While looking at a duplex yesteday, my agent and I were there long enough (good tactic for house or apartment hunting to stick around for a while chatting, looking around to see if there is anything out of the ordinary) that within a few minutes I was presented a reminder of my experience living in Seattle apartments back in the day. I could hear the neighbor open the drawers and it was so loud and disturbing it stopped the conversation. Strangely enough, the apartment I lived in most of my life in Tacoma was fine. Lived in the same apartment for 10 YEARS. Never really heard my neighbors.
But yesterday reminded me of the year I lived in Seattle, where I could hear everything my neighbors did, even below me. I could hear them unravel the toilet paper and it was loud surprisingly. It was a 70 year old couple below me so it was just the way the building was built. In any case, that experience caused me to stop looking at Condos and start looking at houses instead. Every condo I looked at at the same time seemed to have the same issues, especially in King County. Yesterday was a reminder of that, and my little attempt at foraying back into shared wall living was quickly met with a reminder that more often than not, these situations have a lot of noise. Best to stick to a house.
Yes, if you are the landlord you can come down on the neighbor if they are excessively noisy, but the noise I heard wasn't loud banging or music, it was just from people living normally. Just the construction was really poor.
