I am not even sure if contacting the owner would help, though. Some people just live life loudly, and you can't force people to use area rugs. When we lived in a top-floor apartment prior to moving down here, our best friend in the complex lived on the first floor under a heavy, noisy woman and her son. Our friend had complained both to the tenants and to management several times, but since the noise was just caused by them walking around (heavily), nothing could really be done and the people refused to change their ways since they didn't think they were being noisy -- it's not like they were throwing late-night parties or anything. They even had wall-to-wall carpeting, but the building was just today's typical cheap construction. We couldn't believe how noisy it was above when we visited our friend and felt SO lucky to live on the top floor. Lucky for her, she recently got married and moved into her husband's very nice single-family house!

We thought we'd be okay living on the first floor in this building since it's concrete and the units are not inexpensive so we assumed it would be well-built. However, it's even noisier! I will say that we never hear TVs or conversations -- the concrete seems to block that -- but heavy footsteps (and running, if any children are above us, children always run), loud music (the man on the third floor has a habit of playing his guitar in the middle of the night and early in the morning), and furniture moving are enough to make me tear out my hair. I sleep with earplugs every single night.

Sigh...