HDB Neighbours

Hi! Hope everyone’s doing well so far. Would like to just hear out some opinions and perspectives here regarding the above topic.

Recently we moved into a HDB, we have always been staying in a condo and there’s quite a big difference in privacy and security.

Realised that in HDBs as there are bigger families here, it tends to be noisiest during evening and weekend compared to condos where it’s always quiet until you go down and use the amenities, neighbours tend to open their front door understandably to air their houses but also means that any sound from inside does come out like when they’re watching TV and quite a loud volume, cooking and the smell lingers in the corridor, slamming of the metal gates and oddly it’s not really sound proof because sounds from above and side are so much obvious compared to condos.

We realised that neighbours tend to be a little more KPO here and talk loudly when walking past corridors, letting their kids run about at corridors, people looking at your delivery parcels (literally slowing down to see what is at the front door) it’s just.. wow. And we installed a doorbell camera, which is legal and helps a lot when we have deliveries or unknown loitering at the front door, since then we stopped having them slowing down or looking into our house when we open the door just for a bit (so weird why would you look into someone’s house..)

So our neighbour next door has the TV inside the room from the sound of it, of course we were like sure cool, so we utilise the room next to it as a store room instead, can’t imagine sleeping in that room with the muffled tv noise. One time we had friends come over, they were entering the house and greeting us and the neighbour had the audacity to come out and stare at us which I did not appreciate, so I asked “do you wanna join us? Do you need something?” Which she then said we were noisy, and of course we had sound recordings of her tv noises from 8PM - 12AM daily because we have a in-house camera to check in our cats. Which I pulled out a few and told her like your daily tv noises everyday? Then she just went in her house muttering stuffs, I’m so sorry but is this normal in HDB? Just genuinely curious or we’re just at the wrong neighbourhood.

The privacy and security difference is really huge, we’re just 3 months in HDB and already thinking about moving back by year end. Genuinely seeking for perspectives! Thank you 🙏🏻