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!

We live in a ground-floor flat in a four-in-a-block building. We have our own little garden for the first time. But it's hard not to feel less-than compared to everyone in the giant sandstone houses round about. Odd.

Almost everyone I know lives in apartments. It’s only in la di da land where anyone can suggest people ‘prefer’ houses. People prefer to live in the best place they can afford; in most cases in the Midlands / SE and SW that now means apartments unless you earn a six figure salary.

I'm not rich and I don't know anyone who lives in a flat/apartment?

" It’s only in la di da land where anyone can suggest people ‘prefer’ houses."

That's a bit silly. A flat in an expensive area will be more expensive than a house in a cheaper area.

Vaseline - I completely agree that we should be building upwards in cities. We have a shortage of housing so we need to be more efficient with it. It would also cut down on car use. We need to sort out the leasehold issue and have more flats with access to an outdoor space.

The majority of apartments (flats) aren't nice nor in the centre of London so the apartment=nice area association doesn't exist.

The weather is crap in this country so if the sun comes out, you want to sit in your garden! Noise from other flats, lack of storage space, lack of privacy, nowhere to dry washing, can't have pets. If you have children, nowhere for them to play. I couldn't live in a flat now, I would feel like a caged hamster.

I live in a flat with beautifully kept gardens, in a nice part of a big city. The thought of living in a semi in the suburbs makes me run cold. But most of my friends are moving out to these kinds of places as they get older. Not sure I’ll ever want to follow - just sounds boring. Where do you go? Do you just hang around in your house when you get home?

I lived in flats in my 20s. Neighbours shagging above my bed at 3am, parties midweek so loud they shook the walls, culminating in upstairs flat owner putting a shotgun to my head. Flat living

I live now in a detached house with massive garden beautiful views masses of space and no one impeding my living.

Flats were fine til I had kids. No thanks now.

I live in a flat with beautifully kept gardens, in a nice part of a big city. The thought of living in a semi in the suburbs makes me run cold

You do know that they’re not the only options?
We live in a large 4 bed detached in a nice town with bars/restaurants/theatres/parks/museums. There’s plenty to do.

Having lived on the continent I do get where you're coming from. But as pp have said moving out the country and buying land has been what people have wanted for centuries, and as a result there's very little apartment stock big enough for families. I live in the north and the only apartments I know of would be seen as first time buyer/young professional properties and definitely not actively marketed for families.

I think the British obsession with gardens is a factor though.

OP (and any other Europeans) -
Does lack of garden not bother people? Even if you have kids? What if you want a big dog?!

Most of my friends have Victorian terraced houses and for the most part I don't envy them. Street parking nightmares (my apartment building has a car park). Noisy neighbours (my apartment is modern and sound-proofed). Poky entranceways that you can't swing a cat in (I have a huge hallway and vestibule). Freezing cold bathrooms stuck on the back of the house like an afterthought (I never even have to turn the radiator on in my bathroom as it's always so warm).
I do like the fireplaces, but I could always get an electric fireplace if
I decide I'm that bothered.
A garden isn't worth the hassle for the few days a year it's worth sitting out in. A balcony is just fine for growing herbs and drying clothes.

I lived in flats on and off for 10 years and left london because of that. Simple answer...garden!!!!! Also parking, noise but less so. The struggle with bins, washing etc. Im so glad those days are over.

Where would you hang your washing out?
You would use a dryer?

Where would you sit?
On a balcony or a terrace? I have one that is about 60 square feet. I grow a lot of herbs in pots, plus little shrubs and lots of perennials and annuals, and tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. I have a wrought iron table and three chairs out there, and a wooden bench.

What about pets?
They can live in an apartment.

I had three children in two different apartments at the time exH and I bought a house. The last apartment had a nice courtyard and a few children they could play with there - riding tricycles, playing with sidewalk chalk, playing school on the back stairs and back decks. I sometimes ran a bath in the afternoon so they could splash around. They played with indoor toys in the extreme cold and in the extreme heat too - building forts with couch cushions, playing with the old rocking horse, dolls house, blocks, cars, dolls, art, etc.

In the house the DCs could do all that too, and go out and play front or back, and it really was very nice, partly thanks to the lovely neighbours we had. Sadly I had to sell due to divorce. So back to an apartment we went. It took a little while to adjust, but the same public facilities were available nearby for fun (pool and rink, parks, library) and the older ones were just starting to leave for university while the younger ones were getting to the point where they really didn't 'play' as such.

AnElderlyLadyOfMediumHeight Thu 26-Apr-18 19:01:11
Part of it is definitely the British dislike of people and of living too close to others. Things are a lot more communal over here in Germany. There's an expression 'Hausgemeinschaft' - house community - for the people living in an apartment building. Even with houses, there's much less demarcation of space - often there aren't fences or other boundaries between gardens (this still freaks me out)

I agree 100%, and I suspect the Germans and other Europeans and Scandinavians brought this sensibility to the US, where I live.

My mum (Irish) is in her 80s and Dsis and I have been trying for about a decade now to get her to sell her 3 bedroom semi in the Dublin suburbs and move to a flat. She simply will not entertain the thought despite the fact that she moans constantly about keeping the garden, worrying about the roof when there are storms, the effort and expense of keeping the place painted and updated, etc. Living cheek by jowl with neighbours would mean having your every move subject to inspection by other people, and everything you said would be overheard, apparently .

She worries a lot about me, living in an apartment with an outside back stairs that the upstairs neighbour and her guests use, going past my back door. The last time she was over she fussed about getting a blind for the back door glass pane so nobody would look in. I assured her that people are welcome to look into my kitchen if they really want to but that nobody wants to and people here have developed the mental habit of not looking into other peoples houses or trampling over other people's front gardens just because they can. It's inconceivable to her.

"Where would you hang your washing out?
You would use a dryer?"

Rental flats where I live don't come with dryers and have no space to put one in. They're also expensive to run and not environmentally friendly.

"Where would you sit?
On a balcony or a terrace?"

It's not the norm for flats in the UK to have terraces or even small balconies and the ones that do are expensive.

I don't think the average small garden is suitable for a big dog. A few acres, certainly.

I do see the appeal of a nice apartment in the city and its probably my post chikdren sim but things I didn't like about my flat were hearing other people's noise and not having my own garden to eat out in and have a paddling pool etc. I also found keeping the children quiet all the time hard.

Because, while admittedly this is changing here now, generally apartments in this country are not the nice spacious balcony wielding apartments that the rest of the the continent has.

I live in a three bedroom council flat. It's me and three kids. No storage etc and it's very very small and noisy. We have security though and no more rental contracts!

This is the only 3 bed apartment on the market in our city.
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-35215443.html#_full-description

It's not really suitable for families at all and for a similar price, you could buy this, still be in spitting distance of the city centre, and across the road from the hospital if you work there, and have room to rattle around.
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-47019216.html

Or something absolutely gorgeous if you don't mind being on the outskirts and really do want character.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-72351449.html

We do have a small balcony though

When I lived in a flat, the person above me would wake me up at 3am with their washing machine. Also they had a leak which came through my ceiling, they were out overnight, so it continued to drip all night.
I like to have my bedroom upstairs, as then it's more private from guests. I wouldn't live in a bungalow for the same reason. Also I wouldn't want to open my bedroom window at night in case a stranger climbed in.
I don't really want to live with neighbours who have an impact on my home. There's more noise and communal areas in flats.

The problem with the UK is that the elements that make life liveable are so pricy. Storage space, the comfort of a dryer (it's no more environmentally unfriendly than the mould-producing practice of hanging wet laundry indoors with the resulting health problems and need for medicines for asthma, bronchitis, etc) a little balcony that would fit a couple of chairs and a little table, maybe a potted plant or two.. You pay a premium price for elements that are taken for granted elsewhere because not everything is monetised to the extent that it is in the UK.

'My' washer and dryer are in the basement of the old subdivided house I live in. They are shared by me and my downstairs neighbour. When I lived in apartments before, the buildings were purpose built and featured communal washers and dryers in the basement too. I used to carry little DD1 down three flights of stairs in a back carrier, rain, shine, or snow, with the big basket of laundry in front. I kept my detergent down in the basement. I would load up the washer and then head back up, then down again to load up the dryer, then back down and up again with the dry clothes. It was hard work. I used to time some of it for her naps. DS came along and I managed it while he was napping, while wrangling 3 yo DD1 downstairs and back up multiple times.

God am sick of parvenu boasters 😡

Unless you have a mansion sadly I don't communal gardens are so much more spacious than private ones, and my current garden has a decent size.
I never bothered and loved my dryer, but there was always plenty of space to hang laundry outside when I was living in a flat, hidden from view as opposed to plonked in the middle of your back garden.

By all means, prefer a house to a flat, but you can't say that flats are a nightmare to live in. They feel so much more luxurious than a house, if nothing else because of the communal cleaner, gardener and management company dealing with everything. The price is divided by the number of flats, it's a lot cheaper to maintain too.

I do miss my flats sometimes!

We live in a flat, it’s tiny but I love it - big communal garden where the kids can rampage with the neighbours’ kids, barbecues in summer, lots of greenery and very social (well, not so much in winter!). It’s a very efficient use of land but still pleasant to live in. That’s what living in a flat with a family ought to be like! Usually isn’t though.