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Living above someone in an older building usually means a little extra awareness about footsteps and furniture, but some situations go well beyond reasonable.
One couple, both working from home with flexible schedules, found themselves on the receiving end of near-constant noise complaints from their downstairs neighbor, the only person in their six-flat building who’d ever raised the issue at all.
Late nights, the occasional drink, a cat that sometimes wanders at night, none of it seemed excessive on their end.
What made things stranger was that complaints kept rolling in even during weeks they were away on holiday or asleep early.
That’s when the pattern stopped looking like a noise problem and started looking like a smear campaign.
Keep reading for the full story.
AITA for keeping my downstairs neighbour awake at night.
I live in a topmost flat with my partner in a small set of 6 flats, two per floor, with perhaps not the best build quality.
The downstairs neighbor has definitely taken notice of this.
Over the past couple of years our downstairs neighbour has continuously registered noise complaints both via direct messages in WhatsApp and more vague noise complaints to the whole block.
They are the only neighbour that has ever registered a noise complaint in our building.
The renter describes their typical routine.
My partner and I both work from home, and our jobs are flexible, so we don’t have to start super early every day.
Some nights we may stay up to 1/2am, we also both sometimes have some drinks on a traditional non work day, though rarely enough to get drunk.
By their account, they think they’re pretty decent neighbors.
We both do sometimes have a heavier night of drinking, but those are exclusively on the weekend and maybe once every 4 months (think nice meal, a fair amount of wine, etc). We also have a pet cat who sometimes is up at night.
There was a period of time for a few weeks where my partner would need to get up early for work and go on site, which required work boots, but that was temporary.
For their neighbor, no noise is too small to complain about.
These noise complaints would be both focused around specific times and events, and then also general periods of time lasting a few weeks. However, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of times it is just my partner and I moving around our apartment normally.
The heavier drinking nights have been sometimes louder, and he has complained about those, and yes, I do understand those ones, but they are also within what I would call acceptable behaviour.
The renters also get complaints when they’re not even there.
There have been noise complaints from times where both myself and my partner have either gotten an early night, have been away on holiday, have been out of the house.
Some of the direct messages from our neighbour have been quite pushy and angry, claiming a lack of sleep as a result of this noise. We have yet to find a solution for this.
Sounds like this neighbor has it out for them.
What did Reddit have to say?
Simply walking around is just a normal part of… being alive.
Everyone perceives noise differently.
Perhaps these renters are just the scapegoat.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about annoying neighbors who end up regretting their request for a property survey.
The downstairs neighbor needs to take reasonable measures to control his own environment.
It’s hard to solve a problem when the evidence doesn’t support the claim.
Throughout this entire process, this couple has been more self-aware than most, admitting when louder nights were fair game for pushback, while also noticing a pattern that doesn’t add up: grievances rolling in during holidays, early nights, and stretches when their unit was essentially silent.
That inconsistency matters, because it suggests the frustration downstairs isn’t purely about decibels, it might be about building quality, personal stress, or something that has absolutely nothing to do with the couple.
You never know what’s going on in someone else’s life.