At wits end with "clever" noisy neighbors

[Davide]

Hi all. My wife, 10month old daughter and I own a home in manurewa, south Auckland. (We've been here about 2,5yrs) We are kind of a middle property, and the neighbours who are in front of us (beside our kitchen) have their garage on the boundary line.

When they moved in about a year ago we tried to do the neighbourly thing and took them some home baking and gave them our phone numbers , in case of emergency and all that. No real response, no worries (pretty sure they are a Samoan family with limited English)

Recently about 6mo ago they started with the noisy drinking sessions in the garage with friends over. Loud bass and all that. So I tried to call over the fence to them one night as it was massively disturbing my wife and daughter and they just flat out ignored me. I called noise control who eventually had some impact and after they were served an "end notice " the bass finally stopped.

But the parties haven't. So there's loud music, even louder laughing and yelling at anywhere up to 2 in the morning at least twice a week. And they turn the music up for a song, and down again... then up... and down... it's like they know how to play the game....

I have contacted noise control but they seem either unwilling or unable to see how this affects us despite me asking the officer to come down our shared driveway to assess. It's all ok to call at, say, 10pm but then to have to wait an hour to call back, and then wait further hours to keep calling back is just too hard, with work the next day.

We try to mask it by closing doors and running fans but it's just getting silly.

Almost certain they rent but HNZ have said it's not one of their properties. What I don't get is that they have a young child of their own there too?!?


Does anyone have any suggestions? I tried a forum search but not a whole lot there?

Appreciate your help- sorry for the novel!
Kind regards

David

[Keys]

www.qv.co.nz

[Davo36]

What Keys is saying is find out who the owner is and perhaps get onto them?

You can use a site called Terranet to do that too.

[sidinz]

Someone on another thread mentioned an app that measures decibels. Maybe use that and take a screenshot as evidence?

[artemis]

If other neighbours are affected, coordinate calls to noise control. Get hold of the record of complaints and pass on to the owner. Rinse and repeat.

[flyernzl]

Another ploy is a really good stereo and some classical music - Wagner and Beethoven are ideal.
After they have a late night party, you play those at 6am with all your doors and windows open.

[Dunning]

You might be able to do a search on the address and find the agency that it was rented out through.

[mrsaneperson]

You can call noise control anytime of the day. The officers who attend do not need noise meters ;instead they make their own personal assessment by standing at the boundary of the nuisance property. If they deem it ""too noisey"" they then issue an abatement notice to the main resident of the property. Once the abatement notice is served if they re-attend within a certain time frame they will cease the offending sound machine .
If the owner wants it back they have to pay around $500 by collecting it from council offices a few days later.
I would start keeping a written record of times and dates , of the nuisance and then your actions to call officers along with any results. This will help massively in getting something done. If the officers are not doing their job, write a complaint letter to Council and they will look into the matter.