Landlord threatens Wisconsin renter with a lease violation over parking a Corvette in the home garage: ’Just saying "you're being loud" in an arbitrary manner with nothing in a lease to back it up is an empty threat’

Author image for Etai Eshet
Etai Eshet • Editor
Jul 29, 2026 2:30 PM EDT

Some people hear one noise, one time, and immediately promote themselves to Chief Noise Detective. Doesn't matter if the sound has existed for years without incident

Doesn't matter if it lasted twelve minutes and involved zero drama. The second it hits their ears, it becomes evidence in a case only they're building.

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  • 01

    Landlord threatens a lease violation for parking a sports car in our private garage [WI]

    Man in a red shirt stands smiling in an open garage, holding the door overhead.
    via Natalia Blauth

    Renter standing in his garage

    Subject is a model

  • 02
    Hey, I am pretty new to renting and we recently had an issue come up so I was wondering if anyone had some guidance for how I can handle this.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 03
    My fiancé and I rent a town home in Wisconsin. It has a private attached 2-car garage and a 2 car drive way for each unit.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 04
    We have been here for a little over a year now and had no issues until recently.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 05
    We have three cars together, one of which is an older model corvette. Due to limited garage space we have to park the corvette pretty tightly against the wall of our garage so that we can have our other car in there and be able to get in and out of it.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 06
    The corvette has sat for a few months now due to issues with the tire so the unit next door has some new neighbors. who haven't been around while we used the corvette.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 07
    The other day we were attempting to park the corvette in the garage after taking it out for a night.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 08
    Man in a red shirt stands smiling with one hand on his hip in front of a large green metal gate.
    via Natalia Blauth

    renter standing outside with a confident stance

    Subject is a model

  • 09
    This occurred at 10:15 am and about 5 minutes into it, just as we were finishing up, the landlord came over and said she had received calls from neighbors complaining about the noise.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 10
    We tried to explain that we were simply parking the car and that we had just finished so we were about to be done.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 11
    Later in the day she sent an email explaining that this is considered a warning and that any further complaints would be considered a lease violation.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 12
    The email had said that if we felt the need to run our car we should do so in a public parking lot from now on.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 13
    I am just at a loss. The entire time span of the noise was less than 15 minutes, which was extended by her coming over and stopping us to talk.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 14
    And we were not doing so for fun or just letting it sit, we were simply attempting to park the car.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 15
    I don't know how to move forwards with this as I find it unreasonable to expect.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 16
    Over the past year we have made active strides to ensure that we never had the car out extremely early or extremely late and are mindful while accelerating as we understand how that could be an annoyance.
    via HorrorTutor3740

  • What's funny is how fast the story mutates once it leaves the original witness's mouth. A perfectly boring, explainable noise turns into "ongoing disturbance," which turns into "escalating pattern of behavior," which turns into a landlord firing off a warning email like they just cracked a cold case. Nobody asked how long it actually lasted. Nobody asked if it happened before. The complaint arrived, and suddenly it's treated like gospel, no cross-examination required.

  • 17
    We also had checked with the leasing office before signing our first lease that this car would not be an issue and they agreed saying that the only issue would be if we were doing it outside of reasonable hours.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 18
    This is definitely a speculation but I feel as though it would be our new neighbors complaining since we have had no issues in the past, when we had been regularly driving this car, and that the noise was not loud enough to disrupt anything farther down the street.
    via HorrorTutor3740

  • Landlords, for their part, operate less like arbiters of fairness and more like anxious substitute teachers. One kid raises a hand and says "he's being loud," and instead of asking a single follow-up question, the whole class gets a lecture and a new rule nobody needed yesterday. It's not about right or wrong. It's about making the complaint go away as fast as possible, even if the "solution" makes zero logical sense.

  • 19
    I am setting up a meeting with the leasing office to get a better idea of how they expect us to fix this.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 20
    We still need to have the ability to use our car and with how harsh the winters can be around here we cannot simply house it outside permanently.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 21
    It is currently summer time, but we both leave for work very early so if we were to move this car to an outside spot for the time being it would require us to start it and move it every morning at 5:30 am which would be a much bigger disturbance.
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 22
    We also don't want to give up the ability to use half of our garage space because someone is uncomfortable with 15 minutes of noise in the middle of the day.
    via HorrorTutor3740

  • And the solutions never make sense. There's always some wildly impractical suggestion floated as if it's reasonable, something that would require rearranging your entire life to accommodate one person's five-minute annoyance. It's the customer service equivalent of "have you tried turning off your entire existence and back on again."

  • 23
    Any advice on how to navigate this situation from here on out and I would like clarification as to if this could really turn into a reason to evict us?
    via HorrorTutor3740
  • 24
    Thank you!
    via HorrorTutor3740

  • The real joke is the double standard baked into the whole thing. The same action gets a full year of silence, then one new witness shows up and suddenly it's a violation. Nothing about the behavior changed. Only the audience did, and apparently that's all it takes to go from "totally fine" to "grounds for a written warning."

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Tags

landlord rental tenant bad landlord entitled renting corvette sports car parking entitled people
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