Ups and downs

TO life’s many choices -- paper or plastic, Mac or PC, Leno or Letterman -- apartment dwellers face another: upstairs or downstairs. No decision would seem more critical. Yet, strangely, few seem to consider the question upfront.

“It only becomes an issue after people move in,” said Kelly Arft, senior property manager for the Renken Co. in Claremont, which manages about 150 apartment units.

That may be too late for those who value their sleep, sanity, security and other requirements for happiness. Unlike homeowners who enjoy a measure of privacy behind fences and hedges that separate them from neighbors, apartment renters in increasingly high-density Southern California often share ceilings and floors with people who live above or below them. To find their place in this vertical world, they must honestly assess their personality and lifestyle preferences, as well as their tolerance for sounds, odors and other conditions not of their own making.

“In real estate, home buyers are always talking about location, location, location, but for renters, location is as much about the floor they live on as the neighborhood they choose to live in,” said Ann Krauter, a broker and owner of Dilbeck Premier Properties in Claremont.

All single and fortysomething, renters Kelli Sipp, Audrey Rivers, Jim Martinez and Gabe Valdez live in a vintage 1920s four-unit apartment complex in the Pasadena Playhouse District, with Sipp and Rivers in the two downstairs rentals and Martinez and Valdez in the upstairs units. With hardwood floors, cathedral ceilings and crown moldings throughout, the building is beautiful. But the walls are thin.

During the week, upstairs neighbor Martinez, an L.A. County Transportation Department employee, bounces out of bed at 5:30 a.m., showers, dresses and shuffles around the kitchen before striding out the door for work. Rivers, who lives below, wakes up right along with Martinez.

“He’s my alarm clock,” said Rivers, who keeps similar work hours to Martinez’s. Rivers, who works for a seismograph company, wasn’t always so noise-tolerant. Until she moved into the apartment four years ago, she lived in a house and savored her solitude in a neighborhood where the cutting of grass or use of a leaf blower on Sunday caused her to contemplate calling out the National Guard.

“In the beginning,” she said of adjusting to apartment living, “you think every sound is aimed at you. You are totally controlled by the upstairs people because you don’t know when they’re going to drop a TV or jump into a pair of cowboy boots or what.”

It was the “or what” that irritated Sipp when she moved into her apartment last year. “I heard everything Gabe did up there,” Sipp said. “Vacuuming, flushing the toilet, his conversations, his cat skidding across the floors.”

But Sipp has mellowed. “As time goes by, you become familiar with the sounds around you,” she noted. “You discover you have room in your life for noise.”

Martinez tries to muffle noise. He’s learned to pad around his apartment in his socks more often and switched his daily exercise routine from early mornings to late afternoons.

After raising her family in single-family homes, Cheryl McDonald, a courier service owner now living in a two-bedroom upstairs apartment in Upland, felt confined.

One night while she was washing dishes as her 18-year-old son, Michael, played video games, a neighbor bolted upstairs and banged on her door. “Are you turning this place into an aerobics studio?” McDonald recalled him saying.

McDonald said she would have preferred to live downstairs but family members convinced her that upstairs units were safer.

For that same reason, Stephanie Thomas moved into an upstairs apartment in Rancho Cucamonga with her 15-month-old daughter, Kylee.

Although many upstairs residents say they feel safer, they concede that downstairs is unbeatable for easy access. Each time Thomas lugs a load of laundry or a bag of groceries upstairs with her baby in tow, she says she regrets selecting her upstairs apartment.

Many downstairs occupants also maintain it’s easier to evacuate in an emergency. Medical aid can reach victims more quickly -- a priority for many elderly renters, who may also no longer have the agility or strength to tackle stairs.

Sipp simply feels more connected to her neighbors and neighborhood living downstairs. Outside her screened front door, she enjoys a small brick patio, a birdbath and a tidy green lawn, only paces away from the theaters, restaurants and bookstores that populate the Playhouse District. The interior decorator walks to her dentist, doctor, pharmacist and bank.

“It’s like a little ‘Cheers’ neighborhood here,” she said.

Beware the zoom lens

Of course, access works both ways. Street-level occupants may feel more vulnerable. Doors opened to catch the breeze are more likely to invite unexpected knocks, inquiries and the roving eyes of strangers -- or even of neighbors. Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock played on those fears in “Rear Window,” a classic 1954 film about a wheelchair-bound photographer, portrayed by Jimmy Stewart, who spies on his neighbors from his apartment window.

Cost is another factor in the upstairs-downstairs comparison. Stairs, for example, always magnify the agony and expense of moving furniture.

“Any time we’re dealing with three or more flights of stairs, we have to add an extra man, which adds to the cost,” said Megan Long, marketing director of Starving Students, a Los Angeles-based moving company.

Closer to the roof and the sun’s searing rays, upstairs units tend to be hotter, so air conditioners must run longer.

Yet, despite the drawbacks of summer heat and thigh-burning stairs, some landlords charge their tenants more for living upstairs. For Thomas’ upstairs Rancho Cucamonga apartment, she pays a $90-a-month premium, although her unit is identical to the one directly below her. The difference in the monthly rents of the Pasadena foursome, however, is negligible, more a reflection of when they moved in than where.

Alan Nevin, chief economist for the California Building Industry Assn., said rents typically start rising for fourth-floor units and above. Better views and greater distance from street noise don’t fully explain this price difference. Many people will simply pay more to one-up their neighbor -- a living-above-the-crowd bias that’s been hard-wired in humans since the first cliff dwellings were carved out.

“You’re paying for prestige and privacy,” Nevin said.

Another downside to living downstairs: Because of the law of gravity, clogged water pipes and leaky air-conditioning ducts typically cause greater damage to lower units. Renter’s insurance provides some peace of mind, but even when renters are compensated for damages, they still have the hassle of filing claims, scheduling repairs and seeking substitute shelter.

Bonnie Bogharian, a Montrose shop owner who also has a Palm Springs apartment, drove out to her first-floor flat one weekend and never made it past the front door. A leak later traced to a faulty upstairs air conditioner had drenched her apartment, damaging paintings, carpets, clothes and furniture. “If I had to do it all again,” Bogharian said, “I’d never live downstairs.”

As more high-density housing goes up in Southern California, especially near major transit centers, more people will face the upstairs-downstairs question.

For now, Sipp, Rivers, Martinez and Valdez aren’t budging from their Pasadena apartments, the women secure downstairs, the men upstairs.

“We love our neighborhood,” Martinez said. “And if anything should happen, we always have Kelli and Audrey downstairs to protect us.”