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!

A french family i know with 2 small kids love living in quite centrallish London over Paris. They say there they would be in a flat, no garden, no parks, no community. Here it costs them the same (over 1 million) to buy a house, with garden, ypur own space, big green spaces nearby, plentiful transport. Their thumbs up is to london and they are French!

I have family in Spain. My mum says her cousin has lived most of her life in a box. It has e bedrooms but is still a box with no outside space on a busy road. There this is probably considered central and an advantage! The next generation of family rent a flat as is the normal even with kids, high up in a big new tower, nomoutside dpsce and not larticularly big. I'm not sure if any on has mentioned that especially in Spain the preference is always to rent or buy a brand new flat, others are considered second hand and not desirable.

I grew up in a big house in a suburb close to London which I loved. Having never had the income my father had I have never owned my own house until I met dh who had just sold his large house in a suburb of London. We started looking together for somewhere and although I was determined to live in a house after so many years of living in flats, for our money the houses all seemed claustrophobic, the third bedroom was always just a but too small. Then we found our current home which is a large, v spacious apartment, v central, can walk to town easily. And we love it so much! We have way more space than we would in a house the same price, love being on one level, great views as we’re 3rd floor. We don’t want pets and have no time for gardening so those things don’t matter to us. I would find it so hard to live in a house again now.

Snork there really is no need to be so snarkh (no pun intended). I already posted up thread to say that I appreciate that all the reasons that were given are absolutely valid

Aww Paula, I wasn't being snarkh, I was just pointing out that I'd rumbled the reason for your thread

Apartments in continental Europe are bigger and nicer than in the UK and Ireland a friend of mine grew up in a 300 sqm appt in the city centre. I don't think anyone wouldn't like that

antisocial behaviour in stairway, including but not limited to drug taking and dealing, graffiti and noise at all hours from teenage brats

more space in my house

I couldn’t live without my garden now. Space for the kids, a place for me to dry my washing

nicer neighbourhood

neighbours are fab

Thing is though, these are not things that are always present in flat living and absent from house living. I live in a flat and there is no anti-social behaviour in the stairwell; I have plenty of space; a garden; it's a nice neighbourhood; and my neighbours are lovely.

Apartments in continental Europe are bigger and nicer than in the UK
Well some probably are but I really don't understand it when people post things about continental Europe as if it were one homogenous place. Btw there are some really horrible flats in Romania.

Not all flats in Europe are necessarily massive. We often like to stay in apartments instead of hotels when we go on city breaks and I've stayed in absolutely teensy ones in Barcelona, Lisbon and Berlin. Absolutely fine for a holiday obviously but these were in blocks with mostly permanent residents.

Max - I agree that they're not necessarily bigger, but in some countries there are more custom-built apartment blocks and you're more likely to have a balcony or terrace. Over here, many flats are in converted houses or above a shop and rarely have balconies.
Where I live, only the modern ones near the marina have balconies. It's very windy down there and the apartments are expensive.

Glasgow some apartments are like this

In the country where I come from most people in the city prefer to live in flats as they are normally enclosed more secure and to be honest down there I prefer them too. However, the flats there are totally freehold so if we are talking about living in a property that you want to own in the UK, I’d go for a freehold house as flats here in UK are normally leasehold. I don’t want to think that I’m paying the odds for it and still is not totally mine.

British living in an Italian apartment.

I would say an Englishman's home is his castle and most at least English, if not British, want to draw up the drawbridge at the end of the working day. I struggled in the multi occupancy city centre apartment and having to say "buongiorno" and smile three times with a toddler in tow and five bags of shopping, negotiating my way up stairs. We now live in an apartment which is only two families and love it a lot more. Our apartment's balconies are also considerably larger than an average lawn, but we don't have grass to mow, which is frankly like having all the perks of the garden without that nagging feeling that you have to do jobs forever more! I agree you would be mad to aspire to live in a British town centre, as they are in general ugly and soulless places now, which is a real shame. living in the town centre when it is historic, full of fresh bread shops and street parties and piazzas is really not equivalent!

As someone who's spent more of her adult life living in flats and only a few short blissful years in a (terraced) house, it's the fucking NOISE. Dozens of different neighbours all around, noise at all times of the day and night, I hate it.

Snork, I don't know how you extrapolated from the observation of your son about a few people he knows that Europeans on the whole are more afraid of crime than Britons, and I dispute the notion that British people in general are not afraid of crime.

I also think your observations on what British people want out of a house, be it ever so humble, could be summed up as... getting as close as they can to the lifestyle of the landed gentry.

We lived in apartments in Paris for four years. It was fine though I missed a garden. Then we bought a house in a village with neighbors.. We grew to dread the weekends as they partied non stop. We sold at a loss and bought a house in the middle of nowhere. So happy.

Loads of nice posh flats/apartments in Edinburgh. Often with keys to a shared but private to residents only garden. It’s the architecture that lends itself to this.
We moved from tenement flat to a house due to the need to store bikes, no idea where the Dutch and danish etc flat dwellers store their bikes.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67940621.html

I own a house and an apartment, I love the house so much more! I love having a garden and not having to live high up - I dislike those awful modern 3 storey townhouses with the main living space on the first floor for the same reason.

mathanxiety

Hmm, I take your point about my sons experience of Europeans not being necessarily indicative of a whole nation - I do, but it is every single European he's encountered and he knows quite a few as his job brings him into close contact. But I accept that they don't all feel afraid. I do think that Brits in general don't think about crime from day to day, or particularly fear being a victim of it though.

I can't see, however, what you mean about people wanting a house to be striving to be part of the landed gentry. It doesn't really make any sense, I've never, ever heard anyone say they want their house for the feeling of gentrification they get. Every single person I know has wanted a house to simply be able to close their door and be responsible for their own property, without reference to anyone else regarding repairs, decoration (shared spaces in flats etc) and maintenance. Additionally, they want no-one above or below them. Most people don't want side attachment either and so most people who don't have one, hope to own a detached house, eventually, for that reason. But by far the biggest motivation, I believe, would be to have a private garden that they can enjoy themselves and let their children play in without let or hindrance. I know after years of London flat living (very upmarket large flat with huge balcony) that's what I craved the most and my daughter now who lives in a house with a very small outside space is trying to move to a house with a large garden for her children. She's the most unmaterialistic girl I've ever met. She just wants space for her small children to have room to play happily.

I really don't think almost anyone who buys a house to be thinking to themselves, "Hmm, now I feel like the landed gentry"

I can see that train of thought might happen if the majority were buying houses with hundreds of acres, but even then, I think the majority thought would be more along the lines of, "Wow, all this space, now I won't be bothered by anyone else". I think it just comes down to that really, we don't want to be bothered by other people, which is why flat living is so horrible, because in so many ways, you're constantly involved.

museum mum's 5 bed of £1m scottish flat illustates how the British are. If i were going to spend that kind of money I would want a garden separateion from other people a free hold (if they have freeholds in scottish law) etc. i think we just don't like flat as much as houses in the UK.

snorkfavour I agree with you about not wanting to be bothered by other people's needs/wants once you close your front door but I think we also don't want to impose our own needs/wants on others

I live in a huge flat and my dcs do t want to move to a house.

Our rooms are enormous (smallest 18x12), high ceilings, tall windows which let loads of light in, walk in storage cupboards and it will be standing longer than most houses built in the last 70 years.

It’s a freehold so when I own it, I’ll own it forever.

We have no awareness of neighbours, it’s stone built so the walls and ceilings are very think. We don’t hear noise.

Our heating bills are low because the heat comes up from below.

I like being on one level- I’ve never needed a stair gate or baby monitor.

I feel safer having an outside door as well as an internal one- I get no cold callers!

We can leave the windows open when we go out so it’s lovely and fresh.

There’s a communal garden we can use when we want. It gets maintained by a gardener and we only pay a fraction of that cost.

There’s a big communal hall for storing bikes/ buggies so they don’t need brought into the house.

Best of all, living in such a high density area we have every shop you could want on our door stop.

I have a car but could live here without one.

There’s a great sense of community with people saying hello to each other in the street/ cafe/ shop.

But there’s also the anonymity of the city which I’d prefer over an estate of curtain twitchers!

I adore living in a flat in a city centre (not a particularly smart/posh one but it’s nice nonetheless)
Then again I live alone

Snork
I've never, ever heard anyone say they want their house for the feeling of gentrification they get. Every single person I know has wanted a house to simply be able to close their door and be responsible for their own property, without reference to anyone else regarding repairs, decoration (shared spaces in flats etc) and maintenance. Additionally, they want no-one above or below them. Most people don't want side attachment either and so most people who don't have one, hope to own a detached house, eventually, for that reason...I think it just comes down to that really, we don't want to be bothered by other people, which is why flat living is so horrible, because in so many ways, you're constantly involved.

I think I expressed myself clumsily. What I was getting at was that all the things that go with house ownership, and in particular the freedom from being bothered by nuisance and noise, are essentially the lifestyle elements that the gentry take for granted.

I do appreciate the desire for even a little patch of garden. I grew up in a house with a lovely big garden and it was wonderful.

@PaulaLollie I grew up in Ireland, in a detactched house, etc. I moved to Italy and I lived in an apartment in the centre of Milan, I could touch the madonnina from my bedroom window, literally. And i hated it. No privacy, lack of respect from others in the building, noise at all hours, no sense of security.

I hate flats and apartments. I hate that your neighbours know if you talk, scream, fight, fart or make love. I hate that my neighbours wake up at 4 am to go for work and I hear them get out of bed, go, (yes actually go) to the bathroom, degrade their wife, slam their door and wake up my kids in the process.

Tbf, I prefer my detached house where if someone sits under my window annoying me I can, and will, throw a bucket of ice cold water over them.