Q: I recently purchased an apartment in a condominium in New York City. Unfortunately, it’s above the building’s gym. The constant noise and vibration from the treadmills and from weights being dropped has made my life miserable. What are my rights, and should I sue the building?
A: New York is a “buyer beware” state, meaning the onus is on buyers to do their due diligence before making a purchase. Sellers must, however, disclose material defects.
Presumably, you could see that there was a gym beneath the apartment before you bought it, and so you could have asked for more details about the noise, or asked to spend more time in the apartment to gauge the noise before you made an offer.
But the gym still has to respect the city noise code and cannot make a noise that materially diminishes your ability to use and enjoy your apartment, according to Lisa Smith, a real estate lawyer and a partner in the Manhattan office of the law firm Smith, Gambrell & Russell. You could ask the condo or the gym operator to put the exercise equipment on mats to reduce the noise and vibrations, or see if the condo would add soundproofing materials to the ceiling.
But if the noise isn’t in violation of city rules, you’ll have a hard time exerting much leverage beyond that. You could also look into the cost of adding soundproofing measures to your own apartment, and see if the board might be willing to share some of the cost, Ms. Smith said.
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
