple have any self respect or respect for others, if the want people to hear them shag and argue they may aswell go do it in the middle of sainsburys!

Does anyone know of a reasonable cheap way to soundproof??

If either of the adjoining flats are still council-owned then I believe the council has a legal responsibility to soundproof their property. Plus if council tenants are making a lot of noise it can breach their tenancy.

Very hard when it's a baby waking you: not the baby's fault.