Tenant’s noise complaints

[Joni Chin]

We have a tenant renting a cottage behind our house, and we have a shared yard. She moved in 3 months ago and has been a good tenant that pays on time and I’m happy to have her as my tenant..so far.

About two weeks after she moved in she started complaining about a neighbors dog barking excessively—I agreed it was a problem, went over to talk to neighbor & problem was resolved for now. Then a couple of weeks ago, she asks me around 9-9:30pm if I could shut my outdoor backdoor light off because it’s shining in her bedroom window (which has black out drapes!) because she is having trouble sleeping. So I did, and I kept that in mind so I avoided turning it on after 9pm.

Then yesterday she texts me and she says she loves being here but the neighborhood noises (like barking dogs and conversations taking place in areas close to her house) are distracting to her on the days she works from home or when she is trying to sleep at night. Then she proceeds to tell me that my son and his friends are talking just outside her living room window and is very distracting to her when she is trying to work (this is 5-6 pm on a Saturday!) so she asked them to keep it down, but it is still distracting so she asked me if I could tell him again. I explain to her that this is the first time in at least 6 months that he has had friends over but I would remind him to keep it down. (they were hanging out in what is considered our shared yard!) At this point I wasn’t even aware they were back there as I could not hear them in my own house! Then she tells me that late at night she can hear conversations in our kitchen so could we also please keep our doors and windows closed if we are in our kitchen. (We don’t have air conditioning in our house so our windows and doors are usually open) i told her that we would try to be more aware of time and keep voices quiet as possible in our kitchen after 10pm but we also need for her to consider that we also would like to enjoy a normal family life and conversations in our house. (The conversations she is referring to is two people talking normally-not loudly- in a kitchen, getting a late evening snack or washing dishes and cleaning up, —we weren’t having social gatherings in our kitchen or anything like that)

When she has friends over I can clearly hear them talking and laughing in her house but it doesn’t bother us at all, we expect that we would hear it being that close by, but she is apparently bothered by hearing us.

When she moved in she did ask about noise so I was aware that this could potentially be an issue but I fully disclosed to her that obviously living within 10-15 feet of another house you can expect to hear people talking, tv sounds, people using the kitchen etc and she told me she wears earplugs to bed so I figured that wouldn’t be an issue. But now apparently it is. I feel like because I have been accommodating all her requests, she is now expecting me to not use our kitchen after 10pm and keep all the lights off that might possibly shine into her bedroom? Summer is coming up, it’s already too hot to keep our windows closed at night.

Am I not being understanding of her requests? I felt I met her more than halfway. Or is she being a little unreasonable?

Long term I’m not sure if I want to have to worry about this constantly. We never had issues with previous tenants complaining about noise from our house even when we had all four of our adult children home and a normal social life with friends over from time to time. Once these lockdowns are over we want to have friends and family visiting us and I don’t see it working out well if she is already complaining about “noise”.

Fortunately I usually give 6 month leases before extending for a longer term just to make sure that we are both mutually happy with the living situation.

What would you do?

[Nathan Gesner]

To be honest, I stopped reading less than halfway through. You need to get rid of her. Give her a written notice that the property is clearly not suitable for her needs and she should find somewhere else to live. She may accept your notice and move on. If she insists on staying, tell her you won't listen or respond to any more complaints about noise and she will have to accept the rental for what it is.