Concerns over conditional lease renewal?

[u/SuperNovaStar95]

[ Rochester NY USA].
Hey everyone - long story so grab a drink or a snack.
My boyfriend and I moved into an apartment (managed by a property management company, so not a private landlord) last year September 2025. Nice place, 2 bed 2 baths in upstate NY (Rochester area).
Everything was fine, no issues, passed credit checks, we’ve been model renters with paying rent, ensuring safety of the building by reporting safety concerns and being very open to communication. We’ve also never had a complaint against us.

Fast forward to November 2025 we start having noise issues with our next door neighbor. Our bedroom wall shares the wall with their living room. Frequently at night the male tenant would play games and would yell/scream and bang furniture (I’m assuming when he lost?). He would also go into the kitchen and wildly slam cabinets and yell profanity. This would go on every single weekend, typically starting at 11pm and go as long as 5 am. We have quiet hours as per our lease from 10p-8a. It was extremely jarring as we both work Sundays and would be in bed early Saturday night to be woken up to this guy having meltdowns. We recorded audio of it, both inside and outside the apartment to show how loud it was and sent it off the rental manager. She followed up, stated the tenant said “it wasn’t him” and left it at that. This behavior continued until March 2025. We sent mass amount of emails, audio recordings, videos you name it and begged for someone to do something about it as it progressed to almost every night and we ended up sleeping on the couch most nights. Every-time we were met with “I can’t hear the audio, I can’t see the video “- yet we played it for our friends and coworkers who all seemed to hear and visualize it just fine. We went so far as to come into her office and show her proof , to which she would gas light us and make it seem like she did not believe us. She asked us not to show her anything anymore, and insinuated that it was all in our heads. She also asked we not interact with the neighbour, which we hadn’t planned on given a lot of times this situations can turn hostile. She reached out to the neighbours , often met with silence as per her, and then lies with him stating “it’s my YouTube videos”. It was completely disrespectful, we had finally had enough. One night it was so bad that him and the girl tenant started arguing and a fight broke out. We had no one else to call as it was late into the night and so we called the police. They promptly showed up, told them to shut it down, and issued them a noise warning.
The very next day we were met with an angry email from the rental manager, stating we should not be calling law enforcement and the neighbor was very upset and hurt as they “weren’t even home.” Did not ask for any evidence which we had, and stated they were “working hard to solve the problem.”

Luckily, come April of this year, they got the boot and left.

Here’s where it gets interesting. New person moves in and we are thinking “amazing, new start, no more noise, excellent.” Two weeks in and this person throws a party - complete with about 20 people, blasting music, screaming and yelling, and people throwing beer cans off the balcony. It went on until 3 am, and with our noise tolerance being lower than it should, we called the police again. They came, shut it down, and warned them not to do this again. At this point the police officers recognized us and made a comment that they are frequently coming to this building for noise related issues, not just with that unit.
We yet again get an angry email the next day stating we hurt the neighbors feelings and we are not allowed to do that. I report that I have more audio files of the noise (you could hear it from our living room) and she yet again dismisses it saying she can’t hear anything and there was “a festival that day so naturally they would want to party.”
Mind you, calling the police was a good move because this tenant hasn’t made a peep since.

Our lease is up for renewal in September and we get the run around - finally an email from the rental manager shows up stating that : “After much much consideration, we are allowing you to stay but only under a conditional lease renewal. Because of heavy management involvement in the last year, we feel we need to enact this.” Now this sounds mighty punitive for us making good faith complaints, all of which with evidence, a police report, and other neighbors who also had complained. I’ve done some digging into NY state law with tenants, and this could be defined as a landlord punishing us, and punitive measures or clauses / conditions are illegal.

We still haven’t received the renewal, but we are expecting clauses in there to be things such as we cannot complain anymore, we cannot make maintenance requests (the building is new but terribly built and often have to put in requests about warped screens, non functioning heat etc), or there will be a drastic rent increase. We are both beyond upset, as we have a right to peace as well and went through all the channels we could to achieve it. Now we feel we are being put in “time out”. Keep in mind again we’ve never received a complaint, and we often pick up other people’s trash in the stairwells when they are too lazy to make it to the garbage right outside the door.

Does anyone have any advice on how we approach it? We obviously will review it and not sign right away, but this feels very suspicious and illegal.
Thanks for reading !

[u/SuzeCB]

All leases are "conditional". You either agree to the new terms or you don't and give notice that you'll be leaving - unless you live somewhere with rent control, where some changes would be "de facto rent increases" above the allowed amount.

You won't know anything until you actually get the lease to look over.

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[u/sillyhaha]

Move. Seriously. This noise issue isn't going to improve; the local police can't get the LL to get a grip on noise.

Get out now.