I live in an apartment in the U.K. and this is just not the case - I have absolutely no idea what anyone else is doing. Proper construction goes a long way. There’s something about America that makes proper construction of apartment buildings impossible, apparently - whether that’s building codes or cost-saving exercises I don’t know.
If that is true, I am moving to the U.K. next. I've lived in 4 different countries, 12 different apartments and I've known when each of my neighbors is playing XBox, watching some cop drama, playing bass guitar, getting in arguments, kid is crying - heck, even snoring in a couple of them!
Having no idea what they are doing sounds like dreaming the impossible dream!
I'm also in the UK. It was the case in those I've rented. That included one fancy river front expensive one that work rented while I was working in Docklands. In short, never again.
Maybe newer ones are better as that was back in the 90s.
I suspect its actually older properties that are more robustly constructed - the flats we had in central Edinburgh had 1m+ thick sandstone walls and we never heard anything from neighbours.
I'm currently in a 10 year old house based on old farm buildings and the walls here are even thicker (still sandstone).
There are certainly US apartments/condos with high quality sound insulation. The lack of it is cost saving measure. Every cent that goes into the building comes out of the pocket of the developer.
