Shutterstock

When living in an apartment, it is important to be as quiet as you can so that you don’t annoy the neighbors.

What would you do if, soon after moving in, your neighbors began filing complaints against you for being too loud on a very regular basis, even though you were being as quiet as possible?

That is the situation that the family in this story found themselves in, so after trying to work with the neighbors on the complaints didn’t work, they just moved out at the end of their lease, so they didn’t have to deal with it anymore.

I’m not sure what else they could have done other than file complaints against the neighbors for harassment. Read through the full story below and see what you think.

A neighbor who was calling the police and constantly complaining about noise.

So, I had a neighbor in a side-by-side duplex. Our sides mirrored each other.

This is a somewhat odd setup, but it should work out fine.

The walls were fairly thin, but we could barely hear them. The basement only had a large particle board separating the two halves.

The attic was also shared. We each had stairs going up to it, but it was an open space. It was a finished attic that looked like it used to be it’s own apartment. On our side was me, my wife, our 1 year old, our friend and her 3 year old.

Some people are overly sensitive about noise.

I grew up in triple decker apartments in the city. I was constantly obsessing over noise, making sure we were quiet (within reason and still being able to live normally) for our neighbors.

Soon after we moved in, they were calling the landlord to complain about noises: 1. they could hear us walking, saying it always sounded like we were stomping in heels. 2. they said they could hear people going up and down the stairs all night in the middle of the night (the only thing awake in the night was my cat). 3. the TV, at moderate volume, was too loud.

Why isn’t the landlord looking into this to see that the complaints are false?

The worst noise complaint came a few months during the winter. They called the landlord to complain that they were hearing footsteps in the attic at all points of the day.

They claimed that we had someone living in the attic. We did not. It was winter so it was probably an animal that got up there to stay warm.

Well, hopefully talking directly will help address the issue.

We tried to talk to them but they wouldn’t respond. Eventually the landlord told them to stop and gave them our numbers (with our OK) so they reach out directly.

For all the noise they complained about, they had a televangelist playing a TV in the basement 24/7. It never turned off.

It is pretty extreme to call the police about this type of thing.

The police.. they called the police twice on us. The first time was about 5am. My wife had to leave very early that day. It was winter, she was going in and out of the house packing the car.

At one point she was coming down from the 2nd floor with our 1 year old, slipped and fell down the stairs. She just slid down them on her butt, no tumbling, thankfully.

To be fair, I can see how this would have sounded very serious.

Aside from the kid crying, everyone was ok. She eventually left. About 20 minutes later two officers showed up. The neighbors called in a noise complaint and it sounded like I was beating my family.

Trying to explain that your wife and baby fell down the stairs doesn’t go over well. Luckily our friend confirmed what happened and the police left.

Now this is just too extreme.

The 2nd time they called the police was a month or so later, about 2am. Our friend’s 3 year old had a tantrum in the middle of the night.

It lasted all of 5 minutes. He was calmed down quick and went back to bed. Not long after, the police were at our door because they got a complaint of a kid in distress.

Even the police realize that the neighbor shouldn’t be calling about this.

We explained what was going on one of them said “Seriously? We got called here for that? Ok we’ll just take your information and we’ll head out.”

As soon as the lease was up we moved out.

Maybe this is exactly what the neighbors wanted. If these people move out, they will likely have at least a month or two of no neighbors.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this story.

People can be louder than they realize.

This commenter is correct. Some people hate living next to people.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about neighbors who intentionally tank an open house sale because they want to buy the property themselves.

You never know how loud you really are.

They may have been legitimately concerned when they called the police.

Nothing was going to please these neighbors, so moving out just makes sense. They really had two choices. Move out, or fight back.

Fighting back usually just escalates the issue and causes even more problems for everyone.