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When you are a landlord, you are still obligated to make sure that your tenants are acting as good neighbors to the people who live around your property.

What would you do if a neighbor of your tenants was constantly complaining because they had male visitors over to the apartment on a regular basis, as well as other issues?

That is the situation that the landlord in this story is in, and while he wants to be a good neighbor, he also doesn’t want to try to dictate what his tenants can do like this.

Personally, he seems like a great landlord who is trying to do the right thing. His neighbor seems awful. Read through the full details below and see what you think he should do.

Neighbours unnecessarily creating nuisance over male friends or boyfriend visiting tenants in a home I own

I own a flat in Gurugram but currently live in another city, so the flat is rented to three adult women.

What do the neighbors complain about?

I’m looking for opinions from other homeowners/tenants/RWA members on how you would handle this situation.

The owner/resident of another floor has repeatedly complained to us about our tenants.

Sounds like the neighbor needs to mind his own business.

One of his main concerns is that male friends/partners visit them and sometimes apparently stay for several days (potentially a week or two).

As far as we know, these visitors are not creating noise, fighting, damaging property or otherwise disturbing anyone.

The neighbors don’t have to like it, but they need to accept that there is nothing they can do about it.

We personally have no objection to our adult tenants having friends or partners visit or temporarily stay with them, provided they are not subletting the property, creating a nuisance or causing security problems.

What makes us uncomfortable is that the focus of the complaints seems to be specifically on the fact that three women are living there and male visitors come to meet them.

Don’t let the neighbors drive away good tenants.

We have seen other young couples/visitors in the neighbourhood as well. When we ourselves lived in the property, visitors were never treated as an issue either.

This is also not the first time we have faced this problem. Similar behaviour/complaints contributed to our previous tenants eventually leaving, which is why we are more concerned this time.

Their tenants need to make sure the door is kept closed.

The neighbour has now been telling my husband quite seriously that the RWA may complain and that we should “see what happens” after that.

There is, however, one complaint that I think is completely valid **if our tenants are actually responsible for it**: he says the common building entrance is sometimes left open when they return late at night.

It is hard to prove who left the door open, unless there is a security camera.

We absolutely agree that the common entrance should be closed for everyone’s security, and we plan to specifically instruct our tenants and their guests to make sure they close it.

The difficulty is that this entrance is shared by all three floors. Our previous tenants had also told us that they sometimes came home late and found the gate already open.

They just like to complain.

So, I don’t think it is fair to automatically assume that every time the gate is found open, our tenants must have left it that way.

The neighbour also mentioned that the tenants sometimes return late with “large bags” and leave the entrance open while bringing things inside.

I understand the concern about the gate being left open, but I don’t understand why their returning late or carrying luggage should itself be an issue.

The long distance can also make things difficult.

Since we live in another city, it is also difficult for us to know what is actually happening when there are conflicting versions.

We are therefore considering doing the following:

Let’s see what they have in mind.

• Clearly instructing our tenants and their guests to always close the common entrance and respect common areas.
• Making it clear that we have no objection as owners to personal visitors/partners or reasonable temporary stays, provided there is no nuisance, illegal activity or subletting.

This seems pretty reasonable.

• Asking the neighbour to report specific incidents (date/time/what actually happened) rather than making general allegations.
• Asking that future non-urgent complaints be sent in writing on one email thread instead of repeatedly calling my husband, so there is a proper record and less possibility of misunderstanding.

All of this would make it easier to deal with.

• If an RWA rule is supposedly being violated, asking them to provide the specific written rule so that we can review it.\
• Potentially installing outward-facing security cameras from our own property, after checking the applicable rules and ensuring they do not invade our tenants’ or neighbours’ privacy. The intention would be property/security evidence in case there are conflicting allegations, not monitoring the tenants’ personal lives.

He really seems like a very reasonable landlord.

I want to be a responsible owner and don’t want our tenants creating genuine problems for other residents. If they’re leaving the gate open, creating noise, blocking common areas, etc., I absolutely want to know and will address it.

At the same time, I don’t want three adult women renting our property to be repeatedly questioned or pressured simply because male friends/partners visit them, nor do I want another tenancy affected because of this.

The rules in each country are going to be unique.

For people familiar with apartment/RWA situations in India, especially NCR/Gurugram: **does our approach sound reasonable?**

Also, where would you draw the line between a legitimate neighbour/RWA concern and unnecessary interference in a tenant’s personal life?

And if you have dealt with something similar as a landlord or tenant, how did you handle it without unnecessarily escalating the situation?

This is definitely a difficult situation to be in. He wants to treat his tenants fairly, but he also has to be mindful of the neighbors in the building.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this situation.

This commenter has a good idea.

Yeah, this commenter is right.

Putting up cameras seems like an obvious first step.

The neighbor is really harassing them at this point.

This person says that he shouldn’t give such details to the neighbor.

The neighbor is way too nosy for his own good. For the most part, he should just ignore the complaints.

Putting up a camera to prove that his tenants aren’t causing problems, however, is a good idea.