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How Should a Landlord Handle Noise Complaints?

How Should a Landlord Handle Noise Complaints?

The average monthly rent of a rental property in Oregon is $1,284. Yet, finding tenants is never an issue for landlords.

Keeping your units occupied is important for your business budget. But you can end up with some bad tenants.

Bad tenants might not pay their rent. They might also cause problems, leading to noise complaints from other tenants.

How should you deal with noise complaints? Keep reading to learn how to handle these complaints to keep all your tenants happy.

Start With Clear Guidelines and Rules

As a landlord, you're responsible for many things, including repairs and property maintenance. You're also responsible for laying out guidelines and rules for your tenants. You can do this in your lease.

Therefore, the first thing to do is create noise guidelines in your lease. State your rules about noise and the process of how you handle it. You can reduce the number of noisy tenants by laying out the rules beforehand.

Investigate Every Complaint

You're still likely to encounter some loud tenants even with laying out the rules. Unfortunately, you might not know about the noisy tenants until someone complains.

When you receive a noise complaint, you must address it. The first step in addressing it is investigating.

You must find out who is causing the noise. You should also find out when it's happening and if it's bothering other tenants.

This step is simple in some cases. However, it can be challenging sometimes, especially if you don't know where the noise is coming from.

Address the Tenant

The next step is to address the tenant responsible for the noise. If you want to keep happy tenants, you must perform this step. You must get to the bottom of it.

You can address the noisy tenant in several ways. For example, you can call them or stop by their unit. You can also send a letter.

Addressing the tenant is the start of the process of solving the issue.

Give Warnings

Next, give the tenant warnings. You can determine how many warnings you want to give. The purpose is to give the tenant a chance to change.

For example, you might give the tenant an initial warning. If the tenant continues with the noise issues, you can give them a second warning. If the noise continues, you might have to evict.

Evict After Too Many Noise Complaints

If you seek landlord advice, you'll learn that eviction is the last resort. Evicting a tenant is a process that costs money. It also takes time, so it's not something to rush to with noise complaints.

Yet, eviction is often the only way to stop the noise from affecting your other tenants.

Seek Professional Help

As a landlord, you might receive noise complaints and repair requests. You'll have a lot to handle, but you can hire a company for help. When you do, you'll free up your time for other things.

Contact us at Kerr Properties, Inc. We offer property management services in the Portland area and can manage your units for you. We can handle everything, including noise complaints.

We are a full-service property management company and would love to talk to you about our services!

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