For 16 years now I have rented a basement apartment. Price has always been nice, I now pay 6000 NOK monthly plus heating, so I have always been lucky with low prices ever since I moved out from home in 2000. A couple in their fifties are the house owners, and they still have a son living at home. He occassionally have some wild parties that irritate me, but other than that the house is quite calm.
Like Thor I live in a wealthy part of my city, and there have been lots of noisy building and refurbishing in my neighborhood earlier, but thankfully not now.
Some years down the line I will probably buy my own apartment, but I have kind of got stuck here, lol.