First Home Purchase Went From Exciting Chapter To The Start Of A Nightmare.

Recently, my family bought our first home––a condo/apartment. Location: Fishkill, NY.

PREFACE: The condo complex has 2 floors, ours is on the second floor. It's a unit with hardwood floors in the living room and kitchen. The 2 bedrooms have thick carpet. Our HOA has a rule that either 70% of the unit's floors need to be carpeted, or at least covered in rugs to meet that number. At the time of sale, and later in several inquiries, the HOA assured us that our unit was compliant, and we verified that it was. We are a new family of myself (husband), my wife, and our now 4 year old boy. Our boy has level 1 autism and some ADHD.

Prior to us, the only person who lived there was a single woman in her 60's. We have not moved into the unit yet. It's been months since our purchase and we have not yet moved in.

PROBLEM: We toured the unit earlier this year as just myself and my wife. We had no issues in the visit. Neighbors seemed nice, the unit was move in ready and priced well. After signing our paperwork to close, we paid a second visit, this time bringing our son and my parents for a quick look. We visited smack dab in the middle of the day on a Saturday. This was a terrible day.

We had not been in the unit for 10 minutes when my parents pulled up after we were already upstairs. Our son can be hard to contain sometimes but luckily this day he was fine, just wandering the space, not running or jumping around. It was just myself, my wife, the real estate agent, and my son, wandering and talking. Our downstairs neighbor saw my parents walking up from the parking lot and cornered them. We'll call him M. M stormed out of his door, caught my parents at the stairs, and right away began yelling. He said we were behaving like a "pack of wild fucking animals" and that we should "learn to behave as new neighbors in the building." My parents are not confrontational people. They said their sorry's and immediately relayed to us when they got upstairs. We did our tour but were walking on eggshells. While we were on the balcony, we could hear M talking to another neighbor about how terrible we were.

Before we left, I went downstairs to try to diplomatically address the issue. From my own work, I experience dealing with confrontation and doing so without putting our company in legal trouble. As politely as one can be, I introduced myself, and told him I heard we had done something to upset him. After I introduced myself, he responded with a "Yeah, so?" before I asked what was wrong, to which he said we were being "fucking animals," among other things. He then swore we were not obeying HOA compliance. I told him that I would look into it, but that to my understanding, the unit would have to be compliant before being sold. He told me he knew the unit wasn't because he's "seen it before." Then slammed the door on my face.

After that, I sent a long email with notes to my real estate attorney with my agent CC'd. The agent was witness to everything. The attorney looked into the HOA rulebook while the agent spoke with an HOA rep. Both came back and told me the unit was fine. I documented everything I could right after the moment happened, but I was passed the point of no return. We put the deposit down and couldn't step away. With both of those in mind, we moved forward.

Our second interaction with M was actually positive. He lives with his girlfriend, and she demanded that he apologize to us. He gave us a low effort apology while still claiming our unit is not compliant. We said we'd throw up more rugs to keep the peace. Weeks later, our third interaction with M, we spent a Saturday hanging around the apartment. I was putting together some furniture, my wife took our son to our pool. Mind you, we still haven't been living there. This is the longest any of us have spent time there, and only for a few hours in the middle of the day on the weekend. When we were done, he caught me as we were leaving and told me the "rugs weren't fucking working," and said he was going to pursue some sort of action against us. I gave him nothing in return, I just nodded, said OK, and walked away. When he confronts us, he doesn't have the energy of a stranger with a disagreement. This man gets in your face, he gets red.

I had enough. I called the corporate HOA relentlessly until they finally addressed the issue. I have email threads, spoke with reps, and have pictures as proof of my rugs with padding to show we are compliant. The HOA not only agrees with my family, but turned my story into a nuisance complaint against M.

QUESTION: After all this, the best the HOA did was attempt to call the landlord of the unit ONCE, and left a voicemail. Apparently this M has a history of problems, and they already had a list of violations they wanted to address. But they're spineless and the best they could do was a voicemail.

How can my family protect ourselves? Is there anything we can do?

That is my question. My wife is too afraid to move in. My parents don't want to visit. We already are terrified of letting our son live a normal life, playing with his toys, tumbling as he does. The other day we paid a visit to show some extended family the unit, and M nearly confronted us because of our normal, standard, footsteps they could hear. We overheard his girlfriend telling him "Don't start, M..." before he sat down on his balcony and glared at us. Mind you, his girlfriend is the actual landlord, he is not on the deed. The HOA said as much.

To make matters worse, I am an immigrant a part of DACA (Dream Act.) I speak perfect English as my first language, but the man has a very loud political stance. I normally don't care but I have an Achilles heel. My paperwork is fully up to date but in today's climate, there is still massive risk if someone has the wrong intentions. My wife and kid are American born citizens. I am willing to move in but I am struggling to convince my wife all will be fine, and part of me is afraid as well.

EDIT: M and I have not had any political conversations of any kind. My family doesn’t have any political stickers, we don’t bring politics up in conversation, etc. But the fear is that he one day puts a call in just because he notices I’m fluent in another language and speak it within an earshot of him.

TLDR; We bought an upstairs apartment, downstairs neighbor claims we're non-compliant. We ARE compliant, but HOA won't do anything to stop his aggressive harassment. He has a history of breaking HOA rules and his girlfriend is the actual landlord. We haven't moved in yet, too nervous to.