Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Massachusetts

We live in a condominium in Massachusetts. We occupy the upper floors. There is an owner/occupant who lives below us. Their master bedroom ceiling of their unit is the floor of most of our downstairs area. The way our condo is built, the bedrooms in our unit are on the lower level, while the kitchen and living areas are on the upper level (we live on a hillside that provides a road and access to [our] upper level units, and there is a road and access on the lower part of the hill that the lower units are accessed by).

Our neighbors who live below us have been complaining that we make too much noise. It particularly bothers them weekend mornings when they try to sleep in until 7:pm or 8:pm. We have 3 children between the ages of 6 and 9. It appear that their movement creates noise enough to disturb our neighbors. However, it is my master bedroom that is most immediately above the neighbors master bedroom. My spouse and I do not tend to move around abruptly or in any way that should create a noise disturbance below us. Our floors are carpeted, and we presume there is some padding beneath the carpeting. The floors are unaltered from when we purchased the unit, and the units construction was completed in late 2006 - which is when we purchased the unit, brand new.

Some of what our neighbor has told us about what they can hear indicates to me that they simply hear too much. This leads me to believe that there may be inadequate sound buffering between the floor and ceiling of our units. They've made it clear they can even hear (and I'll be euphemistic here) personal acts on congress between my spouse and I. And we're not boisterous. Some of their own statements make me wonder if they hear my 5 lb cat when it runs around.

I've written a notice to our condo board letting them know that there have been issues between my neighbor and us about noise and the floors/ceilings, and also let them know that we believe the floors don't do what we think should be reasonable sound buffering. Shortly after that, our neighbors have submitted two complaints that we have made noise that have disturbed them.

We feel we're in a situation where we're set-up for failure. We do coach the kids to move quietly when on the lower level, but it seems we are put up against a situation we can't appease out neighbors.

We don't want to be an offense to our neighbors, nor do we want them to hear activities from us that they shouldn't be able to hear. Its an infringement on our privacy.

Reviewing our Master Deed, one tidbit I took note of is that the [bottom] boundary of our unit ends at the surface of the sub-flooring. We feel that this may be important to our case.

We ask what we can do.

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