To do nothing about tenant?

[MyBurdenisHeavy]

Hi folks, happy new year.

We have a flat in London that was used for work 2/3 nights a week. Been WFH since pandemic and started to rent it out a year ago. It’s not typically a “family” building. Mainly young professionals. Anyway we were approached by a company who offered to lease it from us and they would manage the letting. Turns out they have a contract with a homeless charity or such and had a few units in our building housing homeless families during the pandemic. No issues there - all good. Fast forward a year and we’re being contacted by other tenants/owners who managed to get our number, pleading with us to do something about the people in our flat (a mother and 3 boys I understand - 2.5, 4 and 6). Apparently they are making the lives of the people below them (at least 2 flats based on the way they are laid out) an utter misery - stomping, running, jumping from morning to night I’m told. I contacted the company we leased it to and they said that they had received some complaints a few months ago and called out to talk to the family a few times. The complaints kept coming and ultimately they said the woman explained that the children were just playing and being kids so she didn’t know what they wanted her to do. They told me the kids were probably a bit boisterous alright but ultimately that’s part of apartment living and the neighbours just have to accept there’s a family living there and get on with it. The complaints kept coming apparently but they had closed the matter and are no longer responding to them - they told me there is a legal route the other residents could take if they felt strongly about it, but it rarely happens so just sit tight and don’t worry about it.
I’m now up the walls with anxiety and guilt and don’t know what the right thing to do is.
It’s abundantly clear that the woman cannot or will not control the kids (no judgement - just stating fact that it will not be resolved from that side). So the options are to carry on and leave things as they are - thereby upsetting the neighbours and ruining their home life (their words), or terminate the lease (I can do this in 4 months) and cause distress to the woman and her kids.
AIBU to do nothing, stay out of it and leave the family stay there?

She probably wouldn't go, because she'd find it almost impossible arranging somewhere else to live. So you'd be left with with going down the legal route to evict her. Expensive, stressful and it's not a quick solution. It takes time. Eventually you'd have to get bailiffs in to change the locks.

I am not referring to the licence or AST agreement between the tenant and the op or letting agency, but to the lease of the Op’s flat if she does not own the freehold or if there is a management committee.

@Dillydollydingdong

She probably wouldn't go, because she'd find it almost impossible arranging somewhere else to live. So you'd be left with with going down the legal route to evict her. Expensive, stressful and it's not a quick solution. It takes time. Eventually you'd have to get bailiffs in to change the locks.

The tenant can't go . She's in temporary accommodation. She can't go anywhere unless the council find her another temporary

@user290814356289

Going against the majority here.

Living underneath kids can be difficult.

Can you put in sound proof underlay under all the flooring to reduce the noise?

Kids can make typical noise between the hours of 7.30am and 11pm or roundabout those times.

I feel for mum having 3 young kids in an upper flat and neighbours complaining constantly. It must be very stressful. Throw in the fact she's a single mum and also accessing housing through a homeless charity because of circumstances. what exactly is she supposed to do. Have you tried getting a 2.5 year old to sit still and be quiet? It sounds like the other neighbours are not used to living near a family with small children.

It's not so easy to just walk into another house. I don't think people realise that you won't just be offered somewhere.

She should be taking them to the park to run around

I doubt the neighbours do have any other decent options. Which doesn’t mean that they are being unreasonable, just that neighbour issues can be very difficult to resolve. They don’t have a contract with the tenant, so they have no control over that aspect. Start legal action? Really desperate stuff that will majorly impact on their lives. Council? Hit and miss, but if the local council is any good and does anything at all the first thing they’ll do is engage with you and your agent - so you’re back where you are now, but having given the neighbours the additional irritation of having to involve the council.

No, the LL and their agent are the best chance of getting this resolved. Saying there are other options is essentially putting two fingers up to the neighbours - the agent is saying this in the hopes it’ll salve your conscience. Knowing the neighbours can’t do much.

I agree with pps advising you to find out more about what has actually been going on. I wouldn’t ignore this, but nor would I evict someone without understanding the situation. If the council do get involved they will take this approach ime.

If you want to live there again, you need to appease your neighbours. Listen to them and the noise. I’d personally would give notice to the LA. Your neighbours must be hating you to have all got in contact with you.

@MauveMavis my lease obligations are similar to what you mention - and while there have been complaints it hasn’t led to any action from the management company or any official correspondence as it were. Also I understand that the other residents aren’t able to provide recorded evidence due to the nature of the noise (mainly impact noise and one of them said to me that’s impossible to get on tape but it’s real!). So for that reason I guess the noise team haven’t been involved - not that i know anyway.
On your other point, the judgemental bit, I genuinely amn’t that person but understand your criticism. I bought that flat nearly 30 years ago when I started in London, the area wasn’t great and it cost f all relatively speaking (although I was alone and had to beg borrow and steal the 10k deposit at the time). This is the first time in 30 years that we haven’t used it and it’s the first rental. I used that company due to my naivety. I am genuinely teary thinking of the mess I’ve caused these people.
I don’t think the family cause other issues in common areas. The flat is fairly big so they have no storage problems etc. It’s a 2 bed but there’s a sort of a study as well that’s easily big enough to use as a single bedroom.
Anyway head suitably wobbled. I’m going to write to the company and try and get them to sort it out. I won’t be renewing the lease and will just let it empty going forward - if we don’t get back to London this year we will just sell up.
I’ll try and get to the city during the week and visit the flats below and beg for forgiveness and let them know that it will be over one way or the other in a few months.

That’s a good update to read, OP

I wouldnt kick her out. The agency have spoken to people and concluded that they are malicicious reports and the family are making normal family noise

“ It’s not typically a “family” building. Mainly young professionals. ”

I have no idea why you thought it would be a good route to go down to put a homeless family in this building. Hopefully this company/charity can get them out on time. Sorry but not your problem.

Sounds to me you are planning to let MN& your neighbors dictate you what to do with your property. They don't have any right to guilt trip you into leaving the flat empty. Living in a flat means having neighbors. My ndn plays trumpet. He is quite good at it, and never plays outside of 9am-9pm, so no problem.

If young professionals means people working from home, they might be overly sensitive to every day noise of living, but it is home, not office.
I suppose you need to know more to decide whether the behaviour is ok or not and take it from there.

About future relationship with neighbors, I suppose that once you start using it yourself, they would be just glad. And if you consider selling it anyway, it is one less reason to worry, if you'd find the behaviour acceptable.

Excellent news. Another empty property and another homeless family in London.

@AncreneWisse

You are not the LL, the company is, so this is not (directly) your problem. The company was perfectly right to be wary of evicting a mother and 3 young children just before Christmas. And the mother is probably right saying the kids are just being kids. As the company said, there is a legal route the downstairs tenants can pursue if they really believe the behaviour is unreasonable. Let them go for that and it will be investigated legally to determine. It will very probably turn out that nothing really unreasonable is going on, and they just don’t like living below children. Well too bad. They should buy a house if they don’t want upstairs neighbours.

There should absolutely not be a situation in which families are excluded from apartment living because downstairs neighbours don’t like it.

In any case, you should stay out of it. As above, you are not the LL. Your contract is with the company, not the family.

You've just unilaterally 'decided' that the complaints are inflammatory and false without any proof whatsoever???

Lived underneath small children and have had dc.....its a nightmare having that type of noise. If they're complaining it's probably more than a normal day noise. You expect a certain amount but if its going into early mornings and into the nights its not fair on the other tenants. 4 months is a long time and it may show your tenancy company you won't accept them playing games.

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

Excellent news. Another empty property and another homeless family in London.

I know, depressing right?

@MyBurdenisHeavy good update.

I’m just a bit scarred at the moment. We have acquired a number of tenants in our block over this time who may not have lived here previously (central zone 1 professional tenants) and there have been a lot of issues.

Not all of the non resident leaseholders have been very understanding of the issues their tenants are causing. I got so cross at one point I offered to repatriate the outgoing tenants discarded furniture to the their landlords driveway in outer london suburbia & had a string of offers to help me do so. The landlord was minimizing how annoying / difficult it is for those of us who live here when the bin store gets continually clogged up by people discarding their crap.

Other leaseholders would only, I’m my experience, engage with the formal lease enforcement process as a last resort as it has to be declared should they come to sell and in my experience management agencies often aren’t very proactive about responding to issues like this. E.g as a director I’ve asked the agency we employ to contact leaseholders several times but I know they haven’t actually done so. If they aren’t responding to my requests (and ultimately the directors employ them) I think they will definitely not be proactive to requests from other leaseholders.

I understand that the other residents aren’t able to provide recorded evidence due to the nature of the noise (mainly impact noise and one of them said to me that’s impossible to get on tape but it’s real!).

Complete bollocks. All noise of any kind can be recorded. Impact noise isn’t exempt by magic. The neighbours are telling porkies.

Easy to be sanctimonious when you're not the incumbent residents whose life has been affected. Let's reframe it for a moment:

"AIBU? I pay a fortune on my mortgage to live in a nice apartment in London which is a lot quieter than normal apartment blocks in the city. All our neighbours are lovely, it's mostly young professionals who either rent (with the associated premium for prime location/environment) or own like me, at premium price.

Many of us are WFH since covid, but about a year ago, one of the apartment owners signed up to an agency that has put in a really noisy, disruptive family that are putting a real strain on things. The noise is constant, it's getting me in trouble at work as I look unprofessional on video calls with all the noise, banging, shouting and screaming. The woman who lives there with her kids won't engage with any of us and the agency are refusing to deal with it.

There's cuts coming at work and I'm really worried the problems on calls with the noise will being me to the bosses attention for the wrong reason and put me at risk.

AIBU to go to the building management company to insist the forfeit the lease of the flat owner so we can all get our lives back?"

@Branleuse

I wouldnt kick her out. The agency have spoken to people and concluded that they are malicicious reports and the family are making normal family noise

Well of course they're going to say that! Because if OP evicts, then they'll have to find somewhere else for the licensee (the mum)

@Holdingontonothing

Easy to be sanctimonious when you're not the incumbent residents whose life has been affected. Let's reframe it for a moment:

"AIBU? I pay a fortune on my mortgage to live in a nice apartment in London which is a lot quieter than normal apartment blocks in the city. All our neighbours are lovely, it's mostly young professionals who either rent (with the associated premium for prime location/environment) or own like me, at premium price.

Many of us are WFH since covid, but about a year ago, one of the apartment owners signed up to an agency that has put in a really noisy, disruptive family that are putting a real strain on things. The noise is constant, it's getting me in trouble at work as I look unprofessional on video calls with all the noise, banging, shouting and screaming. The woman who lives there with her kids won't engage with any of us and the agency are refusing to deal with it.

There's cuts coming at work and I'm really worried the problems on calls with the noise will being me to the bosses attention for the wrong reason and put me at risk.

AIBU to go to the building management company to insist the forfeit the lease of the flat owner so we can all get our lives back?"

That’s a lovely fairy tale. You missed the part about the constant noise being so loud and disruptive but somehow magically unrecordable at all ever. Perhaps the tenant is a witch and the children imps of the devil.

@zoeFromCity

Sounds to me you are planning to let MN& your neighbors dictate you what to do with your property. They don't have any right to guilt trip you into leaving the flat empty. Living in a flat means having neighbors. My ndn plays trumpet. He is quite good at it, and never plays outside of 9am-9pm, so no problem.

If young professionals means people working from home, they might be overly sensitive to every day noise of living, but it is home, not office.
I suppose you need to know more to decide whether the behaviour is ok or not and take it from there.

About future relationship with neighbors, I suppose that once you start using it yourself, they would be just glad. And if you consider selling it anyway, it is one less reason to worry, if you'd find the behaviour acceptable.

I agree with this.

There's lots of posts talking about noisy children. Mum not controlling them etc etc . But really no one knows what noise the family are making. In flats There's going to be sounds from neighbours especially from children. I read up on my council about noise complaints it says baby's crying and child noise /playing would not trigger the council to take action.

I know op mentioned that one of the complainers said recording equipment can't be used. I did wounder if that's because the noise is not as bad as they are making out .

@Holdingontonothing

Easy to be sanctimonious when you're not the incumbent residents whose life has been affected. Let's reframe it for a moment:

"AIBU? I pay a fortune on my mortgage to live in a nice apartment in London which is a lot quieter than normal apartment blocks in the city. All our neighbours are lovely, it's mostly young professionals who either rent (with the associated premium for prime location/environment) or own like me, at premium price.

Many of us are WFH since covid, but about a year ago, one of the apartment owners signed up to an agency that has put in a really noisy, disruptive family that are putting a real strain on things. The noise is constant, it's getting me in trouble at work as I look unprofessional on video calls with all the noise, banging, shouting and screaming. The woman who lives there with her kids won't engage with any of us and the agency are refusing to deal with it.

There's cuts coming at work and I'm really worried the problems on calls with the noise will being me to the bosses attention for the wrong reason and put me at risk.

AIBU to go to the building management company to insist the forfeit the lease of the flat owner so we can all get our lives back?"

Being a middle class, single, young professional doesn’t mean you get to live your life in complete silence and not have to ever come into contact with children. Especially when you live in an apartment block. There will be noise from other apartments. In this case, it just happens to be even worse, because it’s a homeless single mother and her children… shudder. The OP doesn’t mention screaming. You’ve just made that bit up. I think it’s a class issue. I’d bet my life on some of these tenants and posters being proud labour voters but then when those dreadful lower classes invade their spaces, they suddenly ditch their socialism. This is a vulnerable, homeless woman and three children you’re all salivating over making homeless.

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

Excellent news. Another empty property and another homeless family in London.

Nobody has a God-given right to choose to live in an expensive city…..

Especially if they want the taxpayer to pay the rent for them!

OP, offer to come and visit your neighbours one evening so you can hear it for yourself.
You’re making a family homeless based on no evidence.

@BluebelllsRosesDaffodills
I pay thousands and thousands in tax. I’m more than happy for that to go towards paying for a roof over three children’s heads. I’m also happy for that roof to be in the city their mum chooses to live in or the city she happens to have been born in and have ties to.
London is not just for the rich elite.