Exercise Noise Complaint

By Peaceful Neighbor

My roommate and I have started a new exercise program. It is 25 minutes/day 5 days/week and involves a lot of plyometrics (jumping around). We live on the 2nd floor of a 3-story apartment complex. For the majority of our residence here, the apartment below us has been empty so there has not been an issue with noise. About 1.5 months ago, a new tenant moved in to the unit below us. We did not know about the new tenant, so we proceeded to exercise as scheduled.

Within 2 days of the new attendent moving in, this episode happened:
With about 5 minutes left in our program, we hear a banging on the floor (ceiling of the bottom unit). We assumed since the apartment had been empty for some time, the landlord was doing some renovations and/or construction. We completed our workout program only to hear a banging on our door. We answered to find our new neighbor violently and aggressively threatening and cursing us out about the noise. We explained to him that we had spoken to our landlord about the workout program and he was fine with it. The neighbor stormed to the leasing office before we could have a civil conversation to reach a conclusion. Within an hour, we received an email from our property manager. We explained to him that there is very limited floor space at the gym and that we were only exercising 25 mins/day during daylight hours but would be more than happy to be flexible for the new neighbors.

Before exercising again, we went and tried to reason with the new neighbors before starting to work out again the following week. We spoke to the female tenant who was more than reasonable and explained to us that she and her boyfriend (gentleman who stormed our apartment) both worked nights and that we could anytime after 5 or 6 PM without bothering them. We even took further measure to modify the workout program so that there would only be a noisy exercise 1-2 times a week (rather than 5).

We have had no issues with that schedule until the other day. We started working out at 5:15 PM and with about 5 mins left in our program (~5:35 PM), we heard a banging on the floor. I walked downstairs to see if we had misunderstood the time arrangement. The male tenant proceeded to react aggressively again and said there was absolutely no scenario or time frame that he could tolerate us working out and threatened that if he hears us workout out one more time that he is going to call the police.

I sent a follow up email to my property manager but have not heard anything back. We have been flexible and would love to find a solution that accommodates both parties. We have tried twice to meet these neighbors in the middle, but with no success.

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