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Six months of peaceful apartment living can disappear fast once the wrong neighbors move in upstairs.

One PhD student, who relies on working from home for hours of reading and studying, went from quiet coexistence to near constant slamming and banging the moment new tenants settled in above her.

She tried the reasonable route first, leaving polite notes asking for quieter footsteps or more carpeting, then escalated to a formal complaint once the noise didn’t just continue, it got worse.

Despite her lease’s clear provision about quiet hours, her property manager brushed it off, citing “kid noise” and discomfort over notes being left.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

New neighbors with children

I have new upstairs NFH. No amount of creative adjectives, metaphors, or hyperbole can explain how loud they are.

I have lived in my building for ~6 months with no noise issues (other than occasionally hearing people walk past in the hall or from W/Ds in nearby units).

So these new neighbors were quite the shock.

Then 1 month ago there was an extended weekend of slamming, banging, etc.

I reached out to my property manager and she said new tenants had just moved in.

That’s fine, move-in noise is to be expected and is perfectly reasonable. But it continued. And it’s gotten worse.

This renter has tried multiple things to get the noise to stop.

I left two notes asking them to keep it down or to lay down more carpeting. I filed a formal complaint with the PM since our lease states that tenants “shall not disturb the peace and quiet of other neighbors or tenants.”

Apparently they’re uncomfortable with notes being left (whereas I’m uncomfortable with knocking since I have no idea who lives there).

The property manager quickly blames the excess noise on the kid, but the renter knows there’s more to it than that.

Apparently they also have a kid who makes, as my PM put it, “kid noise,” as if this excuses the volume and frequency. The noise issues mostly during the day and evening, but sometimes starts or extends into “quiet hours.”

This noise is starting to really impact the renter’s routine.

I am a PhD student and have endless reading and studying (and can’t always stay long hours at the library), so I have to be able to work from home.

I have no peace and no quiet. It’s sounding like the PM isn’t keen to enforce their own rules, so now I end up being the crazy one for complaining.

This just isn’t fair.

What did Reddit have to say about the situation?

Why not fight noise with more noise?

This user doesn’t exactly have the most optimistic take.

Perhaps there’s a seasonality aspect to all of this.

This user understands exactly how this renter feels.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about neighbors who couldn’t ignore reckless neighborhood driving after an accident occurred.

There’s a difference between reasonable move-in noise and… whatever this is.

All things considered, this student handled things about as fairly as possible, giving new neighbors the benefit of the doubt, leaving polite notes, and only escalating to a formal complaint once the noise didn’t improve.

The property manager is the real villain here, waving away legitimate concerns with vague excuses of “kid noise,” all so he can avoid doing his actual job.

This fight is far from over.