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Q: My roommate and I live on the third floor of a three-story walk-up in Brooklyn. Our landlord and his family live on the second floor. Every step we take reverberates through their apartment, so if we walk to the kitchen at night or use the hallway bathroom after 11 p.m., we get a broomstick knock from below or a belligerent text about stomping around. We’ve carpeted where we can, don’t wear shoes in the apartment, and try to walk as lightly as possible. But lately our landlord has become increasingly irate whenever we have guests. Do we have options when he demands that no friends visit? What are our rights?
A: The good news is your landlord likely doesn’t have grounds to evict you based on the minor noises you describe — meaning you should be free to continue hosting guests.
“The standard for noise is unreasonable or excessive in order to violate the noise code, and it’s a pretty high bar, especially in New York City,” said Ingrid Manevitz, a real estate lawyer and a partner at the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, where she is also a co-chair of the Condominiums and Cooperatives practice.
Establishing whether noise is, in fact, legally excessive or unreasonable is on the landlord. “That requires testing because the courts like to see measurements and data before taking that kind of action. That’s an expense for the landlord to incur,” Ms. Manevitz said.
Since the landlord owns the building, it’s also his responsibility to ensure that the apartments are habitable. If, say, the floorboards are creaky and loud, he needs to fix them, add some soundproofing or go on being annoyed. “The tenant’s not doing anything wrong to have to go into their pockets and pay for a material just because of the way the building is constructed,” Ms. Manevitz said.
Of course, no one wants to be in a dispute with their landlord, especially when they’re neighbors. Ms. Manevitz suggested asking yours to install a foam-material padding that will absorb sound below the carpet. It might take some negotiation, but “the tenant could offer and say, ‘We’re doing everything we can. I hear that there’s this material. If you want to pay for it, we’ll put it under our carpets,’” she said.
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