Arg, I love my current place, but didn't know until after I moved in that there is NO OUTLET IN THE BATHROOM. Not a huge deal--I basically made a vanity in my bedroom so I can blow-dry my hair and use a straightener. But seriously? It's a fairly new building, too.

Oh well. It's worth the great location. Great post! Sorry about the truck-quakes.

Just FYI, the doorway isn't where you should stand in an earthquake! It's completely unstable, and if there's a door attached you would undoubtedly get hit by it. It's advised to either duck under a piece of furniture (such as a desk) or stand against an inside wall.

I didn't know that I would pay a $300 electricity bill for the month of August for a 1 bedroom duplex in Phoenix. NEVER RENT A HISTORIC HOME IN PHOENIX.

i also have the drain problem. Didnt know until my first shower. Draino is not match for poorly planned out pipes.

There is a drain pipe outside of my bedroom wall (the wall my headboard is next to), when it rains all I hear is "drip, drip, drip, drip" all.night.long. When I have trouble falling asleep, the dripping noise makes me want to pull my hair out!

Didn't really find out about the subway rumble underneath the building until I moved in in June. And the garbage trucks that pass by Tues, Thurs and Sunday nights at 12:30. Or the streetsweeping trucks in the early morning (7:30) am. There's also construction going on across my building which starts up anywhere from 6 :30 am to 7:30 am. I've been sleep deprived these days.

That stinks about the outlet. I'd ask the landlord if (s)he would be willing to install one. You never know unless you ask, right? In one apartment I rented there were no 3-prong outlets. When I brought this up to the landlord she fixed it right away.

As for me, we found out after moving in that most of the doors didn't close all the way, thanks to the house being old and many layers of paint on the doorframes and doors. We spent $600 (we own) to strip all the doors and have them repainted. Now they close and latch and I feel like I won the lottery!

I didn't know our neighbors across the street had numerous roosters in their backyard.
I also didn't know that they were prone to having loud screaming matches on their front porch.
I didn't know the walls were plaster, but this was a good thing.

Come to think of it, I love my country house, we didn't have any huge, horrible surprises at all, it's a good beginner house-not a lot to go wrong.

Neighbors and neighborhoods and environments change! The big tree outside my balcony got cut down 6 months after I bought my condo! Several new tenants in my hallway got loud dogs with serious potty training issues! However, I am still close to lots of good groceries, and restaurants, and entertainment and shopping on foot. I still have great public transportation at my back door. Parking fees have never been raised in the 8 years I have lived here. More and more of the neighborhood went condo after my purchase and when the economy turns around I think a final few eyesores will disappear replaced by new condo buildings. In all it is a good thing. Remember to be much more careful when you finally buy! Renting can be a grin and bear it experience but once you buy you are stuck for some time.

Actually emadams, doorways are exactly where this NorCal girl has been taught to go during the Shakes since toddling days. The header and additional stabilization needed to hold the door frame makes it one of the safest places to be. Your other suggestions are correct as well, tho!

Freshman dorm: 1 set of 2 outlets on the end of the light at the top of the mirror. For 2 girls with 2 hair dryers and 2 straighteners to share. Also fun was when the roommate and her friend blew out the circuits... twice. PS - the microwave works as a mirror for fixing your hair in the kitchen.

Senior year apartment: check for cable outlets in the bedrooms. For a 2-bed apartment, the only cable outlet was in the living room. It was an old building, so the building manager told us to call the cable company, but they wouldn't pay for the upgrades. Needless to say, I watched lots of DVDs and Hulu that year.

It never occurred to me that the swings in the adorable playground outside my window would 1. squeak, loudly 2. attract drunken students at 2 am.

On the up side, I wouldn't have believed that my building was as well managed as it is. The place is painfully ugly, inside and out, so I suspected they just didn't care. But the management puts every cent of cash into preventative maintenance and hiring good staff so nothing is ever broken or dirty for more than a few hours and they haven't raised the rent on me in four years.

i have to admit, we found a knock off pair of eames molded plastic chairs by baxton studio on amazon for 150 dollars, and i don't feel bad about it. charles and ray wanted their designs to be affordable, and 1000 dollars isn't affordable for most people. the other 850 dollars we saved is going towards furnishing our new babys nursery.

I didn't know my landlord's meth head son was moving back home. Family arguments, police sirens, and sketchy house guests galore!

Our current apartment has bedroom windows on the side of the building that faces the back of another bigger building, right above where all of the trash cans sit. I can expect someone (or multiple) clanking through the metal and glass recyclables on recycle days around 10:30 or 11:00pm... It wouldn't be so bad if recycle day was every other week, or even every week, but we have it twice a week!! No good night of sleep 2 out of 5 work days is not good :(

I forgot to ask about the work habits of the couple above me. They have lived there for over 20 years... and dont work anymore. They wake up at 4:30-5 am and the sound of [their floor boards] creaking above me wakes me up without fail every single day.

It also didn't occur to me that on trash day, trying to make my way down the one car only narrow roads out of the hills, would be impossible since I cant pass the trash truck.

Years ago I moved into an apartment unaware the sewage treatment plant was a block away. Most days it was fine but when the wind would turn - yuk!
I was an awesome apartment though - and really cheap.

l love my apartment. Two bedroom, gigantic space, HUGE windows. Landlords are amazing, and live on site, and will fix things at the drop of a hat. However, I had no idea that the physical therapy place just outside my huge windows could see right in. At least not until I got a kinect, and found I had an audience laughing and waving when I looked.

New curtains fixed the issue, but at least they were friendly.

Our living room ceiling leaks - the building mgmt thought it was fixed, but every time we get heavy rain, we get an indoor wading pool. It comes through where the ceiling fan is, so if the fan is on the water sprays out! We love everything else about the apartment so we've stuck with it. Countless days of rain, repair men, and money fixing everything they can think of and it's still an issue (much better than before, but still there). I just keep all my valuables off the floor and away from the center of the living room. And I turn the fan off on rainy days!!

Just how thin the walls are. It's not terrible but I can definitely tell when my neighbors are home or having friends over.

Also, the serious lack of outlets. There's just one per room. It's not always a 3-prong. Luckily I don't have a lot of gadgets. Extension cords work out fine.

I also didn't know that when the high school down the way was having an even there'd be no street parking for 6 blocks in any direction.

And finally, I didn't realize how narrow the galley kitchen is. I can barely open the oven or dishwasher all the way (they graze the cabinets on the other side). And I can't open the fridge enough to use the drawer on the bottom.

Oh well, the benefits far outweigh all of that.

I felt confident my apartment would be solid considering the on site owner/landlord lives downstairs of our two family home but I was wrong...windows are crap, skylight has an opening constantly letting debris in, floors aren't leveled and it takes him forever and a day to fix things.

On a side note...where is that coffee table from in the picture?? The CB2 one is definitely deeper than that one.

I forgot to ask about the work habits of the couple above me. They have lived there for over 20 years... and dont work anymore. They wake up at 4:30-5 am and the sound of [their floor boards] creaking above me wakes me up without fail every single day.

It also didn't occur to me that on trash day, trying to make my way down the one car only narrow roads out of the hills, would be impossible since I cant pass the trash truck.

***I know what you mean about squeaky floorboards. if i ever live anywhere else, i will not want people living above me. it sucks.

I didn't know that most of my neighbors are temporary, because they're Marines from the nearby base and they keep getting deployed left and right. I didn't know that my heart would ache for them and their families.

Re: slow drains. Have you tried using a plunger? Block off the safety drain at the top, fill with enough water to cover about 1/2 the plunger, then go to town. It may take multiple attempts but this technique has always worked for me. They even sell mini plungers just for this purpose so you don't have to use the icky toilet one.

We moved into our apartment in the winter so we didn't realize how dense the leaves on the trees outside our window are in summer. On the plus size, we feel like we're living in a treehouse. On the negative side, we have almost no light in summer.

I didn't know that my biggest fear would be my neighbor's trees crashing down on my house/garage...

Re: drains -- One of those cheap little plastic things with teeth does a fabulous job getting the hair and gunk out of mine. Triggers the gag reflex, but at least I don't have shower water up to my ankles!

{sigh} Yes. I just moved about 4 weeks ago and we have found that the children from next door use our yard and porches (back and front) as their own. It's sweet and I love the children...but I am always coming home to little presents be it a shirt, bicycle, etc. It is never enough to say anything, but at the same time there is always something.

My apartment complex has two "types" of apartments -- ones that face the street and ones that crowd together in a U pattern. The ones that crowd together in a U pattern have assigned parking spaces in front of their apartments. I, however, live in an apartment where it faces the street and there is no assigned parking. 8 out of 10 times, I am able to park in front of my apartment. For those 2 times I am not able to, I get HIGHLY irritated.

Sometimes the idiot kids/teenagers sit on MY front steps. This is happened a few times since I moved in (which was in May 2011) and it is so irritating and rude. Since school has been back in session, this hasn't happened recently.

Adding outlets isn't that expensive it turns out. The electrician had to come to our new rental to fix some scary stuff and we paid him to add a couple to our 1920s rental. The landlord was delighted. =S

Weirdest thing: we live in Los Angeles, a dessert, and yet our backyard is so totally overwatered it is muddy most of the time. It must the landlord a fortune. And yet neither the gardener or the landlord will reduce the amount the water the space. So weird.

I found out there were 7 kids under the age of 10 to the left and right of us after buying my house, and something tells me there's still more to come. Oh and half of them are home schooled so that's 24/7 kid chaos.

I live on a 15 acre farm pick apples, pears and berries in th morning walk the dogs around the property at night, enjoy watching the deer mosey though the yard everyday triming and "fertilizing" the lawn, and the cargo train across the sound blasting its horn 4 times an hour everynight. Almost worth it. Without sleep can you really call it home??

Ew one of my past apartments had terrible smelling cabinets. I'm not sure what they were made of, but whatever type of wood or material it was reeked really bad. Obviously I didn't notice at first since the cabinets were shut. I DID notice when my peanut butter started tasting like the cabinets smelt. The odor saturated my food!

That was just one of many problems I eventually faced at that terrible, terrible apartment.

But, for the most part, I've been lucky with my living situations.

Also, I think we should all take a moment to reflect on the happy surprises we've found after moving in to a new place. =)

@strongodores: I'm an emergency preparedness volunteer for the red cross and from what I've been instructed, hiding under doorways is one of the most common earthquake myths! The myth stems from an earthquake that occured in south america in a community with adobe houses. After the earthquake was over, everyone noticed that the only remaining part of their homes were the doorways. In North America we don't build adobe houses, and hiding under the doorway is definitely not advised! For your own safety, you might want to look into it....

It was the early 70s and we rented a wonderful, cheap place in a nice older neighborhood, close to lots of shops & restaurants. Little did we know that the landlady, who lived next door, had a mother with dementia who had a key to our place & would wander in at all hours. When the mom went on the lam (which happened several times a week) the landlady's very loud alcoholic husband would yell, "Red alert! Red alert! She's gone over the wall!" There was also an on-the-make unemployed nephew in the mix who used to come over uninvited. In addition, the former (evicted) tenants used to knock on the door in the middle of the night (when we were sleeping) to see if we wanted to buy any downers. We moved our after two months - luckily we were month-to-month and didn't have to worry about a lease. Our next place was a house about 100 yards from a railroad track but it was much more peaceful!

@SJScott, I had that same issue with the drain pipe at a prior residence. I took an old sponge and placed it at the base of the pipe and it no longer made that dripping sound.

I wish I had realized how LOUD the shower plumbing is. For example, I can't hear my TV if my upstairs neighbor's using hers, that's how loud the running water noise is.

What's even worse is she is semi-retired and only works late afternoons, but I work 9 to 5. So I get up and shower around 6:30 or 7am and wake her up. We had quite the conflict about it at one point. I feel terrible that her sleep is disrupted, but I need to shower!

Landlord tried to help by working on the pipes, but it was only a little bit of noise reduction he was able to manage. I think it would take a major re-piping/insulation job to make any significant difference.

Neighbor and I have patched things up (although I always have a moment of self-consciousness before turning on the shower, I feel so bad!) and I'm pretty used to it, but still, next time I check out an apartment I am going to see if there's a way to screen for this ahead of time!

I wish I'd realized how terrible my landlord is. Never responds to any communications and tries to illegally evict me every month.

I wish I'd known that both the dishwasher AND laundry machine were broken.

I wish I'd known that the apartment was not going to be cleaned or painted before I moved in and that I'd have to do it myself.

We lived down wind from a chicken processing plant. Every day I'd walk past truck after truck after truck filled with the saddest looking chickens. Chicken plants stink too. Oh they stink. We managed to last in that apt. for about 4 months before we moved.

Our current apartment is in the noisiest building in the world. We face a loading dock which was actually not a busy dock when we first moved in. But now it is always building: 6am to 8 pm it's unloading central out there. I have a special hatred for the special 1am deliveries that occur a couple of times in the summer.

The building is also plagued with ridiculous sounds of water pumps, drilling from the longest parking garage reno project in the world (no idea what they are fixing now. Maybe it's a mine?), and the latest bunch of neighbours are dance enthusiasts.

I hate this place. Need to move soon.

Feral parrots might be the weirdest thing I didn't know about our apartment when we moved in. They are all over parts of the LA eastern suburbs, but I had no idea they would perch in the tree outside of my bedroom morning and start squawking at 7am. Good thing I have to be up that early most days and it seems that squirrels have kept them away lately.

Last house we had the rumbling of the garbage trucks emptying the nearby dumpsters around 5 or 6am every morning. Trucks going by made the whole house rattle. But no, not a deal breaker. Mice, maybe. Probably. We had an infestation.

Current house: nothing so far but a pesky neighbor! And we can handle him!

I wish I had known that the washing machine didn't work and that the dryer would never work because it was gas and there was no gas connection.

I really, really wish I had noticed how small the mailbox was, and realized that not one piece of mail would fit without being bent and torn, and that the postal carrier and landlord could not care less.

For years my bedroom has been on the back of my home. After moving two years ago, I am still sleeping in a guest room. There is a street that stops right in front of my house and car lights shine into the window. When the cars turn, the lights go from one wall to another.

I had no idea that 5 people live in the apartment above mine. Well, 6 now with the baby, who is walking. How can someone who weighs only about 20 pounds stomp so loudly?!

When I lived in an upstairs apartment as a newlywed years ago, I did not realize that there was no apartment under ours. Everyone that walked under the apartment was talking. That happened all night long and made it difficult to sleep. The dumpster was also outside the window. When the truck came on Monday's to empty it, the entire container was raised with a loud noise and then slammed on the ground. Memories.

When I lived in a downstairs apartment I was not told that the upstairs neighbor had a drinking problem. Often he would arrive home late at night very drunk. He would knock on my door thinking it was his place. After being frightened the first night I talked with the manager. She told me he was a nice guy and had being doing that for years. I never saw or heard him in the years I lived there except the times he came home drunk late at nights.

Amygoog-For your shower , start pouring Hydrogen Peroxide down the drain. It's 50 cents a bottle, so it's a cheap solution. Over time, it will clear your drain. You should see it drain faster almost immediately.

If this doesn't sound good to you, then get the drain enzymes from Amazon. Also excellent, but the Hydrogen Peroxide works a lot quicker, in my opinion.

I had no idea the traffic outside my bedroom would go non-stop and that trucks and cars idling on the hill waiting for the green light would drive me batty. Nor that the garbage trucks would make 5:30 AM pickups on Monday mornings - other than that I have no complaints about my place. I'm used to sketchy non-grounded and sparse outlets from my prior SF Victorian flats, it's a small price to pay for my well-built and spacious new apartment with stained glass windows, coved ceilings, bay windows, hardwoord floors, wainscoting, and box beam ceilings !!

When we first moved to Boston, we didn't know that the subway would run right through the back part of our parking lot, making it impossible to even have a telephone conversation with the windows open. "Hang on ______, the train's coming through."

AUGH. Like omnombiscuits, I discovered while getting ready to dry my hair the first morning that my bathroom has no outlet. I always tell myself that it adds to the charm of the era of the building's construction, but...running an extension cord from my bedroom is not cute.

We moved in when it was cold and dry, but when summer rolled around, we discovered a mold and bug problem (we live in humid Florida). Gross. Luckily, our landlord is taking care of everything. The mold problem is costing her thousands of dollars to fix!

Boy am I glad I own in a low population part of the country!

When I moved into my current 1920's-era duplex, I didn't know that the other half of the building was occupied by a bartender and his lonely dog. When the dog heard me come home from work, he would start whining for attention. He would continue to whine-- non-stop--for the next 5+ hours. It was sad, yet annoying, yet sad. Yet annoying.

@ pleiovn - Do you not have an evaporative cooler? When I lived in Tucson, the swamp cooler worked well almost all year, except during monsoon season in August.

We're pretty lucky in that there is nothing that seems like it should have been a deal breaker. But...I am an at best light sleeper and the snow plows and street cleaning trucks that come by again and again and again all night long (we are at a T so we get at least twice the passes) can make the nights very long. I guess it is worth the trade of (at least during winter) of clear streets but it makes for some mighty long nights.

I didn't know the neighbors would let their barky Basset hounds out at 5am every morning. I didn't know they also liked to feed the local squirrel/ bird population, which left a huge mess all over our yard. I didn't know that there was no insulation in the roof or walls, so our gas bill would be $200+ in January (for about 800sf).

Annoying yapping dog next door, terrible mosquito problem in the yard (I can barely go outside despite spraying poison), and for 7 months our landlord was renovating the upstairs apartment while living in it with his wife and 2 small children... now he's moved out and in his place is a guy who has listened to Adele's "Rollin in the Deep" 3 times in the 2 hours I've been home.

Hmmm... how about moving into a two story 1950's home where every sewer and water pipe decides to blow the month you move in? Still haven't fixed it and the back porch roof leaks, it gets invaded my ladybugs and termites, has various types of rot etc.
The joys of ownership are tough. :(

Freshman year, moved into the dorm in September, East LA on a hill... At some point in less-smoggy October, I came out one morning and almost fell over - there was a whole mountain range right there that had never been visible before!

I rented a 1 bedroom loft apartment on the first floor of a warehouse conversion. I loved the soaring 14 foot ceilings and exposed pipes & duct work. Impressed by all of the industrial character, I failed to recognize a big horizontal pipe on the ceiling that hung right across the entire length of the bedroom above my bed. That is, until the first night.

Turns out that said pipe was a main sewer line for all of the floors above me. I could hear the flow of every toilet flush and shower etc of my neighbors on the upper floors. It sounded like a sporadic rain machine, but thinking about the contents of the liquid did not bring tranquility; especially since it was right above my bed!

In addition, some people think a toilet should be used for more than what it was designed for. On occasion I'd be hear a loud clang in the metal pipe as if someone flushed down a golf ball or some other object.

I ended up learning how to sleep with earplugs that year and when my lease was up, I was outa there.

Churches! If you're near one, you might get woken up every hour on the hour. And notice proximity to fire stations, too.

My first casita in Tucson had tons of windows that let in beautiful natural light, but only two could open, one out of five in the bedroom and the kitchen one. I felt trapped. My current place is a duplex. No three prong outlets so I had to get some converter plugs from Home Depot. There was also not one telephone jack in the entire place, so I rely on my cable company for my internet and phone.

Landlord said he cared, loved creative people, took amazing care of his amazing buildings and guess what, he does not. Never has and is the worse landlord I have ever had EVER! Shame is his buildings are amazing until you move in and then he let's them just die around you.

I didn't know we lived next to a house known as a venue for house parties/aspiring bands. I also have lived in places with serious ant problems - when it rains, they come pouring in! I spent months sealing up the house, including cracks in the back of the cabinets and sinks.

I second the church alert! Beyond the bells there is also the myriad of child classes going on there. Meaning, if you live next to church grounds, you live next to a playground which gets the blessed little squeals of children from 7:30am until 3pm every weekend.

STUNNING apartment in victorian house with beautiful bay windows and an exposed brick wall. What I didn't know was that the windows leaked air so bad, my apt's temp was never more than 5 degrees different from outside (no matter how much I ran the heater/AC). Also, that beautiful brick wall was proof positive that there was NO insulation. I used to listen to the concrete between the bricks crumble at night. Every morning, I had to wipe off concrete dust from my furnishings.

Every night I enjoy a great view of the Makati skyline and my condo is pretty cool san airconditioning. But what I can't wrap my head around is that it gets so dusty after just one day. It's so weird! I don't even know where the dust comes from since I keep my windows closed most of the time.

I don't know if it's just the area where I live or if it's some kind of subconscious thing, but I always seem to pick apartments within hearing distance of train tracks. Always. It's a deal breaker or anything (not even the one place that was literally right next to the tracks), just a weird habit I guess.

In my current place, one of the things I liked about it was that it was near my building's trash chute. Which seemed great, because the idea of hauling my trash through the hallways wasn't very appealing. It wasn't until I moved in that I realized that being that close to the chute meant that I could hear it when people used it.

It's not* a deal breaker...

Edit option, wherefore art thou

I just bought my first loft and the previous owner did a lot of the work on it himself. It looked beautiful but soon became clear he chose form over function (he was a graphic designer, not industrial or interior. Makes sense to me now). The kitchen cupboards are only 10" deep so large plates don't fit and the drawers only open 5". The light switch for the mezzanine bedroom is beside the front door, so if you want the light off you need to then climb up to bed in the dark. The cupboards over the sink in the bathroom that look like sooo much storage don't even fit a small deodorant upright let alone a blow dryer. Oh, and there's not a single place to hang a towel.

Overall, it's mostly little picky/preferential stuff but boy has it been odd to be constantly saying "how did they live like this?"

Thankfully, I knew that the train went by frequently and was surprised that we cannot feel it and only faintly hear it.

There are no fans in the bathrooms! Never thought to check that since it's in the building code.
also, the wonderful location on the plaza in the middle of my U shaped complex gives me the feeling of living in a storefront. The "private" patio is nothing more than a change of pavement in front of my apt. It's hard to keep the shades open and feel like I'm not on display.
as are any unwashed dishes or clean laundry on the dining table....

Once had a duplex neighbor who walked her cute little Chihuahuas on the street for the first ten days she lived there, then started using our shared backyard as the potty place. The poo was always picked up but the lawn suffered and don't even think about walking barefoot! Did not realize that gardening would be a constant challenge, with deer finding their way into the backyard. Damned Bambi! On the plus side, the shower was a lovely surprise; the rain shower head is so far above the low-flow nonsense I had been used to, I forgave the ghastly flesh-colored tile.

1) That, although our home is not in a flood plain, and our area had not had any kind of flooding in the past 40 years, we would wake up to 2 inches of water across our living room the first spring we owned our home (after a freak rainstorm). We discovered that while the previous owner installed a french drain, he did so incorrectly.
2) Our attic hadn't been insulated since...ever...unheard of in Houston. We went up there this past spring to finally do the job and found all the original insulation was almost completed disintegrated.

I've also lived in an apartment near train tracks, where the train whistles blew at 2am each night. Those same apartments were next to a bunch of really crappy old houses that were slated to be torn down over the course of the year and a half I lived there. Only that some of the houses that were yet to be torn down attracted a multitude of squatters. One of my favorite memories was watching, dumbfounded, as this transvestite squatter took an old mailbox and stuck it in the road outside her "home." Like, really? Who's going to be sending you mail?

exactly one month after I moved cross country for a job right out of college, I moved into these little duplex, which just the right size, and price for me. It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't terrible, until the baby cockroaches came. Apparently a nest or so had hatched into the walls, giving me millions of baby oriental cockroaches every day throughout the carpet/bathroom/everything. I had it exterminated twice and it was like I was giving them sugar water. I moved out as soon as I could. Thank god I got a new job a year later...

I found a great apartment (that I still live in) great location, GREAT price.. started moving in, mid-move found out my box spring cannot fit up the twisted entry stairs. Later, I mentioned it to my landlord, and he said.. "oh yeah, the people before you had the same problem." Guess he didn't think that was an important piece of information for me.
So I'm still sleeping on my matress on the floor.. luckily I had two huge pillow top mattresses to stack, so I get the height, but no under the bed sotrage, much needed in a tiny space.. grrr..

Does anyone know the source of the little bookshelf under the window in the picture?

I wish I had known that our neighbors are not the best about cleaning up after their (constantly yappy) dog.
And that our landlord would be the laziest bastard in Chicago.
Otherwise, we love our place and our neighborhood.

@lmailman, I had the same issue with my newly built house. My bed is queen size. I ended up getting a bed frame from Ikea that didn't require a box spring, then I found out that you can get split box springs for a queen. I had though they were only available for king beds.

I was desperate for a place a couple years ago and rented an apartment that was half in the basement. It was unbelievably wet down there and I'm sure there had to be mold. I couldn't breath half of the time because of this. Also, I enjoyed cold showers all winter long. When I complained, my landlord told me to get up earlier than my neighbors as apparently we shared one water heater. As if that weren't enough, the ceilings were very low and I would be startled out of sleep at 3am by the couple upstairs having sex on a very creaky bed..... and let's just say they weren't the skinniest people in the world. I was actually afraid they would come crashing through the ceiling and kill me. ha!

We live in a wonderful 1940's apartment with pretty well maintained vintage tile (for a rental) and crown molding. There are only two fuses for the entire apartment. Repeated trips outside to the fuse box has taught us not to do laundry and watch TV at the same time. Also, two of the built-in ceiling lights just don't work -- it's an electrical thing rather than a lightbulb thing. Not a huge deal, we just plugged in some lamps, but still annoying.

My husband and I moved into our house in the middle of December and it was freezing outside. We turned the heat on after the moving men left and no heat. We discovered that one of the radiators in the house had a big hole in the back of it. There was no heat in the entire house. We had to buy a new radiator quickly. We found out how expensive they are. We ended up buying a much smaller one, which didn't heat as well as a larger one. It was so cold that we didn't care.

House I used to rent at the edge of a well to do beach front area of CT - when we moved in in October, we didn't realize that come May all the local bikers hit the biker bar at the beach up the road. But on their way, they have to stop at the stop sign right outside the house and the REV their engines before peeling out. EVERY TIME. Or that when the highway backs up, it's our road they use to avoid the congestion meaning a constant, steady stream of traffic for HOURS (all of them having to stop at aforementioned stop sign).

In my current apartment it was not until the lease was signed that I noticed the noise in the bathroom, which I thought was the neighbor taking a shower. It was actually the building’s energy efficient, green, geothermic HVAC system. I was told that there is water running through the ceiling 24 hours a day and there is nothing that can be done to stop the noise. Luckily, my unit is a long way from the gargantuan geothermic processing unit. Boy is that loud and the building sits next to a very quiet open space. I hope that going green is not always this noisy. The loudest sound is in the bathroom, so with the bathroom door shut, the living room noise is not quite so bad, it’s like white noise. Though, I would rather have the quiet.
Years ago I rented a shotgun house, 14’ X 34’. In the first month I trapped a rat under the kitchen sink and over 30 mice over the next three years. The house was across the street from a fire station, a block from railroad tracks and a quarter of a mile from a hospital. Oh, and next to a university. The place was freezing in the winter. I would put a kerosene heater in the living room area and only turn it on when I was home. How do people live like that! Never once did I think of moving. Maybe it was being young and carefree that allowed me to overlook these issues

Water came out of the dining room ceiling the first time I took a bath. They had forgotten to connect the tub overflow. And if you turned on the light to the porch, it also turned on the garbage disposal. Both fixed. But if I had known the fire station a block away would be so noisy, I would have definately insisted on sound proof windows for the front bedroom. Yikes! I feel bad for my guests.

kevininchitown, I think we lived in the same loft in Chicago, Uk Village? In addition to the toilet thing, there was also the fact that the street was an ambulance corridor down to UIC and County hospitals, so there was constant sirens at 3 in the morning. Oh, and the guy who moved in upstairs who was 40+, newly divorced, and bringing home ladies in high heels at all hours of the night, matched with him having his kids for the weekend who liked to wake up at 7am on Saturday and play with marbles, or something that sounded like marbles, on the floor right above my bed area.

The elevator in our apartment building has shaken the 10th floor (on which I live) almost as bad as an earthquake. Scared the poop out of me.

Also, the outlet in the bathroom is in the middle of the mirror -- not dead center, thankfully, but annoying, nonetheless. Also, you can't plug anything into the top receptacle; it will fall right out.

My townhouse is built on the edge of a small forested area and was cleared for development this year. A civet cat sometimes climb up the pipes and live under my roof. I am sorry to have taken away his home. Sometimes he drags things around and my cat is suspicious of the rooftop activities. I live alone and panicked when I first heard the sounds.

A neighbor says that the civet cat has made its home under the roof a few townhouses here.

While I love my new apartment in Chicago (beautiful and fun neighborhood, hardwood floors, a porch, and a pretty little courtyard hidden from the street), it has had more drawbacks than I expected. Mostly, it is very "dog friendly" which sounded great at the beginning, but has turned into the reason why I will never live in a building that allows pets (or at least pet owners--it's not the pets' fault their owners suck) again. The grass in the courtyard is non-existent because everyone lets their dogs do their business there rather than walk them on the street, and on hot days, the courtyard just smells like hot dog pee. Yum. Second, the combination of hardwood floors and dogs makes it sound like the people above me have a herd of horses with very sharp nails running through the apartment day and night, and no rugs because Fido might pee on them. And finally, nothing like cooking some delicious 4th of July ribs on my porch and finding someone else's dog sitting patiently by my grill waiting for their serving, while their owner parties in the courtyard. Ugh, crappy pet owners.

My block is so lovely by day. By night my neighbor likes to invite his friends over to hang out on the front stoop and drink until 3 am. Someone always gets into a drunken argument with his girlfriend. I keep hoping they'll move...

There is a baptist church across the street and a small community centre next door to my apartment. While I assumed that the church would have services, I didn't know that the singing would actually be quite terrible - although bearable.

For the community centre though, I didn't realize that they shuttle kids to school (2 blocks away) every day. And by kids, I mean loud, nasty kids. Oh, also I was unaware that on Wednesdays the community centre runs a food pantry. I'm all for the food pantry, but the people who come to use it... horrible. They park on both sides of the street (only one side is legal) and they block driveways, stand in the road, they yell, block intersections, litter, etc.... And they start gathering 2 hours before it actually starts, so trying to get out of my house to get to work is difficult...

When I moved into my condo as a first time homeowner, I was thrilled to be getting out of the various firetraps and broken friendships of young adult rental life.

Little did I realize that the builders and previous owner cut corners and jerry-rigged as much of the electrical and plumbing in my place as they could.

Several years after I moved in, I found out that the "drip-drip-drip" I constantly heard in my kitchen was actually a leaky pipe, and that everything that went down my drain leaked down two flights to the apartment on the bottom floor. Eventually enough moisture built up that it came gushing through the downstairs neighbors' kitchen wall in a torrent of rancid, moldy, unbelievably stinky water.

They moved out soon after that.

My neighbour slams her door shut with earth-shaking strength. lol

Not something you'd find out before moving in. :o)