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Have you ever lived below a heavy walker before?

If you haven’t, let me fill you in…

It sucks!

Bad!

You feel like you can never get any peace in your living space, and you’re constantly on edge, just waiting for the next footstep to drop.

Just ask this guy…

He’s really going through it with the person who lives above him, and it sounds like he’s about to snap.

Read on, and see what you think.

Upstairs Neighbor’s Heavy Footsteps Are Unbearable.

“I’m in California and dealing with an upstairs neighbor whose heavy footsteps/stomping have become unbearable.

This has been going on for a while, but it became significantly worse toward the end of 2025.

This isn’t normal noise…

I understand apartment living comes with normal noise, but this is heavy, repetitive impact noise throughout the day and sometimes late at night/early morning. It has:

Woken me up around 1 a.m.

Made working and studying from home extremely difficult

Made it hard to relax in my own apartment

Caused my bedroom closet doors to rattle

Previously caused my light fixtures to rattle

It never gets fixed permanently…

I’ve reported it to management multiple times.

They have spoken to the upstairs tenant, and each time the noise improves for maybe a week or two before coming back.

Today, maintenance was actually in my apartment while the stomping was happening and heard it firsthand. He described the footsteps as sounding “aggressive.”

The temporary office manager also spoke with the upstairs tenant today, but the stomping has continued.

Management has offered to let us transfer to another unit, but we’d have to pay current market rent, and that would only happen if another similar unit would become available.

He’s not sure how much longer he can deal with this…

We just renewed our lease for another 12 months in June, and we’re now seriously considering moving to another nearby building with a top-floor unit.

One thing that also bothered me: a manager previously told me something along the lines of, “A certain type of demographic has heavier footing,” and mentioned giving the upstairs tenant slippers because he’d done that with a tenant at a previous property.

At this point, I’m exhausted and feel like I’ve tried everything.

For those familiar with California tenant law or dealing with severe upstairs noise: what would you do? Is there any realistic way to negotiate out of a lease in a situation like this, or am I basically stuck?”

Let’s see what readers said on Reddit.

This person had a lot to say.

Another individual shared a story.

This reader weighed in.

Another individual spoke up.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who gets revenge on her neighbors after they keep using her trash bins.

And this person shared their thoughts.

This sucks for him!

And I’d guess that it’s not going to change anytime soon…

What a lame situation!

He needs to move out of this place as soon as he possibly can!