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Noisy Sexy Neighbor Survey: The results are in!!

Teri Rogers Headshot - Floral
By Teri Karush Rogers  |
February 12, 2010 - 4:40AM
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Feel free to let loose in bed this Valentine's Day if you can bear the awkward morning-after elevator ride: Our loud neighbor-sex survey found that although two-thirds of apartment dwellers overheard a neighbor having sex and more than half wished they hadn't, almost none complained.

However, you may still want to muzzle your moans if you find it creepy that nearly a fifth of those we surveyed become aroused by their neighbors' mating sounds.

Read on for the highlights: 

1.   You are probably not as quiet as you think

Of 407 people we surveyed, 68 percent reported hearing a neighbor having sex.  The specific sounds overheard were generically reminiscent of Halloween: Thumping (60%), moaning (56%), screaming (28%) and “other” (23%).

2.  One neighbor’s audio porn is another one's nuisance

Just how did our survey-takers feel about these erotic soundtracks?

Twenty-six percent claimed indifference, while others reported feeling aroused (16%), annoyed (19%), jealous (19%), disgusted (11%) or anxious (9%). 

(We digress for a tragiocomic survey moment, relayed by one of our interns-on-the-street:

Intern: “How does hearing your neighbors in bed make you feel?”

Woman: “Jealous.”

Man, concerned: “Really?”

Intern: “Have your neighbors ever complained about you having loud sex?”

Woman, blunt and dejected: “NO.”

“It was sad,” relays our eye-witness intern.  “I can almost guarantee that when they went home that night, they let go of all inhibitions and rocked the house. Or broke up.”)

Even though more than half of our respondents owned up to a negative reaction, 89 percent said they had never complained to their neighbor, the management or a staff member. (See The agony of the ecstasy: 4 tips for overcoming loud neighbor sex.)

“I would be afraid they might complain about me,” elaborated a twentysomething woman on the Lower East Side.

3. Nighttime is not necessarily the right time

Most people reported overhearing their neighbors’ conjugal moments in the evening (29%) or the middle of the night (46%).  

A third would prefer that loud fornicators do their thing in the afternoon; others voted for the evening (20%) and the middle of the night (35%)--except for one enthusiastic respondent who noted that she would like her neighbors to have sex all the time.

Note to early risers: Almost no one wants to hear you in the morning (12%).

4.  What goes around comes around

While most people (88%) said they’d never been on the receiving end of a loud-sex complaint, about a quarter  admitted that they try to keep quiet, while a third said it depended on their blood alcohol content.

"I'm normally not loud, but if I'm drinking, it's not until the next morning that I'm actually terrified about what my neighbors heard," one Lower East Side woman told us.

Related posts:

The agony of the ecstasy: 4 tips for overcoming loud neighbor sex

Sex & the Neighbors

Booty calls rattle condo

What to do about those prostitutes in your building 

The $100,000 love affair:  How your super's sex life can cost you money

Private dancers: Tales from the elevator security cam

 

Teri Rogers Headshot - Floral

Teri Karush Rogers

Founder & Publisher

Founder and publisher Teri Karush Rogers launched Brick Underground in 2009. As a freelance journalist, she had previously covered New York City real estate for The New York Times. Teri has been featured as an expert on New York City residential real estate by The New York Times, New York Daily News, amNew York, NBC Nightly News, The Real Deal, Business Insider, the Huffington Post, and NY1 News, among others. Teri earned a BA in journalism and a law degree from New York University.

Brick Underground articles occasionally include the expertise of, or information about, advertising partners when relevant to the story. We will never promote an advertiser's product without making the relationship clear to our readers.

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