Landlord Question and Answer Forum

I have a couple of questions. First, I have a downstairs rental. I have been there for the past 3 days painting. Each day I hear loud noise from the upstairs. It is like someone is constantly running around, dropping items. I emailed the property manager and he said there were 2 special needs children living upstairs and one did not understand commands. He said all he could do was to ask the upstairs tenant to put something on the floor to eliminate some of the noise. Is there anything else that I can do? For me it has been very annoying listening to the noise. I have an elderly lady who wants to rent but I am afraid that noise will not be acceptable. What are my options? My second question is today I ran into one of my tenant's granddaughter and her child going into the condo with 3 or more large baskets of clothes. I asked her if she was living there as we had a problem in the past with relatives living in the condo that were not supposed to be there. She said no, but she was doing her laundry there. This is wear and tear on our appliances that are meant to be for the tenant only. How do I go about taking care of this problem? Thank you. ¿

To the first part of your question, Maybe offer them the downstairs so they will not disturb the other tenants, if that doesn't work, then add extra padding on the flooring upstairs so it will not be as obnoxious. To the second question: i would just leave it, because as a grandparent myself, my wife and i sometimes will do my gsons laundry when he gets breaks from college and it is just one of those things us grandparents do. Although i understand your concerns, either way it will be getting used and will eventually need maintenance, you don't want to micromanage too much when you are a landlord, you will find you will have a harder time to keep tenants that way. her throwing in a couple more loads won't hurt much. A way to avoid this, would be to have tenants provide their own appliances.

Posted by Jason m, PA on Monday, February 5, 2018