America seems to have a glut of poorly made "luxury" apartments. Luxury in this sense is they slapped up a standard wood frame multifamily until built to the ab

America seems to have a glut of poorly made "luxury" apartments. Luxury in this sense is they slapped up a standard wood frame multifamily until built to the absolute minimum building codes possible and threw in a concrete counter-top. Most seem to use the IBC which has incredibly lax sound transmission standards. Apparently they don't have to test for anything low frequency -- just standard human talking frequencies. The best part is that STC is measured in a lab, not in the actual unit during code inspection. (I believe if you measure it after a build it can be dramatically lower). I've always been able to hear neighbors talking in wooden units I've lived in. Always guessed STC isn't even part of the code inspection but no idea. I'm with you 100%. Let's focus on building high quality units that will actually last longer than 10 years. Sure, it'll drive up the rental prices, but hopefully people would move out of the cheap garbage everyone is used into nicer units with privacy. That would open up a lot of space in now less desirable units. Health code would be a good start. Hell, create a new sound transmission standard & test that actually requires the range of frequencies you'll hear in an apartment (including subwoofers and doors slamming), and make landlords have to supply that information if requested. At least I could actually shop around for something better instead of rolling the dice on neighbors.