Do you have noisy neighbours?
While everyone isn't always on the same schedule, a modest amount of noise likely won't bother tenants living in close proximity to one another. Even a few loud gatherings typically aren't a cause for concern, provided they don't happen frequently and aren't deafeningly boisterous.
But some sounds are particularly unsettling.
A woman who lives in a Kitsilano apartment says she's no stranger to noisy, tempestuous neighbours. She responded to a recent call-out in a Vancouver Is Awesome daily newsletter asking for tenancy tales — the good, the bad and the buggy (plenty of rental horror stories are about pests).
For the purposes of telling her story, we'll refer to her as Jane (she has asked us not to use her real name for safety concerns). She resides on the "1.5th floor of a 1950s building in Kits" and says she lives above the "noisiest man on the planet."
What exactly is a one-and-a-half floor?
"So from the front it’s ground floor but by the back, it’s like one floor up with a little patio and I have a basement suite below me," she explains.
When her neighbour plays music, Jane notes that it sounds like she's playing it in her own unit: "it's horrendous."
But the intense tunes are only the tip of the noisy nightmare, according to the Kitsilano resident.
Jane's neighbour has been dating a woman for the past couple of months and the pair aren't exactly quiet together. "She’ll come over: loud sex noises, bed moving, fills my entire bedroom with noise," she describes.
"And then the next morning at like 8 a.m. they will be arguing. He regularly calls her a [expletive]. I think maybe she cheated on him because he was mad that she just needs attention from men, and he told her it was 'embarrassing.'"
While the couple argues when they're physically together, Jane also hears them bicker over the phone. "My favourite line over the phone from him was 'I’m done with you, you know what I’m going to do today, I’m going on Tinder, bye [expletive]."
Jane adds that she has an ongoing series on her Instagram story where she updates her friends on the quarrelling couple's status.
Here are 4 times 'sex noises' became an issue for B.C. landlords and tenants
Ever been in a disagreement with your landlord?
While many people enjoy mutually beneficial relationships with their landlords, countless others face difficulties.
But it may surprise you how many of these disputes are about sex.
The BC Residential Tenancy Branch sees a range of complaints from landlords and tenants and a sizeable share of them involve sex — whether it's seeing sexual activities or hearing them.
Here are just a handful of the multiple decisions involving sex-related issues in past years.
