some suggestions: #1 - get rugs with HEAVY foam padding (it comes in different thicknesses and is the best for reducing impact noise). Maybe your neighbors would split the cost. #2 do not wear shoes in the house. #3 - are your neighbors below a couple? Ask one to come up and walk around your place in a normal manner, and the other one to stay below and listen. Perhaps this will prove to them that all you are doing is walking normally around. I don't know if mgmt can evict you for walking around - it doesn't seem fair but I don't know what the laws are about this. Are they aware of the nature of the noise complaints - that your neighbors are complaining about your walking (which obviously you can't do much about unless you learn to levitate!) and not about your having parties or blasting stereos, etc. I guess I was lucky in my situation. My downstairs neighbor complained repeatedly about me even AFTER I got rugs and padding, even banging on the ceiling when I walked around. But I managed to let the mgmt company know that SHE was harassing me, not the other way around. She was told to stop bothering me.

Hijack here but I am looking at a lot with the exact same issues (I think) and would love advice on who to talk to before I buy the lot. And it is possible that what my (potential) neighbor had done would work for you. Lot is .46 acre and slopes about 5 feet downward to the back and then comes up again. The neighbor (faced with almost identical constraints flattened it out enough for a pool and built a 1/2 walkout basement. By 1/2 walkout - the right side of the house basement is covered by dirt - no windows. The left 1/3 has a door and some windows. You walkout but can't really get to the flat part of the wall - they didn't build stairs. There is a patio on grade and then a sloped landscaped area - much cheaper than a wall. He built some drains underground that do dump onto my lot. It looks like I could continue the drains and pass onto the next lot (which built is as a seasonal stream with a little bridge over it). This "stream" is tiny but clearly needs to be addressed. I would like to do something similar to the neighbor with a 1/2 daylight basement. I would really like the kitchen/great room area to be level with a backyard pool. The realtor says it can be done but I take that for what it is worth. Is getting a surveyor in there the way to go? A builder - I don't have one yet? Pool builder - don't even know if I would wait a year or two on that. I would like to not be surprised like OP but I don't think I want to spend $5000 before I've even purchased the lot....

I agree with the others in here that it depends on how you use your closet. If you store everything in it, and will not have a chest of drawers or armoire in the bedroom itself, then 6x6 might be a bit small, unless you come up with some spectacular closet system. We remodeled our 1978 split level home and didn't want to give up another bedroom to make a huge master bedroom suite. Any extra space we used for the master bath, then we stole from a linen closet off the hall way to open up the master bedroom closet a bit, expanding it from 6' x 6' to 8' x 6'. I put in the metal closet system from Storables, with 2 parallel hangers on the 8 foot section, then two smaller parallel hangers on one short side, then a floor to ceiling section of shelves on the other short side. The tops of each long hanger on the 8' side had shelves as well, for more storage possibilities. I knew we were going to get new bedroom furniture that included a large chest of drawers, so I purposely did not want to go the California Closet route of built in's in the walk in closet. We also removed the closet's swinging door and replaced it with a pocket door. It's possible to walk into the closet and change clothes...in fact we do that at night when changing out of our work/day's clothes. The clothes hampers for each of us are in there. Admittedly, only one person can comfortably change at a time in the closet, but it works well for us, and allowed us to keep the maximum size in the bedroom and bathroom areas. Another thing to consider...the trend of the huge house with the huge walk in closets and master bathrooms is fading fast. The new mantra in construction and design is less is more, so I wouldn't worry so much about resale value. If you do a beautiful job of the renovation, use quality materials, tastefully decorate, and make it a warm and comfortable place, it will sell itself.

Honestly in Canada we do have heating that heats our homes so IMO you match the floor from the bedroom in the closet . Make sure you have heating vents in the closet .