Noise & Neighbour Conflicts
Noise Complaint / DocumentationDocumenting a Sudden Noise Problem After Ten Quiet Years
New, recurring noise from a long-quiet neighbouring unit exposed how hard it is to prove noise, and how little support an unhelpful property manager may offer.
An owner in a condo townhouse reported ten years without any noise issue from the unit next door, until loud TV, movie, and bass noise began several nights a week. The owner didn't feel comfortable approaching the neighbour directly and went straight to the property manager and bylaw enforcement instead. The neighbour denied responsibility despite it being the only adjoining unit the noise could be coming from.
The owner described the property manager as slow to escalate, sending warnings but taking no further action, and noted the noise stopped as soon as the bylaw officer's vehicle was seen arriving, avoiding any ticket. The owner's core difficulty was evidentiary: the noise was clearly audible inside their unit, but didn't come through clearly on phone video, which tends to filter out what it interprets as background noise.
Documents an owner in this situation should gather
- A written, dated incident log (date, time, duration, description) kept consistently going forward
- Any audio or video attempts, even if imperfect, plus notes on why they under-represent what's actually audible
- All written complaints submitted to the property manager and their responses
- The specific noise or nuisance rule the complaint is being made under
Questions to ask management or the board
- 1What standard of evidence does the corporation actually require to act on a noise complaint?
- 2What has bylaw enforcement documented on each visit, and can those visit reports be shared?
- 3What is the corporation's own escalation process if warnings aren't changing the behaviour?
- 4Beyond the corporation's internal process, does this situation fall within the Condominium Authority Tribunal's jurisdiction?
Facing something like this?
Read the plain-language guidance for this exact situation, or run your own documents through the Free Notice Decoder.
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Curated and maintained by Alexander Baraz, Condo Owner Advocate.
This case is not a testimonial, review, or endorsement, and is not a Condo Owner Advocate client file. It is an anonymized, editorially rewritten educational illustration, not legal advice.