How to deal with tenants with noisy pets

[Dan Beck]

Hey BiggerPockets community,

I own a small apartment building and I occupy the lower level unit. I’ve never had problems with previous tenants.

However, my new tenants have three cats who get quite noisy at night. They run around and make a lot of noise around 1:00 am. I usually go to bed at 10 pm, so staying up late is obviously not an option.

They just signed their 1-year lease and I don’t want to wait so long. I talked to them and they apologized, said they feel really sorry, but they don’t know what to do.

What can I do as a landlord? I don’t want to start the eviction process based on the noise nuisance since it’s lengthy and complicated.

I was considering simply asking them to move out and pay their moving fees since they just moved in.

Thanks

[Brenden Mitchum]

Hey @Dan Beck, welcome to the BP community!

Sounds like you got yourself a great education opportunity here. With these types of properties it is best to just not allow any pets, whatsoever. If you ever move out, keep this policy so that you don't have tenants constantly complaining to you. Or, just allow the folks with pets on the first floor if you must. 

The only thing you can really do at this point is cash for keys or wait until their lease is up in a year. Maybe get some noise-canceling headphones? Evicting them for loud cats would not only be a lame move but also likely take months in most courts these days and cost you more than it would to just do cash for keys.

Hope this helps a bit. Please, feel free to reach out anytime if you have other questions or just want to chat!