Overseas LL tenant good neighbour bad

[VMG]

I hope I'm posting in the right place here. We are living overseas and are renting our house out while we are away. We have been away for 2 years and have a newish tenant who moved in about 4 months ago. We have received an email from our managing agents about complaints from one of the neighbours that our tenant is noisy. Our initial response was concern that our tenant is pissing the neighbour off especially as the estate agent reported which neighbour it was and they are really nice super people. I contacted them to see if everything is ok & they said that the tenant is great and not noisy at all. Which makes complete sense. Which leads me to the neighbour on the other side - is a complete arsehole of the highest order and has apparently been harassing our tenant and also been into the managing agents office and abusing them too. Our agents suggested that they contact the council. I don't really know what my question is but I'm wondering if there is anything that can be done. We really don't want to lose the tenant but have the feeling that at the end of her tenancy she will vacate. Any words of wisdom/advice?? Anything?

That is confused! So the agents told you it was one set of neighbours who complained when it was in fact the other set? How did they manage to mix that up? Can you trust the accuracy of what they are telling you?

Who has told you this neighbour has been into the letting agent's office? Sounds as though it's the neighbours you are in contact with, but it's not clear.

Is the rented property a terraced house or a flat, rather than a semi or a detached house? Meaning this neighbour is pretty close by. I would let the agents contact the council if they think it would do any good and also the neighbourhood policing team who tend to be pretty good at dealing with this sort of thing as it's anti social behaviour. In your shoes I would also contact the tenant direct, let her know it has been brought to your attention that this man is behaving like this and ask her if there is anything you can do to help.

Sorry, I did my initial post on my phone, I was rushing as I was at work.

Bit of background, without outing myself say the house we own is at number 8, the agent told us it was number 6 who had complained about the noise issue. We used to live in the house and so have a relationship with both number 6 & number 10. Number 6 are lovely people who we have been in touch with while we have been away & even when we did have problem tenants they got in touch with us but didn't complain and weren't bothered at all. Number 10 are the opposite of lovely, very loud, aggressive, argue a lot, do not like anyone parking outside of their house (although won't admit it because they know they can't complain) so seem to find other things to complain about. The houses are terraced & parking can be annoying.

After the email from the agent I emailed number 6 to ask if everything was ok because the agent said that they had received a complaint from them about the noise. They replied really quickly to say that everything was great, the tenant is really nice and not loud at all & that they hadn't complained. Which made me think that the agent got mixed up & it was actually the number 10 neighbour who had made the complaint (waiting to confirm). It makes more sense that it is them. The description of the behaviour is much more like Mr 10 the bully boy. The agent has directed them to the council to take it further there. They have also asked the tenant to be mindful of the neighbours. I'm doing a lot of reading between the lines so I may be wrong, hopefully my husband will speak with the agent tomorrow and try and find out the full story. But I like your idea of contacting the tenant directly because I'm not 100% convinced on the agents, there's something I can't put my finger on about them, their communication completely sucks and we are always having to ask a lot of questions to get a full picture. We feel like we are doing their job for them sometimes.
Thanks for the advice anyway.

I had exactly this. In fact the neighbours came round & threatened one of the tenants on the front doorstep. The council got involved, came round, measured the noise over several weeks, decided that the tenants weren't noisy. The tenants moved out at the end of the tenancy & the obnoxious neighbours put their house up for sale the same day - bastards.

I did suggest that the tenants kept the noise down when smoking outside, but other than that there wasn't much I could do.

That's exactly what I'm worried about & I can see that happening here too. There have been rumours that bully neighbours are going to move for the past couple of years but no movement yet. It has crossed my mind that we should sell the house, because if we move back to the UK I wouldn't want to live next door to him again, so we would sell the house anyway. That being said, we really love the house and location and with the rumour mill telling us that they are going to move it would be just our luck that we would sell the house and then they would sell too! We also want to stay in the UK property market so if we sold the house we would want to buy another - a blimmin nightmare to do from overseas.

What happened in the end? Did your nightmare neighbours move? And did it work out in the end?

The nightmare neighbours eventually sold the house, but I had to find new tenants, who seem to be OK so far.

Part of the problem with the nightmare lot was that they'd converted the integral garage into a living room - so where the previous owners didn't hear the sound of people going up & down stairs or in the hallway as they'd have to be in the garage to hear it, when they were in the living room all the time, they were always around to hear it.