How do you deal with he said she said tenants drama?

Question

The tenant downstairs complains that the tenant upstairs makes annoying noises sometimes in the middle of the night.

When I approach the tenant upstairs about the issue, she says that she only does it to send the signal to the tenants downstairs to keep their noise level down.

Both tenants pay on time and I've talked to both about the issue, but it keeps happening repeately for about two weeks now.

I've been very good at addressing my tenants' issues, but this one seems to be one of those that I'm not sure about what to do anymore, since I already talked to both of them.

Any ideas on how to deal with situations like this?

Anthony R. · Answer

Haha I had the IDENTICAL issue with two females last Aug. After trying to play the middle man for about a month I realized they were both being a pain in my ass. I told them that I am not their mommy or daddy. They are middle aged women and can handle this on their own. Unless I get a police report for a noise complaint no one was in violation of their lease and there was nothing I was going to do. I finished by telling them that if I got one more complaint from either of them about this and it wasn't legitimate that I was going to blindly deny renewing both of their leases when it came to pass. I haven't heard from either of them about this since. (They also both renewed)

Anthony R. · Answer

When I told those tenants I wasn't their mommy or daddy, one had enough nerve during her lease renewal to try and tell me that I was verbally bashing her when I said that.My response was: "I am the captain of this ship. Its success or failure lies solely with me. Not only are you holding your lease renewal but I have a liberal 60 day penalty free lease breaking clause. If you don't like the way I pilot the boat then you're free to get off." Without another word she signed it and gave it back to me. You need to be in command and control in this business or they will walk all over you.

Nicole A. · Answer

I second what Anthony said. It's not your problem. You're not their parents, life coach, or whatever. Just a landlord and landlords don't run people's lives. They're adults and need to handle it as such instead of tattling on each other.I don't even respond when they text me about this and I DEFINITELY don't respond/answer the phone when they contact me after 7PM to tell me about silly things. They've learned because they've stopped complaining about minor stuff that doesn't matter. Sometimes in person they still vent, but that just seems like the kind of people they are...they like to complain. So I just listen for a couple minutes and offer basically no promises or anything. They understand. I'm happy because I don't get stupid calls and texts anymore.Set your boundaries. :-)Actually, this reminds me of the time that I told a tenant who kept calling me (at night, even!) to complain about silly things or his roommate. I got fed up and told him I wasn't his life coach. He hung up on me! lol! But then he called back and apologized and after that, stopped complaining so much!

Jorge Garifuna · Answer

thank you all for your prompt response and sharing your experiences.

Kelly N. · Answer

I just went through something similar. I got a text at about 11 pm from a tenant complaining that the downstairs neighbors were having a loud party. I told him to go ask them to quiet down, and if they didn't he was to call the police with a noise complaint. I sent the loud tenant a text, however she never got it since she had changed numbers, which I found out when I called the next morning. The upstairs tenant had sent me an e mail complaining that they still hadn't quieted down, in fact they turned the music up nd were still loud as of 4 am. So I went to talk to the downstairs tenant and got a very different story- they had a party and turned their music down when the tenant BELOW them asked them nicely. The tenant above them came down a while later, pounded on the door, and started swearing at them and threatening to call the police on them, at which point they say they quieted down for the night. This was a once a year thing, and they hadn't complained when the upstairs neighbors had had a party at Halloween, or when any of the people below them had parties.My feeling is that the truth was somewhere in between. When a tenant complains about another tenant, my first question is whether or not they talked to the other party. If they haven't, I suggest they go do that, and remind them they would rather hear from another tenant than the landlord about a problem they are causing.Kelly