Can you hear your neighbours

[AlwaysSomethingThere]

Those of you in semi or terraced. How much activity can you hear through your walls? Screaming kids, barking dogs, slamming doors, music etc. I'm looking for a house (unfortunately my budget doesn't stretch to a detached house on an island with a moat, a 12 foot fence and a drawbridge) and the first thing I do on viewings is pin my ear to the party wall as I'm so terrified I'll end up with a shit neighbour.

I suffer with anxiety and EXTREME misophonia so I find it very hard to judge when it's me being irrational or them being inconsiderate.

Interested to hear the measure of what other people think \ have to cope with?

I'm in a 70s terrace, and can hear a lot. I can hear the sounds of conversations (can only hear words etc if they're shouting!) doors closing, their TVs, music, and just general noise.

10 year old semi lived here for 14 months next door have 6 children have never heard anything from the house. In summer in the garden it's awful can hear loads of people it really spoilt the summer.

New build semi, I also have noise sensitivity issues.

I hear everything. Internal doors closing, external doors closing, music, going u the stairs, stirring a cup of tea, filling their kettle..

If this was a place I bought I'd be distraught, knowing I can fuck off with just a month's notice is comforting.

I’m sorry op but you are my ideal of a hellish neighbour who would send me mad. My anxiety would go through the roof.

Why? How would you know?

Postwar semi. Rock hard walls (you need a hammer drill to put a picture up) and good double glazing. You can hardly hear anything that goes off outside but you can hear the neighbours' dog and their chatting but it's muffled so you have to concentrate on it to hear it. Most of the time we don't hear anything.

New build here ! Never heard the neighbours (other than running up the stairs maybe once or twice) and they often apologise for their little girl crying at night but I've genuinely never heard her!

I'm very lucky, our house is detached with no close neighbours. When we have visitors I can't even hear them in our house unless we're in the same room

1930's ex council house semi detached.

I hardly ever ever hear anything from them. Randomly I hear their microwave ping, wardrobe doors if they let them bang shut as they're on our dividing bedroom wall. And very occasionally if I'm in bed and their son is on his Xbox in their living room I can hear a deep rumbling noise of him obviously speaking buts it quiet and not distinguishable.

They can occasionally hear my music (I turn it down!) my 5 yo having a temper tantrum in her room and then absolutely put their shoes and coat on the other morning I yelled that loud ( I even found a jokey meme about a shout out to my neighbours who pretend they don't hear you shouting at times like a nutter).
They love me though as generally I'm quiet, go to bed early, don't massively entertain and the people I bought off were horrendous with DIY, screaming at each other and smashing things up.

I live in a 1920s semi and sometimes hear the family next door.
They sing and they laugh and I love hearing them

20s semi, with a childless couple next door. I sometimes hear her rowing, but I have no idea if it's with him, or on the phone. Other than that, nothing. I imagine we are a lot noisier with three teenage boys crashing about.

He toils in the garden a lot. I have only ever seen her out back once. I often smell their fags out front as they smoke on their front door step.

1970s terraced. V quiet elderly neighbour one differ. Family with an autistic child the other. We occasionally hear him having a meltdown but it's very muted and I suspect the main reason we pick it up is because we have our ears attuned to small children as we're listeni ng out for our own. It's certainly not very disruptive and we mostly feel thankful that it means they can't get too stroppy if ours make too much noise!

I live in a 1930s 4 in a block flat (looks like a house, 2 flats downstairs, 2 upstairs each with own entrances). The flats are solidly built, and I never used to hear my old neighbours at all.

My upstairs neighbours are a nightmare, 1 year old and approx 3 year old. Kids get up at 5.30 and run about like a herd of little elephants. The worst was when they had a baby walker that would go back and forward. Kids don't cry too much, more annoying is when the mum puts music on and they sing along and whoop.

Woman either has bulimia or just pukes a lot.

Dad comes in from work early hours, phones his family in India, sits in the stairwell to not wake his own family and the noise carries.

They used to have loud sex, but that has stopped since the kids have came along.

Through the wall is a single guy who is disabled so makes almost no noise, we occasionally hear him gaming. We smell his dope frequently though, one night coming home and it was like a cloud hit you walking down the path and his window was closed. Otherwise I like him.

I've thought about moving, preferably to a detached house.

10 year old townhouse. Never hear a single sound and they have a child.

Last house was a 2 up 2 down terrace built around 1905 and we could hear Every. Single. Sound.

Victorian mid-terrace. Both sides have teenagers. They apologise for the screaming matches but I've never heard anything. One side can hear my dog on the rare occasion he barks but she had to point it out to me when I was round there. She had visitors today and I could hear a toddler running up and down the passage which was sweet.

I live in a small block of flats. My elderly downstairs neighbour is as deaf as a post, so I get to hear everything he watches on television. It's usually news and current affairs programmes (Question Time is especially painful late at night). Things take a turn for the worse when he puts the stereo on. His taste in music is as dire as it is two-dimensional; Hawaiian guitar music and opera, usually Pavarotti. I can scarcely hear myself think when he cranks up the volume.

We live in an 80s semi and didn't really hear the last neighbours, apart from the baby which didn't bother us at all.

We now have new neighbours who I can only assume have wall mounted their tv and got a sound system, as we can often hear their tv really quite loud! We can hear it over ours but don't want to turn ours too loud when DD is asleep.

Annoying, but then we do have a noisy toddler and planning another baby soon so I'm sure we make our fair share of noise.

They've recently got married so hoping they might also have a baby which should hopefully mean the tv volume goes down...

I am tapping away this very minute whilst heating the noise of my next door neighbours, Victorian terrace in London.

It seems to get 'rowdy' around this time in the evening, maybe getting kids ready for bed time? They are a very large family from Pakistan so I have no idea what they are saying but there are lots of adult and children's voices. They sound animated, not fighting or anything. I don't really mind, they're quite the rest of the day.

I live in a 15 year old conversion, end of a terrace of four and I never hear anything. Few rooms that matter join onto next door, the hallways and bathrooms, one end of the dining room bit and the small bedroom.

I used to own an Edwardian terraced house and heard every noise, especially after the neighbours polished their floorboards. Everything echoed up the chimneys and through the original fireplaces (and there were seven fireplaces).

^ Hearing not heating quiet not quite

I’m in a mid terrace 13 year old house. The whole estate was built by a man who also owned a concrete company so all the houses are made with precast concrete rather than blocks. All floors upstairs & downstairs are concrete. On one side there’s a family with 2 kids, youngest is 3, on the other side is a family with 2 kids, youngest is 2. I hear almost completely nothing from either side. It also makes the house very well insulated. On the down side, it’s very difficult to hang anything on the wall

12 year old apartment. I hear nothing - unless next door are drilling on the adjoining wall, that's it. Don't hear talking/TV etc

I’m hopefully about to downsize to a semi. Me, 2 adult daughters, 2 large dogs, 3 cats, 2 chickens (living, not dead and in the freezer) and a PIANO. Never not been detached before, my neighbours are going to hate us aren’t they?

1930's terraced. Don't really hear them downstairs. Upstairs though is really loud. I can clearly hear them shagging. The woman is clearly faking it the amount of noise she makes.

Exactly the same as @Lauren83 but both sides of me are twats. Deafening music and screaming all night. Next time they do it I'm putting heavy metal on full blast and going out for the day.

Think that's the perils of new builds though. Thin walls.

I live in a semi ground floor maisonette. I never hear my neighbours unless they are setting off fireworks in the back garden, which they like to do fairly often. It helps that I am really hard of hearing and don't wear my hearing aids indoors