To ask why the Brits hate apartment-living?

[PaulaLollie]

Hi all, I have been living in the UK for a few years, but I am originally from Europe and I have lived in multiple countries before moving to the UK.

I have never understood why the Brits seem to be so into living in a house vs. living in an apartment.

Where I come from, the wealthy live in huge, renovated, fancy apartments in nice historical buildings, right in the city centre. That is "the dream" for most, if you see what I mean.

In my home country, living in a house most of the times means living in the countryside/ suburbs, which is not what most people aspire to do, if they have the means to live in the city centre. The concept of having a family = living in a house does not really exist.

For example, I come from a comfortable family background, went to private school, and grew up in an apartment. Nearly all my childhood friends did the same. It never crossed my mind that growing up in an apartment was anything less than ideal.

Here in the UK (as widely shown here on Mumsnet) it sounds like the dream is living in a house, while living in an apartment is really not that great if you have an alternative.

Please, British mumsnetters, can you shed some light on this aspect of the British society? I genuinely just don't get it!

Thank you!

"OP why on earth have you seized on speculation about emulating gentry and ignored all the posts pointing out the facts about the quality of most apartments in the UK? The simplest explanation is usually the right one..."

I totally appreciate that the other facts listed are valid as well, especially the point PP made about the quality of apartment housing stock being different in the UK vs. on the continent.

I would never ever live in a leasehold property again. Stung big time when we lived in a flat and I would never consider it again even for the nicest flat in the world.

Garden

Only reason for me.

Plus I don't aspire to city living. At all.

I agree that it is related to the quality of flats in the UK. I often visit friends on the continent who live on what they consider ‘standard’ apartments. I have lived in flats here in the UK and looked at expensive flats to buy in London. The facilities available with apartments on the Continent are just not available in normal apartments here for the same price. For example, underground car parking, insulation that is so good that the owner never has to turn on the heating and we never hear any evidence of neighbours, beautiful communal garden areas...

Before I married my DH, I lived in a lovely maisonette in Greater London. It was the first place I owned and it meant a lot to me. I acquired a 4 year old cat from a rescue centre, she was my faithful companion until she had to be PTS 10 years later, which was heartbreaking.

When I married my DH, we did consider living there together, but he was well settled in his job whereas I was a legal secretary, and it was easy enough to find another job. I loved my job, though, and it was a wrench to leave, as well as a lovely group of friends.

It never occurred to us to buy a flat together. We pooled our resources and bought a 3 bedroomed detached house in the suburbs. Because that is what the majority of us aspire to in this country. We have 2 DDs and 4 cats now, and my DH loves gardening.

I lived in a flat once and hated it. I like a proper house because it feels more spacious and I find it's 'our' space. We currently have a yard, I'd love a garden though. Hopefully in the future we will do.

it's interesting to note the huge difference across the EU between flat living, compared to houses, from Spain where it's about 70% flats, to Ireland where it's about 90% houses.

If the laws regarding buying and selling leasehold properties were comparable to those in Europe

If there were laws on rent and rent capping as there are in some countries

If there wasn't such a sense of entitlement to own property, ownership wasn't seen as something to 'aspire' to and renting wasn't seen as 'dead money'

If the flats were better built, better soundproofed, more 'mansion style' apartments and not just 'rabbit hutches' with pitiful soundproofing

If there was a greater sense of civic pride and people looked after public and communal spaces the way they should

If there were 'proper' managment of these properties and dedicated concierges and maintenance teams

If the management companies weren't out to screw profit out of every opportunity

If property owners thought of their duties to the other tenants, didn't see property ownership as 'investing' and something to be done to screw as great a profit as possible out of tenants or buyers

If planning laws didn't allow for the building of instant 'dormitory suburbs' away from city centres, amenities, shops and leisure facilities where kids turn feral and adults lose hope

Then I might consider an apartment.

As it stands, I'm in a Victorian, mid-terrace house, close to a (failing) city centre which is almost as bad as a flat.

But I own the freehold.

My experience of flats abroad and here in the UK is: in many countries abroad, flats are large and spacious with excellent soundproofing, somewhere to dry your washing (like a dedicated basement room), and access to a nice garden. Also you can find them in quiet areas with little car traffic if that was important and many EU continental cities are pleasant to live in.

Here in UK almost everything is the opposite. Many flats are tiny and dark, no access to garden, crap soundproofing so you can hear the folk upstairs walking about and having conversations (how unreasonable of them!), nowhere to dry washing, while in city centres there is smelly traffic roaring up and down the road outside.

For me the killer with flats is the noise. I can't be doing with other people's noise and my experience suggests that Brits are far less considerate of their neighbours than in many countries abroad: the attitude is "F* off, it's my home and I'm allowed to do what I like in it."

Which is why I'm currently very happy to live in a detached home in a semi-rural area.

Because the flats we have here are generally nothing like the apartments you describe! Surely that’s not too difficult to understand?!

I do think a bigger issue is that 'shared spaces' are seen as for poorer people and the British mentality is you shouldn't have to share your hall ways, stairs, and certainly not garden space! Communal spaces are not popular in Britain and have never been seen as desirable.

And yes, to the "living vertically, not horizontally" someone else mentioned - same floor space, but in tall thin properties, rather than wider, stacked properties, is how the British dealt with the lack of space in City centres. (You don't need to build as high as well as you don't lose property space to shared hallways /stairwells - these can be turned into usable space and traditionally the hall and stairwells in grander townhouses were used as extensions to entertaining/living space, not 'dead space' as they are in an apartment building)

If you look at something like the Royal Crescent in Bath, this was designed to look like one large building, and effectively was built as one building, but rather than sell it as split into apartments as a similar property would have been in Paris, the architects split it into several thinner houses. Everyone has their own front door. (Obviously since then several of the houses have been split into apartment, but they weren't designed that way).

The way the British got round trying to squeeze several properties into a limited space in a city was to build terrace housing, outside of business areas, London is still surprisingly low rise.

My Dh works away, we rent him a flat.

I like it in short bursts (me and the dog visit a couple of times a month) I miss my garden for the dog, there are no lifts (not that I'd go in one anyway) but I'd send up my bags . Dread loading and unloading. Can hear neighbours. There is parking but its a small car park for bigger cars.

It's easier to keep clean than our house I'll give it that. It has a lovely balcony which gets the afternoon sun, handy for drying clothes. A big plus is its in a fab spot for train into town, gorgeous park for the dog, it has beautiful gardens which the gardener lovingly tends, it has a good feel about it.

In the future my Dh is talking about buying a flat so we could both live there full time together but unless its on the ground floor with outside space I am not keen, plus I really don't like living so close to other people and not sure I'd cope with it full time.

If the laws regarding buying and selling leasehold properties were comparable to those in Europe

Or if they were the same as Scotland. No residential property is leasehold. All flats are owned outright.

Nice apartments are lovely! But basically to get an appropriately sized and spec'd apartment you have to spend some serious cash. It is cheaper to move to the 'burbs into a terrace house.

I bought a house as the apartments I could afford were all shitty in size.

If I had had an extra £300k to spend i'd have gone for a nice central 2 bed flat c. 1200 sq ft with outside space.

I would love an apartment like Frasier's but not affordable in the UK!

Very helpful chart above on this page, thanks.UK/Ireland many more in houses etc as we would expect.

we bought a house with an hour's commuting rather than a flat closer to work for all the traditional British reasons and I am very pleased (and now work from home so have a lot of space here). I like that connection to the soil. I do all the garden myself. I was just outside looking at the blossom on my cherry tree and looking at some of the raspberry canes. I like peace and silence and no one being around. We are very musical - 3 sons won music scholarships and I need space for my grand piano and I like us to be able to play music with no neighbours being affected (the house if detached),

I prefer freehold to leasehold. I like space. We had 7 living here plus nanny (and a morning cleaner every week day morning) and two of us also working from hiome for a time and I need shelves for files, we have 2 garages. We like somewhere to park cars - we have had up to 4 cars here and more with visitors, had about 7 bikes at one point - now down to 2 plus a scooter.

may be we are a private people in the UK? You see spaniards out every night parading their fancy clothes to others and then returning to tiny flats whereas the British might have rather scruffy clothes and not spend much on them but would rather have a bigger house.

An Englishman's home is his castle.

Check this out.

Milennials don't need living rooms, apparently.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/25/millennials-dont-need-living-rooms-says-leading-architect-says/

Flats look like they may be smaller in the future.....

God forbid someone should have to live halfway to Hull!

It's by no means all Brits; that's a very sweeping statement. I've lived in flats for years and don't like them any less or more than houses. I do have a flat with a private garden, though, so I can sit outside/put washing out etc, which I do realise makes a difference; but plenty of flats in the UK have gardens/balconies/terraces.

I grew up in apartments in Germany. As has already been said it's a completely different state of affairs to have apartments in many European countries. Even the lower grade ones we lived in were huge with massive bedrooms and private balconies that you can put plants and furniture etc on. We even used to have a couple of sun beds and a bbq.

In those places and the US their policy seems to be "how big and comfortable can we make it?" while in the UK it's "how small can we get away with building it, what's the minimum we have to provide?" Quite dispiriting really.

We lived in a maisonette in London and one of the bedrooms was rendered unusable as the large elderly lady above would lumber round above from 4am. I'm not a light sleeper but was so loud it would wake anyone and you couldn't yet back to sleep as the noise constant.

Never again.

Flats in this country are often cramped and poorly constructed with inadequate sound proofing. I lived in my first flat for 8 years and you could hear the couple upstairs blowing their noses, stirring their tea, flushing the loo and lots of other things you don‘t want to hear. They weren‘t noisey people, they just lived there. Never again.

What you're describing sounds like Spain, where people like to in apartments but may have a country property where they go for weekends, especially in the summer. I haven't researched but I suspect the preference may be historical/cultural. For example, in Germany it is much more common to rent a property than it is in some European countries. When we lived in Spain, there was a big trend to sell off campo houses to Brits who wanted to have the sort of peace and isolation only the very wealthy could afford in the UK. I think we are a nation that very much loves our gardens and pets, and that is probably part of it.

Loving all the snobby replies from people that live in houses! Some people enjoy living in flats, and some live there because they don’t have a choice. Get off your high horses, you have a garden and a spare room, big deal!