My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Michigan
I looked through the threads to see if I could find an exact or very similar answer before posting this. But, it's late, so it's possible I missed something that was right in front of me. If I did, mea culpa. And sorry for the absence of brevity but I've seen many posts which seem to take several requests for info before the OP finally reveals what should have been revealed initially to better shape the advice s/he was given.
That said a quick set up: I live in the upstairs apartment of a two-story, eight unit building, one of about three dozen or so in the community. Through a combination of original subpar construction and the current parent company failing to rehab and make things nicer it can be a loud place. By the way the latter is speculation but the subpar construction, yikes. The doors are solid as hell but the floors are like paper. Our lease just ended but we'll be here for several more months so - obviously - we're month to month while we get things started on buying a house. I also did some reading that seems to indicate that our rights are significantly more limited not working under a lease and that the landlord has greater discretion in choosing to kick us out. Not for not paying rent in full or on time but for being a "nuisance" tenant or a complaining tenant or whatever. Ok, I think that's the main points.
Our downstairs neighbors are unpleasant, obnoxious people. They have a toddler, probably no more than two, that instead of trying to put to bed at a reasonable time like most people would a two-year-old they let run around till whenever. That's so mom can sleep in the following day till 11 or 12 because toddler is sleeping late.
So toddler is up and screaming and laughing and running around the apartment and having a grand time at 10:30, 11:30, midnight. I approached the dad but he didn't seem to thrilled with the idea of me pointing out that the decent thing to do is try and be mindful of your neighbors so we had words. I decided to let the on site security company deal with it going forward. It's worth noting there's four complexes they monitor - three within a mile and one about ten miles away - so calling them could mean as much as 20-30 minutes before they get here. We were fortunate, however, that they did catch them at least once. But, crappy people do crappy things because they're crappy people and the noise continues. But, since they're aware that security will get involved they now do it for shorter durations. A few minutes here, a few minutes there. Typically never more than 4-5 minutes at a time but in a typical hour the noise could be cumulatively as much as 40-45 minutes. And since their window looks out on to the parking lot they can see the security officer's vehicle and immediately shut things down till s/he leaves.
Since that leaves us more or less up a creek I decided to see what kind of noise my phone could pick up when the adults started screaming at each other because they both like to yell about sh*t instead of talking. I put my phone on the floor, started the video camera and let it record. It did a pretty good job where you could not only hear the voices but clearly make out what they were saying, profanities and all, and hear the toddler screaming in the background as the two adult morons were going at it. I took it to the leasing office to see what they thought and they said, paraphrased, "your video isn't good enough proof." Guess I'm a little confused how it's not as you can clearly make out where the noise is coming from and the voices of the parties involved.
So where do I turn to now? What's next? Security is having a hard time catching them. Office doesn't seem to give two flying monkey nuts about it. We're only here for a few more months thank God but while we're here we'd like to not have to deal with this. Is the leasing office correct that the audio recording isn't good enough? If she's not what's the next step? If she is what's the next step?
I looked through the threads to see if I could find an exact or very similar answer before posting this. But, it's late, so it's possible I missed something that was right in front of me. If I did, mea culpa. And sorry for the absence of brevity but I've seen many posts which seem to take several requests for info before the OP finally reveals what should have been revealed initially to better shape the advice s/he was given.
That said a quick set up: I live in the upstairs apartment of a two-story, eight unit building, one of about three dozen or so in the community. Through a combination of original subpar construction and the current parent company failing to rehab and make things nicer it can be a loud place. By the way the latter is speculation but the subpar construction, yikes. The doors are solid as hell but the floors are like paper. Our lease just ended but we'll be here for several more months so - obviously - we're month to month while we get things started on buying a house. I also did some reading that seems to indicate that our rights are significantly more limited not working under a lease and that the landlord has greater discretion in choosing to kick us out. Not for not paying rent in full or on time but for being a "nuisance" tenant or a complaining tenant or whatever. Ok, I think that's the main points.
Our downstairs neighbors are unpleasant, obnoxious people. They have a toddler, probably no more than two, that instead of trying to put to bed at a reasonable time like most people would a two-year-old they let run around till whenever. That's so mom can sleep in the following day till 11 or 12 because toddler is sleeping late.
So toddler is up and screaming and laughing and running around the apartment and having a grand time at 10:30, 11:30, midnight. I approached the dad but he didn't seem to thrilled with the idea of me pointing out that the decent thing to do is try and be mindful of your neighbors so we had words. I decided to let the on site security company deal with it going forward. It's worth noting there's four complexes they monitor - three within a mile and one about ten miles away - so calling them could mean as much as 20-30 minutes before they get here. We were fortunate, however, that they did catch them at least once. But, crappy people do crappy things because they're crappy people and the noise continues. But, since they're aware that security will get involved they now do it for shorter durations. A few minutes here, a few minutes there. Typically never more than 4-5 minutes at a time but in a typical hour the noise could be cumulatively as much as 40-45 minutes. And since their window looks out on to the parking lot they can see the security officer's vehicle and immediately shut things down till s/he leaves.
Since that leaves us more or less up a creek I decided to see what kind of noise my phone could pick up when the adults started screaming at each other because they both like to yell about sh*t instead of talking. I put my phone on the floor, started the video camera and let it record. It did a pretty good job where you could not only hear the voices but clearly make out what they were saying, profanities and all, and hear the toddler screaming in the background as the two adult morons were going at it. I took it to the leasing office to see what they thought and they said, paraphrased, "your video isn't good enough proof." Guess I'm a little confused how it's not as you can clearly make out where the noise is coming from and the voices of the parties involved.
So where do I turn to now? What's next? Security is having a hard time catching them. Office doesn't seem to give two flying monkey nuts about it. We're only here for a few more months thank God but while we're here we'd like to not have to deal with this. Is the leasing office correct that the audio recording isn't good enough? If she's not what's the next step? If she is what's the next step?
Quiet Enjoyment: Thoughts on Handling This
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