UK Landlord Forum / Life

I live in a flat, in a Victorian building (wooden floors) and all used to be fine until recently, when the neighbour above moved out and decided to let his flat.

The new tenants that moved in are really heavy footed and are keep dropping pretty heavy items on the floor (no idea what's going on above). I could put up with that as it's kind of a delicate matter to ask them to "walk in a way that does not cause any noise". But then the young lady above started wearing heels in the flat and it is very disturbing to say the least. I went up to ask her kindly to be more mindful with the steps given the wooden floors and her reply simply put was that she does whatever she wants to in her flat and that where she is from "it is customary to not change the shoes when coming back home from the outside".

Now, I agree that one should be able to do do whatever they please inside their property but this surely has some sensible limitations - up to the point when your actions start affecting the people outside your flat.

The freehold of the flats here is shared between the leaseholders, so a share-of-freehold system. In the lease, there is a clause about the Tenant's obligations to the Landlord and tenants of the other parts of the Property: " To ensure that nothing is done in the Premises that is nuisance, annoyance or inconvenience to the Landlord, the occupiers of other parts of the Property or neighbouring properties or which would reduce their value". Given this, can I or should I get in touch with the landlord above and require him to sort this out? Does this make him obliged to? I am pretty sure that since the tenants above are renting the property, there also must be a clause in their lease tenancy agreement about not causing nuisance to the neighbours. What can be done in this situation basically? Any advice would be appreciated.

You can certainly ask the landlord to speak to them,but he may well ignore your complaint.It is thoughtless to have just  hard floors on upper floor flats, do they have no carpets?  The terms of the lease are very hard to enforce in situations
like this where it is down to bad manners rather than something more serious. You may just have to put up with it.

Quote from: heavykarma on June 05, 2023, 10:14:07 AM
You can certainly ask the landlord to speak to them,but he may well ignore your complaint.It is thoughtless to have just  hard floors on upper floor flats, do they have no carpets?  The terms of the lease are very hard to enforce in situations
like this where it is down to bad manners rather than something more serious. You may just have to put up with it.

There are no carpets. In fact, no carpets in my flat either, which is on the second floor (was like this when we bought the flat). They are honestly okay as long as the people are slightly mindful of their steps/shoes.

There is, however, a clause in the flat's lease agreement stating that "Tenants are obliged to cover the floors of the flat with carpet and an underlay or sound absorbing tiles or properly sound-insulated hard flooring". Now, I don't know what constitutes as "sound-insulated hard flooring" but they most likely are not. Does this make the landlord above responsible? I would really prefer to not go into the territory of asking the landlord to replace the flooring (it's insane costs for them and would be nuisance for me too!) and I hope there's a way to just deal with the tenants somehow - there were no problems at all for 6 years prior to them moving in, these guys are totally inconsiderate.

You can't enforce someone else's lease covenants, only the freeholder can do that (possibly via a management company).
Many don't, particularly when the issue is noise.

You could threaten the upstairs owner with shopping them.

Quote from: jpkeates on June 06, 2023, 09:52:38 AM
You can't enforce someone else's lease covenants, only the freeholder can do that (possibly via a management company).
Many don't, particularly when the issue is noise.

You could threaten the upstairs owner with shopping them.

The freeholder is basically the company with flat owners (6 of us) being the shareholders. So this should be addressed to the management company I guess?

My standing position as a Landlord is that I would never get involved in a neighbour dispute. I am not in a superior position over the Tenant, or the neighbour. I am not their Carer, nor their Parent. They must learn to live life in harmony as adults and - just as in the case if you were the homeowner - there are formal routes to take - usually involving some department of the Council. You will have to dig out whatever that is in your local area. If two adults cannot reach any kind of agreement between themselves... then someone in authority needs to step in - that generally does not mean the Freeholder of a Leasehold property. Sometimes this can actually mean the residents / Leaseholders if there is some kind of Board that has been established, with AGMs and suchlike.

What has happened to you here is that you've had a long run of good luck... followed, now, by some bad luck. What may also have happened is that you have become noise-sensitive... keep an open mind on that front. I am hearing you relaying walking noises... not parties with blaring music at 03:00... and you calling-out her walking inside with shoes on seems intolerant (to me) - because you say it above almost as if you consider it a totally insane position to take, almost as if you cannot conceive this might in fact be true. So do be careful here. I walk inside with my shoes on... only on my ground floor, which is wooden, if I go upstairs then I do not. I will make no comment about whether they are high heels - you can guess!

Quote from: Hippogriff on June 06, 2023, 02:00:25 PM
My standing position as a Landlord is that I would never get involved in a neighbour dispute. I am not in a superior position over the Tenant, or the neighbour. I am not their Carer, nor their Parent. They must learn to live life in harmony as adults and - just as in the case if you were the homeowner - there are formal routes to take - usually involving some department of the Council. You will have to dig out whatever that is in your local area. If two adults cannot reach any kind of agreement between themselves... then someone in authority needs to step in - that generally does not mean the Freeholder of a Leasehold property. Sometimes this can actually mean the residents / Leaseholders if there is some kind of Board that has been established, with AGMs and suchlike.

What has happened to you here is that you've had a long run of good luck... followed, now, by some bad luck. What may also have happened is that you have become noise-sensitive... keep an open mind on that front. I am hearing you relaying walking noises... not parties with blaring music at 03:00... and you calling-out her walking inside with shoes on seems intolerant (to me) - because you say it above almost as if you consider it a totally insane position to take, almost as if you cannot conceive this might in fact be true. So do be careful here. I walk inside with my shoes on... only on my ground floor, which is wooden, if I go upstairs then I do not. I will make no comment about whether they are high heels - you can guess!

I agree with your point  - I am probably more on a sensitive end but I also have a pretty high tolerance and I would not be so bothered if they were not waking me up every single morning for the past few weeks. I will speak to the landlord and if he does not want to get involved and speak to them, then as far as I understand, he has to ensure that the floors have some sort of sound-insulation.