Noise complaint about a neighbor who is excessively loud during the day with his subwoofer I'm a student and when I'm not in school, I study at home (I live in Boston, USA). Often, 2-3 times a week, the neighbor who lives 1 floor below me starts playing video-games / watching movies at high volume in the afternoon or evening hours. I have noise-cancelling headphones, and for the most part they are life-savior, except this case – because the neighbor has subwoofer speakers and I literally feel with my feet how the floor (and furniture) shakes because of loud sounds, and it seriously distracts me from my study. I have a lease agreement which says that noise is prohibited after 10pm, but there is no clause that any noise during the day. Can I still submit a formal complaint to my landlord about this neighbor? Or should I just call non-emergency police during each noise incident?
These are the limits in Boston: 50 decibels from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. and 70 decibels at any time. If it is annoying you then it is probably greater than 70 dB, you can buy a sound meter if you want to be sure. The advice is: Car alarms, loud parties, or loud amps: Call the Boston Police Party Line at 617-343-5500, or contact your local police station.
As someone who acts for both landlords and tenants I would say that I have never seen exclusions for personal injury or death in a commercial lease. I would recommend that you have the whole lease reviewed by a solicitor dealing in commercial property, particularly as, as has been stated in another reply, exclusion of liability for personal injury or death is prohibited by UCTA. This would suggest there may be other provisions which, if not prohibited, are unreasonable and you should be aware of the commitments you are taking on prior to signing This pure speculation, but the fact that those clauses would not be in a standard lease precedent does make me wonder if the landlord has done a DIY job and produced a lease from the internet suitable for another jurisdiction.
Say I build myself a faraday cage/wave screen around my house, potentially resulting in poor nework coverage for my neighbours. Questions about land property and constructing permits apart, can I be sued for that? By the network operator? by the neighbours? In most countries, the use of the radio spectrum is regulated (who may send what on which frequency, at which power, etc.). As part of these regulations it is usually forbidden to interfere with the reception of radio waves. So if what you do causes your neighbours to have reception problems, then yes, that will most likely be illegal. In France, the government agency responsible for these problems is ARCEP (Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes). If someone notices reception problems, they can complain to ARCEP, as explained for example on the page Le traitement des plaintes en brouillage ("Handling of complaints about jamming"). While you will probably not go to prision for jamming reception, you could have to pay a significant fine. This article on cell phone jamming mentions a penalty of "up to six months in prison or a 30,000 € fine" for "selling or installing" a cell phone jammer. In addition to that, anyone harmed by the reception problems could sue you in civil court and try to collect financial damages (how much that would be will be up to a judge to decide). That said, note that a faraday cage around your house should not hinder reception outside your house. A faraday cage only influences reception inside the cage, not outside. However, that is off-topic here :-).
In the lease agreement we stipulated that rent would be 50% off until the building received full services and then the full rent payment would be due. Ouch. I bet the lease agreement also says something like &quot;no other agreements verbal or otherwise are in effect for this agreement.&quot; So what you did was release the landlord from the responsibility to make the building habitable. Pretty sure you will need a lawyer to unwind this.
This hinges on what you mean by "spy". Generally, a landlord cannot enter a leased or rented property* without the tenant's consent, nor can their agents. (They can arrive and ask to enter, as can your neighbors whether or not you own your home, but you are not required to acquiesce in either case). A landlord can view the publicly viewable portions of the property at their leisure, as can their agents, or any member of the public for that matter. A landlord could possibly be notified of a tenant's actions in a number of ways: such as viewing the public portions of the property, being notified (or billed) by utilities or public agencies, or receiving complaints from the neighbors. A neighbor has no more, and no less, legal ability to spy on you if you owned your home vs if you rent your home. So, they would have no more right to, say, spy at your house with a telescope than if you owned the property yourself, but no less right to complain if you have a loud (or audible) party or a large number of guests; the only difference being they can complain to someone who could potentially do much more than they could if you owned the property yourself. Thus, the answer to your question depends on what is meant by "spying". *This assumes that this is a separate property; a landlord who rents out a room in their own home often has far greater rights.
You want a lawyer who accepts tenant-side landlord tenant cases, usually a solo practitioner or small law firm or legal clinic. Medium to large sized law firms usually don't practice that kind of law at all, or only represent landlords, as a matter of policy. The usual problem, however, is that lawyers are often too expensive relative to the amount in controversy to make sense to hire to fully represent you in a matter like this one. You might want to have a "limited engagement" such as a one time consult with a lawyer, rather than a full retention of a lawyer, over an issue like this one.
The relevant part of Texas law is in the property code, §§92.101-92.109 §92.104 allows them to "deduct from the deposit damages and charges for which the tenant is legally liable under the lease or as a result of breaching the lease", and then they must "give to the tenant the balance of the security deposit, if any, together with a written description and itemized list of all deductions" (except when there is uncontroversial rent owed). §92.109 states what the landlord's liability is, namely a landlord who in bad faith retains a security deposit in violation of this subchapter is liable for an amount equal to the sum of $100, three times the portion of the deposit wrongfully withheld, and the tenant's reasonable attorney's fees in a suit to recover the deposit. This requires bad faith, not just being wrong. If you dispute the deductions, you can sue the landlord to recover the deposit. The law also provides that "In an action brought by a tenant under this subchapter, the landlord has the burden of proving that the retention of any portion of the security deposit was reasonable". In order to extract more money from you for putative damages, the landlord will have to sue you and establish that there was an additional $2,000 damages. If the court finds that you did actually did damage the apartment, you may be ordered to compensate the landlord. Until you get such an order, you don't owe them anything; you may be able to recover the damage deposit if the "damage" was insignificant. This sketches the process of suing in Justice Court to get your deposit back, highlighting details like the demand letter that you might not have known you have to write. As far as your credit history is concerned, this is not entirely clear. The Fair Credit Reporting Act regulates the industry of credit reporting, and crucially you can dispute false claims of debts. This does not prevent a person from making such a claim. I do not have an account with the Big 3 reporting services, so I don't know what their standards are for recording a putative debt. However, you can insert a suitable statement in your record disputing the validity of the claim. It is most likely that the landlord would sell the putative debt to a collection agency. That industry is regulated by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and there is a procedure about disputing an alleged debt.
Providing the antenna was installed in accordance with the law it's hard to see what basis they could either void their lease or seek damages. The antenna poses no risk to health (non-ionising RF radiation is harmless) and you have no rights in any view it may be blocking there is no damage. The only thing that I can see is if there was misrepresentation at the time the lease was formed. That is, the developer knew that there was going to be an antenna and specifically said there wouldn't be. This falls flat if a) they never mentioned antennas or b) the decision to install it was made after the lease was formed.