I’ve recently had a bit of an issue with my tenant that lives in the same building that I do. I live upstairs and they live in one of the downstairs units. There’s a stairway going right down the middle of the two downstairs apartments that separates them.

The other day when I was home I heard some pretty loud music coming from their apartment. It could’ve been projecting from the stairway but I hear it probably 10-15 foot away from the top of the stairwell. Since they just moved in I wanted to make sure that they know how much noise I will accept. I sent the tenant a text saying “would you be able to turn the the music a bit ?” The tenant took a day to respond to the message and at the time the music did turn down about 10 minutes after I sent the message. After about a day of no response I sent a message saying “Thanks for turning down your music yesterday! It helps me out when I get a text back confirming that you’ve received my message. Communication is important to me.”

then I get a text back saying this

Communication is definitely important. So I do want to let you know of a few things. I was just in the hospital with complications with my pregnancy, and am pretty overwhelmed with dealing with that. We are okay now, but any added stress, which includes even texting. For me at this point is too overwhelming for me, being that I am 7 months pregnant. I am concerned about noise levels when my baby gets here, because newborns cry in the middle of the night and I truly am worried that we are going to have an issue with something that is out of my control, and me and my family are going to be out on the street because of that. And that’s frightening to me, being that it was 12:00 pm yesterday and my music was at half capacity when you text me to turn it down. I truly have never had a noise complaints at any residence I have ever lived at so it’s concerning to me. I haven’t mentioned it, because I really enjoy this apartment and we feel very at home here, but you going up and down the stairs and slamming both of those doors so loudly have been an issue. To the point where stuff has fallen off shelves onto James and a guest we’ve had over heads. An entire shelf fell off of my wall breaking a few of my antique items, that were not heavy. My photos on my wall are crooked from the stomping. I did not say anything about it because I truly do not want to cause any issues here, because we are so happy with this space. I feel like we are fairly quiet, music is never really playing majority of the time. So it’s just a little worrisome that I was being asking at 12 in the afternoon to turn it down, when it didn’t seem loud to us. I have no problem keeping it down, I just would also like to live in the apartment as well, not feel like I have to tip toe around, if that makes sense. Any communication after this between the two of us, I would appreciate go through Jordan, since I truly do not need any added extra stress. I hope you can understand that. I really do not want to jeopardize living in this space. And I am just an overwhelmed pregnant woman trying to relax and live just a bit before my baby gets here.

I definitely understand and am going to make the necessary changes upon entering my apartment. What I’m afraid of is that this tenant got worked up over something I would’ve considered a small thing and I wouldn’t want to have to deal with these types of responses in the future when rent is late or when something bigger becomes an issue.

that being said I also do like that this tenant is communicating their concerns to me. Im just curious how any of you would handle this problem and if you would see this as a red flag in a long term tenant.

Chicago, Illinois

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