House selling and official complaints

[Notthissticky]

NNR - has any got experience of selling a house after making a formal complaint to the council about a neighbour? We're in an upstairs maisonnette and our downstairs neighbour slams her doors when our preschooler cries. We've tried to speak to her (she used the opportunity to insult our children) and in August we sent her a message telling her to stop. She stopped but a week ago started again. I now want to warn her that we'll log an official complaint if she doesn't stop, but I'm worried about the impact this will have when we try to sell our house. Can anyone share their experiences?

@Halloaten

I wouldn't want to live under you

Neither would I. Which is why I'd never buy a flat with upstairs neighbours 🤷‍♀️

@CheshireChat

Actually, if you're not doing everything you can to stop him from making a racket at antisocial hours, then I get why she'd be annoyed. You do what you can to get him to be quiet ASAP.

And if you let him tantrum at length so you can "parent properly " during the day as well... honestly, she will be annoyed.

Of course we do everything we can to stop it, FFS! We don't enjoy listening to him scream either! When I said we need to parent him properly, I meant we can't give in every time he has a tantrum. He's three, he cries and tantrums.

When we went round to speak to the neighbour in March she complained about things we no longer did (laundry at night, we genuinely hadn't realised how loud this was for her and stopped doing it immediately when she mentioned it), things we can't do anything about (she can hear us snoring) and things that hadn't even happened yet (kids playing in the garden in summer). She's going to be annoyed until we move out and sell to a BtL landlord specialising in HMOs

I can see from your recent replies that the neighbour is complaining about other noise, not just the kids crying. Which Baffles me as surely someone live there before you?! Living in flats takes a lot of give and take from everyone. I personally never bothered to tell me neighbour I could hear them snoring, peeing, doing washing or the phone. Normal every day nosies k would expect her to just have to accept: and normal every day nosies kids makes. I had the situation of kids upstairs who ruled the house , jumped on the floor, banged on the floor, ran up and down the stairs. And cried and shouted until 10pm every day while there parents said “please” a lot. It was infuriating! So if that’s what’s going on I can empathise with your neighbour. If it’s just normal level of children noise then your neighbour will prob just never be happy unfortunately.

Who lived there before you? A family? You can ask your solicitor to go back and ask them on the record if they had an issues with noise

@Invisiblewoman1

I can see from your recent replies that the neighbour is complaining about other noise, not just the kids crying. Which Baffles me as surely someone live there before you?! Living in flats takes a lot of give and take from everyone. I personally never bothered to tell me neighbour I could hear them snoring, peeing, doing washing or the phone. Normal every day nosies k would expect her to just have to accept: and normal every day nosies kids makes. I had the situation of kids upstairs who ruled the house , jumped on the floor, banged on the floor, ran up and down the stairs. And cried and shouted until 10pm every day while there parents said “please” a lot. It was infuriating! So if that’s what’s going on I can empathise with your neighbour. If it’s just normal level of children noise then your neighbour will prob just never be happy unfortunately.

Who lived there before you? A family? You can ask your solicitor to go back and ask them on the record if they had an issues with noise

Kids in bed by seven at the latest. Obviously have less control over when they wake up. They're at nursery three days a week year round and we go out every day. We try to avoid toddlebeast stamping on the floor and he's not allowed to jump indoors full stop. He's too lazy to run up and down the stairs and I wouldn't let him anyway. He's also not allowed to run his toys over the radiator or use them in the kitchen and bathroom (tiled floors).

Before us it was owned by a single bloke who pretty much moved in with his new GF when lockdown started, so no one there most of the time.

Neighbour spoke to me two days after we moved in to comment on how our then 2yo was an early riser and have a moan about how no one had ever bothered to soundproof anything neither has she. She's an entitled bitch in many ways, not just this - merrily broke lockdown rules repeatedly, even asking us to tidy up our garden (ie put away our kid's slide etc) because it didn't look good for the clients she was seeing in her home. Illegally of course.

@Notthissticky it sounds like you are already doing a lot to reduce the impact of noise. She’s got too used to no one living above her. I loved my flat but I moved as I couldn’t bare the oppressive noise from above but if she has no plans to move she just needs to accept it’s give and take. From what you are saying she sounds like she’s prob not going to though.
Maybe accelerate any plans you had to move on from the flat.
I don’t know what else to suggest - sorry!

Lord. You sound as bad as each other tbh. I merely dared to suggest that you try to see it from her side.. some of your replies really do make me wonder how this story would be if she had posted!! What strikes the most about the sort of person you are is the relish you have about knowing you will sell to your brother who will convert to a HMO.

@loopyapp

Lord. You sound as bad as each other tbh. I merely dared to suggest that you try to see it from her side.. some of your replies really do make me wonder how this story would be if she had posted!! What strikes the most about the sort of person you are is the relish you have about knowing you will sell to your brother who will convert to a HMO.

I think it was BTL landlord not BiL. Equally horrible though really.

@ninnynonny yup. I think we've a fair idea who the entitled hard work neighbour is here.

Don't listen to the 'kids should be seen and not heard' lot on here OP.

As someone as already pointed out, children crying (as children tend to do regardless of how you parent) is not considered unreasonable noise.

Just move and hope she gets neighbours with teenagers who like to party and then she will know what real noise is.

'entitled bitch' - you sound lovely. I would not want you as my upstairs neighbour.

You sound like nightmare neighbours !!

@PaulGallico

'entitled bitch' - you sound lovely. I would not want you as my upstairs neighbour.

Same. You have to feel sympathy for slamming door neighbour. She probably can't take any more!

Sorry for both your family and your neighbour, OP. The worst thing about the majority of flats including conversions is the face they are rarely properly insulated. I would never buy a downstairs flat where the upstairs was not carpeted throughout nor an upstairs which wasn't carpeted throughout. My dying parent and live in carer had their lives made hell by a posh middle class upstairs flat owner who had gone for tiles and wooden floors. Your downstairs neighbour has had no one living above her during Covid - so your arrival would have been a shock and she does seem to be looking for trouble and making trouble by slamming doors. Can you record this and keep a diary of when your children are awake/crying in the middle of the night and when she slams the doors? can you speak to her to say she's only making matters worse?

I would just leave it. If she’s slamming doors only when your child is tantrumming does it really matter? It won’t be waking you up as you’re already up and, although very passive aggressive, I do sympathise with her as noisy regularly tantrumming children is incredibly annoying and disruptive. I appreciate it is normal family life to an extent but if it’s very regular it can still be disruptive. She’s not playing noise, slammming doors coming in late at night etc so I’d let it go over your head.

I am allowed to think she's an entitled bitch and to say so on an anonymous forum. I am not saying she should love having us as neighbours, merely that we are not doing anything wrong and it is simply not possible for us to stop our children producing normal noise. I have listed what we are doing to mitigate noise already. We have never been rude to our neighbour, whereas she insulted our eldest and said her heart sank when she found out I was pregnant. She has also suggested there is something wrong with our child. She is bullying us by deliberately making noise. We have never ever done anything to deliberately cause her upset. My crossed out comment about selling to a BtL landlord who will convert it into an HMO was not serious🤦🏼‍♀️ Now, does anyone have advice on logging a formal complaint and the impact this might have when it comes to selling? Not that we're planning on selling up anytime soon though

@4pmwinetimebebeh

I would just leave it. If she’s slamming doors only when your child is tantrumming does it really matter? It won’t be waking you up as you’re already up and, although very passive aggressive, I do sympathise with her as noisy regularly tantrumming children is incredibly annoying and disruptive. I appreciate it is normal family life to an extent but if it’s very regular it can still be disruptive. She’s not playing noise, slammming doors coming in late at night etc so I’d let it go over your head.

When we met up to discuss this, she used the opportunity to complain about literally everything we do/ did/ might do in future in our house, down to snoring and creaking floor boards. She massively got into my head, as I was six weeks PP with PND. I felt super guilty because I'd hate being disturbed by my neighbours and I'm not actually a horrible person. I'm constantly thinking about her when I'm at home. The door slamming just reinforces her unwanted presence in my head. It also doesn't make any difference whether we've been out all day/ the kids have slept through/ we've been away for ten days, she'll slam the doors when it suits her. It's bullying behaviour, I can't really explain it any other way.

@crosstalk

Sorry for both your family and your neighbour, OP. The worst thing about the majority of flats including conversions is the face they are rarely properly insulated. I would never buy a downstairs flat where the upstairs was not carpeted throughout nor an upstairs which wasn't carpeted throughout. My dying parent and live in carer had their lives made hell by a posh middle class upstairs flat owner who had gone for tiles and wooden floors. Your downstairs neighbour has had no one living above her during Covid - so your arrival would have been a shock and she does seem to be looking for trouble and making trouble by slamming doors. Can you record this and keep a diary of when your children are awake/crying in the middle of the night and when she slams the doors? can you speak to her to say she's only making matters worse?

Amen to everything you say! Our flats were purpose built as flats, but almost 70 years ago so the soundproofing is shite.

I've been keeping a record of when she slams the doors and what's been going on. We've told her this and also informed her that we have been told by the council that we're not doing anything wrong but have grounds for complaint against her.

As I've outlined in other posts, we did initiate a conversation with her but she just used it as an opportunity to complain and insult us. She hadn't done any research into solutions or the law etc, so clearly wasn't coming at it with a constructive attitude.

@AstroBunny

You sound like nightmare neighbours !!

Care to elaborate?