Issues in my groundfloor flat - Multiple leaks from flat upstairs and noisy, inconsiderate tenants

TranceNRG

Hi ladies and gents,
I'm after some advice regarding a difficult situation I'm in. I hope this is the right section to post this.
I own and live (with my girlfriend) in a ground floor garden flat (period house converted 2 flats in mid 80s) in West London. I own share of the freehold and have been living there for about 5 years now. The owner of the upstairs flat bought it about 4 years ago and he owns the other share of the freehold. We've had a pretty good relationship until recently. 

Noise issues
There are 4 separate tenants living in the 3 bed flat upstairs. The tenant on the lease has sub let it to other people so new tenants seem to move in every few months. There's probably no insulation in the building and the conversion done poorly, so we hear all the noises (can hear all the footsteps and their conversations) from the upstairs flat. I understand that people need to live and you can't do much about the general noise but the excessive noise is affecting our quality of life. In the last 6 months or so it's been very noisy at times. There are a lot of them and they seem to go in/out all the time (and they get frequent visitors). A lot of the noise is generated when they open/close building and flat entrance doors harshly and when they run/up down stairs. Multiple times we've been woken up late at night and in the morning due to this noise. The other big noise generator is their washing machine. When it's on, it is very very loud and the whole house shakes at the end of the cycle. To make matters worse, they seem to run it frequently (10+ times a week and sometimes 4 times a day). They however don't run it really early or really late (I've asked them not to) but it's still irritating when it's running a lot. There are also a couple of tenants in there who seem to stomp/walk really fast which can be quite intrusive. I've mentioned this to the owner upstairs and he has agreed to install new underlay and carpet so the footstep noise should improve a bit. However the bigger issue is tenants' lack of understanding and consideration towards us. There are simple things they can do (opening/closing entrance doors gently and not running up and down, running the washing machine infrequently, etc.) to reduce noise which would make a big difference to us. In the past, if the tenants were particularly noisy, I used to talk to the main tenant (also sent him Whatsapp messages) to let him know about noise issues and he would talk to other tenants. However at the start of this year he told me not to tell him about issues with the flat and go to the landlord instead which surprised me but I said OK. Perhaps he got annoyed with me for telling him about noise issues. I was always polite and the communication wasn't that frequent (maybe once every couple of months or so). I thought you were supposed to talk to your neighbours to make them aware of noise issues (when new people move in they aren't aware how noisy it is for us and sometimes tenants forget) and resolve any issues. Anyway since the start of the year, I've been unable to communicate it to the tenant though I have emailed about the noise issues to the owner in the last few months. I don't think the owner has communicated this to his tenants.

Multiple leaks
In the past 4 years or so there have been multiple leaks from the flat upstairs. The leaks have occurred due to multiple reasons. One time they got a replacement washing machine and it started leaking. Couple of the leaks happened when their bathroom was being renovated due to a careless/amateur builder. Last year there was a leak due to a negligent tenant (he was drunk at the time) leaving the bathroom tap running. Then another leak happened a couple of weeks after that and I was told it was a leak from one of the pipes in the bathroom. 
All the leaks so far have happened above our living room (they have their kitchen and bathroom above our living room). when there's a leak, the ceiling in the middle of the living room usually gets saturated with water and water starts coming down the ceiling rose and the light fitting. As a result the plaster in the celling and around the ceiling rose cracks, ceiling gets stained and the light fitting gets damaged. We have to then go for weeks without being able to turn living room lights on until the ceiling and electrical cables are dry. We then have to get quotes from builders and then need to be home (couple of times I had to work from and take time off work) for the repairs. This is very disruptive to our lives. Luckily we were home every time there was a leak. Otherwise the damage could have been in thousands if not tens of thousands as we have furniture, electronic items and wooden flooring in the affected area. Every time we go away and sometime when we go out, we worry there might be another leak from upstairs.
I had previously emailed the owner upstairs saying I'm getting sick of all the leaks and he and the tenants need to be careful, take ownership and if they get tradesmen to do any plumbing work, get reputable people and keep an eye on the work. In the past he has apologised, agreed to pay for the damage and said there's not much he can do other than getting reputable tradesmen.
Anyway much to our annoyance, we discovered another leak last week which was probably the 7th or the 8th leak. The situation got much worse as neither the owner nor the tenant (the one on the lease) answered my calls. I knocked on the entrance door of the upstairs flat but no one answered. I was thinking of turning the water mains off but then I saw the tenant walk in to the building so I told him there's another leak and followed the tenant upstairs (I had been to that flat many times) to see where the leak was coming from. I asked the tenant if he was ignoring my calls or have my number blocked. He said 'it doesn't matter' and I said 'It does matter as if my property is damaged I need to be able to contact you'. He got annoyed and asked me to leave the flat which infuriated me as I thought it was unnecessary and I wasn't unreasonable. I told him I was going to ring the owner straight away. I tried to call the owner again but there was no answer. I sent him messages via SMS and Whatsapp as well. Later in the day I got an SMS from the owner saying the tenant had informed him there was a leak from the replacement washing machine and that he's sorry but there's not much he can do as they got a big company to do the work and that he'd get the company to pay for the repairs. He also said he's unable to talk on the phone. His unwillingness to speak to me frustrated me further as I had helped him in the past whenever he requested me to do something. I wrote him an email outlining how there have been multiple leaks and tenants have been inconsiderate towards us and the property, the situation is going to get ugly if nothing is changed and asked him if he could get new tenants and/or reduce the number of tenants upstairs to reduce noise levels. I believe the whole situation could have been handled much better had the tenant or the owner was willing to speak to me. It's been pretty stressful and I have been struggling to sleep and getting persistent headaches probably due to stress.

The owner replied to my email a few days later and said he couldn't answer the calls because his communication channels were restricted as he was in a dark place (however he clearly got in touch with his tenant so seems it's just my calls he was ignoring). He said he understood it's frustrating but it's a crap part of life and it's not his or tenant's fault. He said he hired professionals to do the job and besides getting the damage repaired there's not much else he can do. I wrote him another email saying I've run out of patience as there have been far too many leaks and they need to be very careful and there are things tenants can and should do for example if they got a replacement washing machine they should have checked to see if there were any leaks after running a wash cycle, considering there was a leak only a few years ago the previous time they replaced the washing machine. I asked him if we could have a face to face meeting ASAP.

What to do next
Last week I was really frustrate and cross at them and was thinking of complaining to the council about the noise issues and/or of hiring a solicitor to get legal advice. I'm a bit calmer now and I understand when you go down that route, things can get uglier and the other co-freeholder and I may never be on speaking terms so I thought I'd ask for some advice here first. Is there anything we can do about noise issues? Do we just have to put up with it? Is there anything we can do to let the tenants/owner know that it's not acceptable to have any more leaks? (they don't seem to be taking it seriously IMO). The leaks in our flat combined with the noise issue and tension with tenants upstairs are having a big impact on our lives. What would you do if you were in my shoes? 

Thank you for reading this long post and any words of wisdom

 

TranceNRG

I posted this in another section initially but then another posted suggested this section.

45002

Use Paragraphs please and not solid blocks of texts.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6197346/issues-in-my-groundfloor-flat-multiple-leaks-from-flat-upstairs-and-noisy-inconsiderate-tenants

anselld

If you have read anything on tenancy law recently you will realise it is impossible for the landlord to "get new tenants" any time soon.  Notice periods are 6 months and court proceedings are a significant time after that.
The Council can address noise but to do so it would have to be sufficient to be classed as a statutory nuisance.  Day-to-day living would not come into that category.  You would also need to declare such a dispute if you decided to sell the flat in future.
Regarding the leaks there do seem to have been an unfortunate number, however it sounds like the Landlord has acted promptly and perhaps generously in paying for repairs given that they were mostly not caused through negligence.
I don't think there is much more you can do and the fact that communication is not being answered probably indicates that you have reached the limit as far as making your point is concerned.

Beeboo23

Are you in a position to move? Possibly somewhere detached. I’ve always lived in flats, sometimes with people above, sometimes below, sometimes both. You get noisy neighbours and loud neighbours. I’ve been in your position with noisy neighbours and sometimes you can get to the point where you’re so fed up that every little sound winds you up. Try to take a step back and realise that some noise is normal and there’s not much you can do about it. 
If you formalise the complaint and you do want to sell at some point neighbour disputes would have to be declared. 

If you can’t move can you get some insulation put in in between the two flats. I believe the government are offering some grants for green improvements, maybe you could claim it?

Not much you can do about the leaks. 

TranceNRG

Quite a few people have suggested moving to a new place. We did talk about it and we may do this in a few years anyway (we do want to buy a freehold property in the future) but not sure we are in a position to do this right now. I'm hoping to talk to the other co-freeholder face to face and talk about our concerns and see. If things don't improve between us and tenants, we may have to move.
I guess our biggest concern is the leaks keep happening. I just don't think the tenants/owner are taking it seriously. Is there nothing we can do from a legal standpoint?

davidmcn

TranceNRG said:

I guess our biggest concern is the leaks keep happening. I just don't think the tenants/owner are taking it seriously. Is there nothing we can do from a legal standpoint?

If they're separate incidents/causes, what would you like to happen from a legal standpoint? If it's a particular fault which they're not getting around to fixing, you can do something legal about that. But it doesn't sound like that, just an unfortunate accumulation of problems. To an extent, it's one of the risks you take on by living underneath somebody else.

TranceNRG

davidmcn said:

TranceNRG said:

I guess our biggest concern is the leaks keep happening. I just don't think the tenants/owner are taking it seriously. Is there nothing we can do from a legal standpoint?

If they're separate incidents/causes, what would you like to happen from a legal standpoint? If it's a particular fault which they're not getting around to fixing, you can do something legal about that. But it doesn't sound like that, just an unfortunate accumulation of problems. To an extent, it's one of the risks you take on by living underneath somebody else.

So the most reason leak was from a replacement washing machine and if it's true then then the exact same thing happened only 2,3 years ago. Knowing there was a leak last time they got it replaced and there have been multiple leaks in to our flat, shouldn't the tenant have checked the washing machine after running it? The leak could have been easily detected and all the damage could have been avoided. I just think they are not being considerate enough. If my property had damaged another property multiple times, I'd be very careful and double check to make sure there are no leaks. 

davidmcn

TranceNRG said:

davidmcn said:

TranceNRG said:

I guess our biggest concern is the leaks keep happening. I just don't think the tenants/owner are taking it seriously. Is there nothing we can do from a legal standpoint?

If they're separate incidents/causes, what would you like to happen from a legal standpoint? If it's a particular fault which they're not getting around to fixing, you can do something legal about that. But it doesn't sound like that, just an unfortunate accumulation of problems. To an extent, it's one of the risks you take on by living underneath somebody else.

So the most reason leak was from a replacement washing machine and if it's true then then the exact same thing happened only 2,3 years ago. Knowing there was a leak last time they got it replaced and there have been multiple leaks in to our flat, shouldn't the tenant have checked the washing machine after running it? The leak could have been easily detected and all the damage could have been avoided. I just think they are not being considerate enough. If my property had damaged another property multiple times, I'd be very careful and double check to make sure there are no leaks. 

Right. So, what legal remedy are you seeking, bearing in mind that they appear to be accepting liability anyway and reimbursing you for the repair costs?

[Deleted User]

I feel you pain.  I've lived on the ground floor of a converted house on two separate occasions and thankfully on both occasions I was renting.  If I'd been an owner occupier I think I would have gone postal.  The soundproofing was almost none exist and the upstairs neighbours didn't help.  Bare floorboards in one and the other installed laminate flooring.  The one with bare floorboards used to play his music so loud my windows rattled in the sash frames and would cause ripples in my cups of tea.  Arghhhh!

Has the tenant actually sublet the property or does he still live there and taken in 3 lodgers?  What are your council's rules on HMO licensing?  I know in England that a licence is required for a large HMO which is defined as:

• it is rented to 5 or more people who form more than 1 household
• some or all tenants share toilet, bathroom or kitchen facilities
• at least 1 tenant pays rent (or their employer pays it for them)

However, council can impose their own stricter licensing rules as well as landlord licensing.  What are the rules for your council?

You have two options, move and sell the problem to some unwitting buyer, or tackle the issue using whatever means you have at your disposal.  That could be the council, your leases, getting legal (does your home insurance include legal cover) keeping in mind that you will need to disclose any neighbour disputes when you come to sell.

[Deleted User]

I have no idea if these actually work but I wonder if its worth buying them an anti vibration mat for the washing machine?  And making sure its been levelled properly.  You shouldn't really be getting that much noise from a washing machine even if little sound proofing.