Ugh....ready to hurt the people that live above me....

@ Kathy: your situation seems similar to mine. I moved here during college, I finished my master's this past may. I'll move in with FH once we are married. He currently is "renting" an apartment over his great uncle's garage which is about 20 minutes from his work, but it's just that: a garage apartment. Basically a bedroom with a small kitchen and a bathroom. It works for him, but would not for us, plus his great uncle is selling his house, so it's unstable at the moment. The one he's looking at he would move in about a month from now, which is good timing, and then I will move once we're married! FH & I will have to rent for a while (hopefully only about a year) until we can buy a house. I'm hoping this one he is going to check out is what we are looking for. I would be so happy to be on the top floor!

@Meghan: I had that with the previous people next door. They always had a need to vacuum whatever room was adjacent to my bedroom at insane hours of the night....WTH after 10:00 I don't really care to do any vacuuming...people.

The people that lived above me prior to these people had a german shepard who liked to run back and forth and bark incessantly. I went and knocked on evening, and like you received no answer, but the dog miraculously stopped barking.

What I don't get is if you can assume what the problem is without answering your door, why did you not come to the conclusion earlier that you may be disturbing your neighbors?

I'm so glad I'm out of my apartment and in a house now! For a while at the house, my neighbor's dogs would bark for about 2 hours straight at night, but I guess the family moved.

Don't get mad. Get even. Have some really, really loud sex.

Ah FYI....my rental experience was years ago. I have owned my own house for many years.

Bottom line, too many renters do not know their rights. Seriously, if you rent, check out your local rental rights. You may be able to get thing done, that your landlord claims that they cannot seem to get done.

Ah the pains of having a great attorney.

We're on the 3rd floor of a 3 story building for those 55+ or who are disabled. I know my husband tends to be a little heavy footed at times, he's disabled and walks with a cane or uses a power chair. I use a scooter 80% of the time when I leave the apt. but I do walk down occasionally with the dogs in a stroller. Several people here tend to allow their dogs to potty in the elevator and in the hallways and I don't want our furkids exposed to that....besides, its a long ways to expect them to hold it, and Bearbear has trouble keeping up since he is missing a front leg. The stroller keeps them quiet and they won't potty in it....and it also acts as a "walker" for me...I have a heavy duty standard baby stroller for them and it helps me quite nicely with balance issues. We had a pet stroller for the dogs but one of the wheels broke the other day and I don't have the cash to buy a replacement stroller, and I picked up a baby stroller off Craig's List for free (Con't.)

That will work till I can sell off some jewelry and make enough to ourder a heavier duty pet stroller. The one I want is $175 with shipping and it'll hold 150 pounds of active dogs and groceries....can't wait till we can get that one, it can also be a trailer for the scooter, it has the setup for using both ways....stroller or trailer.

Definitely check into your rights as a renter as Kathy suggested. But in most states, you are not able to withhold your payment unless your place is inhabitable and the landlord has not done anything to remedy the problem after you've gone through the proper channels. (rats, structural damage, lack of heat in winter, major/total plumbing issues...)

I think most of us have had to deal with loud neighbors...one of the joys of having an apartment. I hated that so much!! I used to use a fan at night or whenever I wanted it to be quiet. I got used to the buzz of the fan after a few nights and it helped drown out most of the loud noises. Contact your landlord by phone and followup with a friendly letter--- keep a record of all the contact you make with them. By law they need to address your issue. Landlords will post a notice regarding noise or at least talk to them about it. If the problem isn't fixed, repeat the call and letter.

In the meantime....loud sex is clearly in order!!

I live in an apartement and i swear that I think my neighbor have to move funiture around to go to bed at night. It got so bad that my 3 year old daughter woke up out of her sleep one night yelling that their was a monster in her closet, the noise had travel in her closet and she thought something was in there. Thats when FS went to knocking on a their door.

I realize this is super old but I was infuriated when I read about the landlord refusing to fix a/c and stuff like this, makes me really upset. I had a similar problem in 2007, where my landlord and property manager both refused to repair my a/c, I called up some professional advice and they said in Rhode island that was illegal to do, and that they needed to make the emergency a/c repair and pay for it or I would not have to pay rent (must be a universal rule), so I had hired a company first one in the yellow pages, back then we used to use those lol, and they showed up, botched the job, they said they took care of it, and tried to skirt me by saying they had it repaired and didn't need to pay to do it again. I explained it was broken still and never fixed. Rule is, since I got to pick the company, I should have picked a better company. I did my research and had to pay it out of pocket in the end, had done some comparisons, and determined some of the most important ways to determine if the company knows what they are doing, you can read if you want, at rhodeislandqualityhvac. blogspot. com and can see what I'm talking about, the primary important features of a good quality emergency repair company for HVAC and similar things, is that they have experts around the clock which are versed in various brands, especially the brand of equipment that you yourself use. If you use one particular a/c you want someone to come to fix it who has used that before. The guy who came out the first time said I must have had a weird unit, as he had never seen it before, but the next guy said that this was the most common unit there is... so you see what my point is. Do your research. it's worth it and saves you money in the long run!