Fake news clickbait over ‘neighbour from Hell’

It’s rare that we are inspired to quote Shakespeare, even as we strut and fret upon the strata stage. But there’s a story in Domain in the Sydney Morning Herald that, like the Scottish play’s “tale told by an idiot”, contains a considerable amount of “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

The story is familiar and predictable – a resident is being driven mad by the noise from a neighbour.  And this isn’t just any noise – it’s a gamer screaming and shouting at their Xbox or Playstation at 3am.

And while it doesn’t spell it out, the complainant is clearly living in a unit as they talk about banging on the adjoining wall. The subtext of the story is that if you live in strata you have to put up with this kind of disruption because there’s nothing you can do about it.

Except that’s simply not true.  But, hey, why miss a chance at taking a cheap shot at strata living?

“A frustrated tenant has revealed he is close to losing his mind, living next door to the neighbours from hell,” says the Domain story.

“The resident has explained that police can do nothing to help, despite one [neighbour] who continues to “scream and rage” until 3am.

“He needs to wear headphones and play white noise to try to block out the commotion, but has reached his wits’ end,” the dubious yarn continues.

“After months of gathering evidence for the relevant authorities, all I got in the end was ‘just move’,” he says in the desperate Reddit thread.”

Okay, let’s stop this nonsense right there. If you go to the Reddit thread – such a reliable source of information and warning, there is a lot of foul language in it – you will see that the tenant was living in a completely different home when they were told to “just move” – advice they clearly took on board.

Next question – is this even in Australia? Diving deeper into the responses, it seems that this story is based in the UK. Here in Oz, if your neighbour is making too much noise in the middle of the night, there’s plenty you can do, in most if not all Australian jurisdictions.

For a start, local council and Environmental Protection Authority rules on noise can be and are enforced by police. 

Generally the rule is that you can’t make excessive noise – often defined as being intrusive in a nearby home which has its windows open – between 11pm on school nights and 7am in the morning. Holiday eves have a cut-off at 12 midnight.

Call the police and if they aren’t involved in chasing crims, they will come and tell the person to turn the music down.  If they have to come back, they can impound the equipment causing the noise, issue a warning and record the incident.

Then there are your strata by-laws which mean you can’t make excessive, intrusive noise AT ANY TIME, day or night. If you are a tenant, that means you are in breach of by-laws – which can lead to fines – and that means you are in breach of your lease, which can lead to eviction.

And finally, if the noisy neighbour ignores the police and the Notices to Comply issued by the owners corp or body corporate, and if they shrug off subsequent fines imposed by a Tribunal, you can get a noise abatement order at your local court.

Ignore that and they are breaking the law and can face significant fines and even jail (albeit an unlikely eventuality).

So while the subtext of this highly dubious clickbait is “don’t live in apartments”, in fact, if you have a noisy neighbour in a unit you have more chance of being able to deal with it quickly and effectively than if they were in a free-standing home.

I would usually put a link to the Domain story here, but I think they are probably already getting more clicks than they deserve.