Today we had a fire alarm go off in our apartment complex. There was no fire thank goodness but after interacting with a few of the neighbors it reminded us that this complex is the last place we want to be long term. I’m home now between my contract assignments and my husband is retired so the alarm caught us in lounge clothes after lunch. Luckily it was not in the shower. After exiting the door, we gravitated to the front of the complex and watched as the other tenants who are home during the day exited the building. Many of the people looked right through us many gravitated to their own groups. We offered help but noone else did. One woman at the end of the hall looked right through me as she gathered her car keys and folders and snuck out the side door on her way to work. Sadly that’s the norm here and I am not surprised.
So we are going on one year of an 18 month lease and I’m counting down the 6 remaining months. After selling our home of 25 years last year and the new owners practically pushing us outside the door, in a whirlwind of stress and activity, we wound up in an apartment complex, a multiplex (the only available apartment before our closing) with people above to the side across and below us. The hallways sometimes look like a scene from out of “The Shining” especially early in the morning or late at night (oh the horror of it all!) and lets just say people above us are inconsiderate as evidenced by my ongoing saga of the noise from above.
Even with the high rent which has turned out to be 1 and 1/2 times my mortgage (for which family and friends have chastised me) sadly enough, we pay for parking (between my husband son and I we have 3 cars) water, electric and garbage. We thought spending this much money we wouldn’t have to worry about issues such as noise a dirty trash room and packages that disappeared, rude neighbors etc but no such luck. We can’t even get food delivery to our door(2nd floor middle apartment)which makes no sense since we have never had a problem getting food delivered to a hotel room on the 4th floor.
We managed to work through some of the issues, but the noise continues. You never think that this will happen to you and are disappointed when it does.
The noise has now been going on for almost 12 months of an 18 month lease ( I know what were we thinking?). After going through two property managers, we have gotten nowhere. The most recent one telling us a couple of months ago that this apartment living as if we were too naive to comprehend it. The two options we were given: 1. go to court with them to have the tenant upstairs evicted which seemed extreme or 2. break our lease without penalty only if we move within 30 days. Neither option was acceptable for us at this time so here we sit listening to the noise overhead drowning it out as best we can (ear plugs at night and a large box fan work well) and just hoping these people get tired of it so that we can have some peace at least until we’re able to move.
We are no strangers to neighbors from hell. When we owned our home, we had a 5 year saga with a woman and her children ending with their eventual eviction only after the home was condemned.
When we sold our home last year an apartment seemed like a good idea. We were no strangers to apartment living. Unfortunately some of the issues we have encountered are causing us to look forward to moving again and, even though we thought we wouldn’t consider it, possibly buying another smaller home.
The people above us are neighbors from hell and managment allows their bad behavior. And so it appears that neighbors from hell come in many shapes and sizes and are everywhere. This unfortunately is my apartment life until the next chapter.