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I'm with you when you say you risk harm or vandalism. I'm afraid any recourse you try that doesn't put a final stop to it will only make it worse.
"Son, we know you're bored, but the neighbors don't like you banging your ball against the wall, so Stop It." "Sure, Dad."
Oddly, if you do nothing, the racket will most likely stop on it's own as soon as Jr. gets a hobby, a job, or arrested.
Which room is affected on your side? You may have little choice but to put up a mattress and close that room off as a storage room until the problem goes away by itself.
Does it suck? Yes it does. But it doesn't seem your neighbors are gonna suddenly turn neighborly any time soon.
We had a somewhat similar situation that resolved itself this way. We never complained to the neighbors because we like them, and the ball bouncing noise wasn't THAT intrusive. It was actually a basketball hoop that the dad had hung over a door so the young son could practice indoors. I told my significant other that the boy would grow tired of it and move on to other things. Sure enough, after about six months the noise stopped and never returned. Hopefully, the same thing will happen in this case.
Knowing myself as I do, I would probably enjoy banging a ball against the wall when the parents are there and see how they like it. And that may be what it takes, as people are often clueless.
I once had a neighbor upstairs with ultra-sensitive hearing, and she'd freak out over the slighted noise (NOT a good thing for an apartment dweller). A few times she complained about music in my unit below her, and I knew it wasn't particularly loud. One day when she complained again, I made her step inside to hear it for herself. She was shocked at how "low" it really sounded, she apologized, and never complained again.
Drills/power screwdrivers, these days, can be very QUIET.
Your neighbors are SOCIOPATHS - probably full-blown PSYCHOPATHS. You are their current designated victims. They ENJOY victimizing people.
If I were you, I'd add at least one more layer of drywall to the shared wall. Between the layers, I'd use GREEN GLUE, which is basically the same goo laminated into the floorplates of luxury cars. It does not transmit sound.
THEN, I'd add another wall, in front of the shared wall. I'd use two layers of THICK sheetrock, with the greenglue in-between. Then, I'd upholster that wall, using a velvet. Velvets are very quiet, and used in car interiors for that reason. Take care to use some sort of sound deadening between the new wall and the floor & ceiling to which it is attached. If you hate velvet, and upholstered walls, consider a sound-absorbent paper, of the type used in a lot of hospitals.
I'd do all of this 'on the QT', which is where all those silent tools come in handy. Delivery of materials is going to be the only tricky part.
You can certainly do what I and my friends did, when we were young, and having to share buildings with subhuman filth, while we were trying to sleep, and trying to study for our advanced degrees. We had velvet curtains - lined and interlined with velvet, and weighing LOTS. We covered entire walls with those curtains, and moved them around with us. They're easy: just shirred onto rods or strip of wood.
But the green-glue/double-wall route is more effective, and "Less Alla Nazimova playing Salome".
Not stuck. Contact an attorney. You can file a lawsuit about anything. You can ask for damages, and they will have to appear in court.
Start with talking to an attorney, because they will give you options. The first might be a letter from the attorney advising them they need to stop the noise, or this will become a legal matter. But again, start with the attorney who has dealt with real estate law, called a real estate attorney. Too often people don't contact professionals to get a problem resolved, because they listen to people that tell them there is nothing they can do and they are stuck.
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Originally Posted by eastcoastguyz
Not stuck. Contact an attorney. You can file a lawsuit about anything. You can ask for damages, and they will have to appear in court.
Start with talking to an attorney, because they will give you options. The first might be a letter from the attorney advising them they need to stop the noise, or this will become a legal matter. But again, start with the attorney who has dealt with real estate law, called a real estate attorney. Too often people don't contact professionals to get a problem resolved, because they listen to people that tell them there is nothing they can do and they are stuck.
If the noise is below the amount of noise the local city says is unacceptable, then there is nothing to file a law suite for. You can file it, and up having to pay both attorney bills when you lose, and the noise does not have to stop.
From the amount of noise that would be generated in this case, it most certainly will not exceed noise ordinance levels. That is why the police are not going and telling them they have to stop, when they are called. As the police were called, and could not note sound so loud it broke city noise ordinances, indicate the sound is not illegal and thus is not something that the police and the courts can prohibit.
What bothers one person, may not even be bother another in any way.
Example a toddler running around an apartment above some people, will drive them up the wall, but it is not against any laws. Another person, may not even pay any attention to it.
My wife had to have some operations in her ears a few years ago. She has little or no hearing in one ear, and the other has lost some ability to hear. Television and movies, have a wide range in sounds, to be dramatic they call it. My wife got so she could not watch T.V., or movie videos as every little bit, the sound would be whisper level and hard to hear it, and the next they set off a bomb, fired a gun, etc., and the sound suddenly was loud. Those sudden changes or loud sounds, made her so nervous she had to quit watching T.V. and we never go to movies where it is eve worse.
To solve her problem, I bought a sound modulator (Best $50 I ever spent). It goes between the T.V. and the sound bar. She sets the sound for the program to be satisfactory, and the sound almost has no variance. The modulator lowers the sound for loud sounds, and increased the volume for whispering or other low sounds. It allows just enough variance in sound level to understand what is happening, but keeps it down to where it is comfortable for her to watch the T.V. People who have watched T.V. with us, are amazed how much more they enjoy the shows with the sound equalized out, so they are not straining to hear one minute and blasted out of the room the next. We know quite a few people, that have bought sound modulators, once the saw what ours was like. Some very high end T.V.s now have this feature as a standard feature, and do not require such a device to be added.
This is one reason we do not live in an apartment for age 55 plus, which we tried. I understand the sound problem you have. The problem, is it is not something that you can force other people to change their lifestyle to make it better for you. There is going to be sounds, no matter where you live. Sounds that irritate you, but may be far below legal limit to the amount of sound permitted by city laws. The cities cannot make laws that restrict sound to the point that everyone will be satisfied. They only restrict the maximum amount of sound allowed.
People such as my wife, the OP and others that are irritated by certain sounds cannot dictate to other people how they live and the sounds they make if the sound is below a certain decimal level.
That is why we live on 5 acres just outside the city limits in a far bigger home than we need. A home that requires us hiring a housekeeper, and someone to maintain the yard and do minor repairs we are too old to do these things ourselves living in such a large house, and with so much yard to maintain, etc. My wife is highly sensitive to sounds since her ear operations, so by living in this big house hundreds of feet from closest neighbor, and using a sound modulator on our T.V. in our media room, we can solve the sound problems one faces when in an apartment, town house, or city subdivision.
Please tell me this is not true! Please tell me that if I move because of the choices of my neighbors, that I am not responsible for disclosing the choices of my neighbors lest I be sued!
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In California you can be. If I had a crazy neighbor who did horrible things to me, like bagging her own feces and then throwing them at my house and car and I called the cops over and over and sold without disclosing I live next to a poop flinging lunatic, yes, I could be sued for non disclosure. Saw this example on tv.
However if my neighbors were huge drug dealers, if they ran a very tight ship and we never saw car after car, or people using on the streets...and the big bust happened after we sold, no the buyer wouldn't have a leg to stand on. That did happen in my neighborhood. Apparently we were the only people who didn't know what was going on, till the line of black SUVs showed up and a ton of cops and Feds burst out of them. That was exciting.
Knowing myself as I do, I would probably enjoy banging a ball against the wall when the parents are there and see how they like it.
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They don't strike me as the type of neighbor who would recognize "taste of their own medicine" in the spirit it would be intended. I see it escalating from that point.
Why does everyone think the HOA is actually there for their benefit?
The HOA is there for the benefit of the developer, local government, and the HOA vendors, not you.
Anyone using the pseudonym "lots of money" should spend a little in hiring competent counsel rather than seeking opinions from anonymous internet posters. If you don't want to spend money on counsel, you could also perform additional research to see if you can pursue a claim in a justice or small claims court where you live.
What you say isn't true of every HOA. I was at a meeting of my HOA just this week. The board is made up of homeowners. We have management company but they work for the board and don't do anything voting members don't want. We actually had warring neighbors at our meeting this week. Luckily one showed up at the beginning of the meeting, left when he go his anger off his chest. Then toward the end of the meeting, another complainer showed up. Turns out she was the one HE was complaining about. We actually tried to help both of them. In this particular case they were both at fault. She was annoying him by not doing several things (granted, they were petty) that he wanted her to do. But his behavior toward her was way over the top. In her case, she needed to curb several behaviors and stop over-reacting dramatically to the ways he was baiting her.
They were offered consultations with our HOA's attorney and we advised them both to ask him to arrange for them to seek a mediator. In fact, neither of them was disobeying any written regulations of the HOA. Nothing in the CC&Rs says he can't call her an "effin' *****" and that she can't take him to small claims court because of the three cameras he has on his property trained on her house. And people say HOAs have too many regulations! Apparently not enough sometimes!
In any case, IC deLight, your charges about HOAs hardly seem to apply where I live. The developer of our area has absolutely nothing to do with us any more and our dealings with local government are cordial and only for the benefit of our residents. We spent most of this month's meeting figuring out ways to improve our development's park and making plans to have an arborist examine our trees for potential diseases and trimming needs. That's hardly scary is it?
As for the OP's problems there are also nothing in our HOA regs that would help with annoying noise that isn't outside the bounds of local government decibel levels. I lived in apartments for several decades, so I know that kind of noise is always a problem with shared walls. I would recommend noise-canceling headphones.
At best only a few homeowners "control" the HOA corporation. The few homeowners on the board of directors are still separate and apart from the HOA corporation.
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HAHAHA how do you think the board becomes the board?
VOTED IN BY THE HOMEOWNERS!
Make all the personal attacks you want.
You are legally wrong.
There is NO PHANTOM "corporation" who can legally override the homeowners when they are in the majority.
I suggest you take a class in what a corporation is.
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