Pickleball Nightmare: Home Sellers Are TRAPPED And Can't Sell

Imagine you've recently retired and you decided to sell your house, but instead of cashing out and moving on, a literal pickleball nightmare has trapped you in your home. But despite dozens of showings and repeated price drops, the house hasn't moved. And Judy Comeau says she knows why. And they just say, uh, we don't think we can deal with that. That is this. And stories like this are popping up everywhere all over the country. What started as an easy way to get exercise, fresh air and to socialize has turned into a mountain of controversy and lawsuits. And some homeowners are having to seek legal action in order to just sell their home. But the constant pop, pop, pop is causing quite a racket across the U. S. A. Most annoying sound ever goes one tweet. It's 9 30. Why are my neighbors playing? Pickleball goes another. Imagine hearing this all day long. Towns across the country are converting tennis courts to pickleball courts. But what they're not addressing is the constant popping noise that haunts the people that live nearby. Now, it seems like pickleball just came out of nowhere during the pandemic, but it's actually been around for a very long time. It was created in 1967 by Joel Pritchard, a congressman from Washington state. His family was sitting around on a warm summer day with absolutely nothing to do. Their property had an old badminton court, but they didn't have any badminton equipment. So Joel improvised with some ping pong paddles and a perforated plastic ball. In 1976, the first pickleball tournament was held at the South Center Athletic Club in Tukwila, Washington. But it was the pandemic that put pickleball on center stage because people wanted an easy way, an inexpensive way to get outside, get some fresh air and just see other people. In fact, since 2020, it has grown in popularity 159%. Now, you might think that pickleball is the ideal sport. You don't have to create new spaces. You can reuse tennis courts. It's relatively easy and inexpensive to get into. It doesn't have any age barriers. People of all ages can participate. However, there's one huge problem with pickleball, and that's the sound of the racket hitting the ball. And it is such an issue that people are having trouble selling their homes if they live next to a pickleball court. One of those situations popped up right in my home state of Massachusetts. Judy Kimono and her husband were recently retired, and they were ready to sell their Sagamore Beach home. The property has beautiful gardens and even an ocean view. But what they didn't expect is that when the neighboring social club converted the old abandoned tennis courts to pickleball courts, those pickleball courts would end up costing her thousands of dollars to sell her home. Tennis courts located just over the fence from the Camo's backyard and recently converted to pickleball courts. And when it comes to the sound of a hard paddle hitting a hard ball, Camo says Pickleball is a whole new game. They had dozens of showings, but no offers. They reached out to the social club to see if they'd be willing to install a sound barrier. And to make matters worse, the club rules on specific hours of when people could play pickleball were largely ignored. She has even gone as far as taking audio measurements of the noise went up to 78 to Camo says she's measured the pickleball decibels at levels comparable to a vacuum cleaner or garbage disposal. She says the only way to sell her home and escape the sound is to make the game stop. Unfortunately, with no buyers that are interested in buying the house and no response from the social club that left them with no choice but to seek legal counsel. So they reached out to a local attorney that had won similar cases in the past, and unfortunately they're gonna have to dig into their home equity to pay for those legal bills just to find a way to sell the house. Now that was a private social club. There are also towns that are converting these tennis courts and in Braintree, Massachusetts, the town converted 12 tennis courts to pickleball courts, and the surrounding neighbors are now dealing with that annoying It's just irritated. He lives on why not road right across eight courts that were upgraded by the town last summer, attracting many more pickleballers who tend to make full use of the space. I have two options. Either where air plugs all the time or sell my home. Now the residents got together and they went to the town and raised concerns about the pickleball noise. The town responded by allocating $22,000 for eight-foot sound dampening panels that would supposedly reduce the sound by 50%. SoundSeal typically manufactures panels in the construction industry and have found a use in pickleball courts. It's just still not enough. Mike Megley says the sound still goes over the barriers. Situations like this are becoming more and more common, and if you're thinking about moving and you live near one of these courts, it could be a challenge to sell. It's super important to have a good strategy to find the right buyer and to do that you need a good agent. Now I've been in real estate since 1996 and I have come across some lousy agents and some great agents and I've pooled all those great agents together and I'm willing to share those with you if you need a great agent. Simply click the link in the description below, fill out a short form, I'll get in touch with you, ask you a few questions and I'm going to connect you with the right agent for you to help your property get sold regardless of whether there's pickleball courts in the backyard or not. Now a lot of communities are trying to fix this noise problem with these sound dampening panels, but unfortunately that's not a complete solution. Now if you compare the decibel reading of say a pickleball game versus a tennis game, pickleball is louder but that's not the whole story. There's another component at play here that makes pickleball stand out. The loudness is just one component. Another is frequency or pitch, how low and deep or high and sharp a sound is. Slowly, lower frequency, quickly higher. The frequency compared to tennis is significantly different and on top of that it is extremely uncomfortable to the human ear. The tennis ball is a lower frequency than what our ears are most sensitive to. Seen in these wider sound waves while the pickleball strike is higher pitched, you can see the narrower sound waves. So our ears catch more of the noise it makes and the Some sounds are just scientifically annoying. There are several factors that contribute to a person's audio irritation. The sound's irregularity, what the person is doing when they hear the sound, whether they believe the sound belongs in the environment that they're in. And with the growth of the sport, the sound annoyance is popping up all over the country. And that got the attention of retired engineer and Carnegie Mellon University professor Bob Unatic. Now Bob moved to Florida and got caught up in the pickleball craze but didn't take long to see that the noise issue is something that really needs to be addressed. So he founded the Pickleball Sound Mediation Company. He studied the sound levels extensively and he found that the decibel and the frequency of the ball hitting the paddle was very significant. It's equivalent to that of a vacuum cleaner. He's studying different types of paddle materials, different thicknesses of the paddles, different materials that the balls can be made out of. And he's also looking at different types of sound dampening equipment. Some of that can run up to $50,000. And there are companies popping up all over the place offering different types of paddles that are quieter, that significantly reduce the noise. But the big question that you're probably wondering is what can you do? What can you do to make sure that you don't end up like Judy Comeau or like the residents in Braintree, Massachusetts? The first thing is that if you live in an area where there are unused tennis courts, find out who owns those tennis courts and be proactive. Reach out to the owners, whether it be a social club, maybe it's the town, and make sure that they are educated on exactly what happens with these pickleball courts and the noise they produce. If you live in an area where the tennis courts have already been converted to pickleball courts, I would reach out to the owners, whether it be the town or the private clubs that own them, and just have a conversation to see if they're aware of the pickleball noise and what can happen over long periods of time to the resident neighbors. And then you want to get together with your neighbors so that you can get together as a group and work out the issue. It doesn't always have to be a lawsuit. You can find common ground. There are new advancements coming, but you have to start the conversation. And if you're looking to buy, just be on the lookout. If you see any unused abandoned tennis courts, just imagine the popping noise that could come from those tennis courts if someone decided to convert them. Now I personally have not played pickleball, but it is a pretty cool sport. I like the idea of people getting out and socializing, getting exercise. It doesn't break the bank, but there's got to be a way so that it doesn't infringe on the quiet enjoyment that you are entitled to as a homeowner. Now we're gonna watch this situation as it unfolds, but if you're interested in more housing market videos, you're gonna want to check out these. I'm Jen Sylvester, and I'm here to help you be a Savvy Home Seller.