Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Massachusetts
We've made a bad choice in tenant
We have a duplex, in December '99 we accepted this women w/3 kids to live in 2 bedroom apt.. She had good credit, she begged us to rent to her, she was really the only out of many who came to see apartment that we thought would meet our guidelines. In the past we've had children who were "very quiet," After she moved in, we noticed that she needed a washer & dryer, we were able to get them free for her (used ones). We tried to make her feel welcomed (she had left her husband in July).
She knew what to expect from us,from rental aggreement to keep the noise down, after 11pm, take her own trash to the dump, be responsible for her family as well as her guests. The age of her children are 8,6, and 4, they are "very noisey," they yell, scream, holler, slam doors. She is just as noisey yelling at them. And her own guest stay well into the night which greatly upsets my wife, who has to put up with their noise (she being a light sleeper), We have spoken to her twice about this issue, and we feel she's turning our private home into a "brothel."
How do we stop this?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: We've made a bad choice in tenant
Frankly, I doubt that asking them to cooperate to be quieter will ever work. For one thing, you're already hypervigilant and even if it got a little (or a lot!) quieter, unless it went away entirely, you'll never be happy. For another thing, they probably don't know or notice the noise level they're making and thus cannot reasonably be expected to control, and when they lose their tempers and slam doors or yell at one another, well, that's not something their personalities allow them to control. So my belief for this problem is that no number of letters or notes or face-to-face meetings will ever correct the problem.
There are several options.
1) Write her a letter and have it sent in some fashion that won't allow her to deny having received it. One problem is that this may cause her to call in the inspector and jerk you around and not pay rent, and, believe it or not, you will most likely lose that case on a major technicality that favors tenants (frankly for good reason).
2) Take the step of sending her a notice to quit, i.e., start the eviction process. This may also cause the same reaction chain but you're in a slightly better position legally for the eviction.
3) Investigate, actively and seriously, soundproofing; if it's an up and down duplex, consider ceiling tiles for sound. Add rubber weatherstripping to INTERIOR doors and they won't make as much noise when slammed! If you have common walls as a side by side duplex, it will be harder.
You might try giving them a free month of rent to leave, or, frankly, 2 - 3 months of rent, and then get a lawyer involved to make it legal. The lawyer will keep the process going to evict them but with an agreement that they need not actually leave until the 3 months is up. If you don't use the lawyer, then when you expect them to leave, they might stay another 3 to 6 months without paying rent, all legally, in spite of your generosity.
There are more extreme measures to take but they don't work so well, so I'm not going to mention them further.
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