Noisy Neighbours

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Hi. I used to live in a flat in Oxford with my (now) wife. It was our first rental property together and we were really pleased to have found it. It was far and away the nicest place in our budget that we had seen - it was big enough, in a good location with good cycle routes and bus services into the city, and it had a great big garden which we loved. But it also came with a problem which was that it was the downstairs flat in a converted house and there was no sound insulation - and I mean none at all, zero, zip, nada sound insulation between the upstairs flat and ours.

Noisy neighbours

When we first moved in there was a couple upstairs that were about to move and quite frankly we could not be bothered to kick up a fuss when we knew they would only be there for another couple of weeks. We thought they were just inconsiderate and that the noise issue would be no more when new, nicer neighbours moved in to replace them. The upstairs flat then remained empty for about 6 weeks, maybe 2 months and in that time we really loved our place. Then a young newly wed couple moved in upstairs. They were very pleasant and when, as soon as they moved in, the noise started bothering us we mentioned it to them and they made a conscious effort to keep quiet. The thing was neither they nor we understood the true extent of the problem. After several weeks of us asking them to keep it down and them saying they were doing their best we finally grasped how bad the lack of insulation was - the fella was upstairs on his own with no T.V. or music on, his mobile phone was sitting on their coffee table on silent and my wife and I were sitting downstairs reading the paper when we heard his mobile phone (and I mean we really clearly heard it!) vibrating on the table! It was at this stage we realised that the problem was fatal!

What to do about noisy neighbours, and approaching your Landlord

We had exhausted all possibilities with simple solutions to the noise problem coming through the ceiling from the upstairs flat into our flat. There was just no way that negotiating with our neighbours upstairs could help the noise pollution problem. We had already raised the issue with the landlord over the phone and he had (understandably) told us to talk to the neighbours about it. Understanding, as we now did, that that was never going to resolve the issue we wrote to the landlord explaining the extent of the problem, informing him that it was completely unacceptable to us and offering a couple of ideas for solutions that we had thought of - namely laying nice thick carpets upstairs or installing some kind of sound insulation between the flats. We also asked his ideas on the problem. His response was that it would be too expensive and we needed to find our own solution. The second letter we wrote was a little more, erm, direct shall we say?! We explained again that we had tried and failed with simple solutions to the noise pollution from our neighbours, that the problem was structural and therefore his responsibility and also that if failed to resolve the issue which was completely intolerable to us that we would need for him to either allow us to break our lease without penalty or find us suitable accommodation in another of his properties. After the third letter our landlord got the message that we would not give up, that the noise pollution problem with our neighbours was not something we would ever accept. He showed us another flat he had on the market but it was just too small so he allowed us to break our lease without penalty. We moved out after six months of living there. It was a real shame for us though - we had really enjoyed living there until our neighbours moved in but unless the landlord had invested in soundproofing it was not somewhere we could have stayed. We actually really lucked out though - we moved out just before leaving for a worldwide trip lasting a month, so didn't have to pay any rent while we were away and then when we got back we found a really nice place really quickly so it all ended well in the end.