House hacking- noise reduction ideas, please!

[Allana Alex]

Hello,  currently renovating the rental unit above my apartment.  I don’t want to carpet because of installation costs  and maintenance costs but i hear that it combined with good quality padding will help reduce sound significantly.  

I am prepared to spend money on luxury vinyl planks but don’t want to spend $3000 plus additional money for installation (bringing cost to maybe $4000)  to put in the apartment if it isn’t going to allow for the significant noise reduction when walking. 

Prior tenants drove me crazy with the heavy walking.   When they woke up at 3 am wearing construction boots as they got ready for work i was up with them i don’t want to go through that again.   

If I buy life proof for $3 a square foot (it comes with built in Underpayment and if i also put an additional noise reduction underpayment will thIs help significantly in reducing the sound of foot steps, things dropping etc?  Would hate to spend all that money and still hear significant foot traffic over my head.

Everyone always says lvp is the way to go but there has not been any discussion on its sound reduction capabilities .

Any suggestions information  would be appreciated.

[Nicole Marshall]

I rent out 3 bedrooms in my 4 bedroom house. All 3 bedrooms are upstairs and my room is downstairs. I made the mistake of installing laminate flooring upstairs (where there was old dingy carpet). Hinsight, I would have installed nice new carpet. It's a 1960 built house, so likely there was no insulation between floors. Even with the expensive underlayment, I can hear EVERYTHING. Short of tearing down the downstairs ceilings and installing soundproofing materials, there's nothing I can do. Ear plugs it is!

My advice would be to replace with carpet, OR require them to have thick area rugs in key areas. I have heard of apartment complexes including this in their leases.