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!

I’ve had a flat in France and a U.K. semi detached house. There was no contest in terms of sound, our French neighbours had a toddler and a baby and I literally never heard them, only if they were on the balcony and making a lot of noise. Neighbours above had a house party which sounded like furniture being shuffled about but was clearly a bit of a mad, loud party when you went outside.

UK neighbours, heard their coughing, laughing, even if they had children visiting I would hear their footsteps thundering up and down the living room. Nightmare.

Lots of perks to a house but my experience is that the quality of the build makes a massive difference.

It depends where you are. I live in a tenement flat in Glasgow and it's huge. High ceilings, massive kitchen and living room, storage cupboards in the hall and living room. It's freezing in winter but that's because there's no double glazing. Communal garden too.

When I read Elena Ferrante's novels describing the spacious Italian apartments I thought about this - it isn't very common for people to aspire to live in flats here, especially when they have children. I've lived in flats before but wouldn't go back to it. I like having a garden and would feel cooped up in a flat. I also like the greater privacy.

Good luck Charlie.

A few years I read a book about home life in Victoria England. The author said they in England preferred to live vertically, in houses with multiple floors, and that people on the continent preferred to live horizontally, all rooms on one floor. The author also made the point that English people preferred not to have to deal with their neighbours on the staircase or in the elevator. Generalizations, I know, but it seems to match the views of other posters.

I'm not in the UK, but I will post that, as a single, childless person, I prefer my condo, as I can't be arsed to do garden work. I have a balcony (but I have vertigo, so rarely use it). My clothes are dried in the dryer or on a rack. Many of my neighbours have pets.

Someone asked the difference between flats and apartments. I would guess that a flat is in a house and apartment is in a medium or highrise building.

We live in a detached house at least an acre of garden between us and our perfectly pleasant neighbours.
We have parking for several cars.
We have a lovely private garden with woods at the back.
We have dogs.
We are noisy.

I live in an apartment in a European city. We've lived in this particular for a couple of years. Two Fridays ago I was unwell and came home from work early. Returning from the pharmacy, I saw someone at the door to the apartment opposite mine. That's when I found out a 4 month old baby lives opposite us. We've never heard it.

The only sound we hear is if we are standing right behind our front door (e.g. just about to leave or just returned) and a neighbour walks past, then we can hear light footsteps outside when they pass directly in front of the door. There are 6 other neighbours on our floor.

Everyone here lives in a flat. As the OP says, living in a house would mean that we live in the country, which would be lovely but a totally different lifestyle and also require us to have skills such as gardening and swimming pool maintenance or to personally hire and pay someone to do those jobs and be at home to let them in, as well as to receive parcels.

Garden
Parking
Mobility in older age
Pets
Noise from other neighbours
Fees

Lots of reasons I prefer a house to a flat.

A few years I read a book about home life in Victoria England. The author said they in England preferred to live vertically, in houses with multiple floors, and that people on the continent preferred to live horizontally, all rooms on one floor. The author also made the point that English people preferred not to have to deal with their neighbours on the staircase or in the elevator. Generalizations, I know, but it seems to match the views of other posters

Interesting and very true.

I live in a luxury city centre apartment in France and it's to do with town planning. Here city centre = middle class, suburbs = working class. Think banlieue with cités. City centre : close to train station, shops, museums etc. Everything in walking distance. Suburbs = no culture, boring.
I think British people are acutely aware of their neighbours, more sensitive to others which takes up a lot of head space. Always being offended or concerned about offending. Just look at AIbU!
We don't worry about hearing neighbours or being heard. We just get on with it!
Of course there are exceptions (MC living in suburban houses)

I prefer a house as I need a garden for pets and herbs for cooking.

It's frustrating being in a flat on a sunny day and not being able to open doors onto the garden. Poky balconies really aren't the same.

We have a three bed house which is detached, just big enough to have brought up two children, with garage and garden. I won't swap it until too old to climb the stairs.

In what little good weather we get here, the double doors at the back can be opened out into the garden in summer to enjoy the birdsong. When teenagers we never had to worry too much about DC making a noise in the house playing music within reason, a great bonus. The patio is currently full of pots with bulbs flowering, soon to be planted with summer bedding.

We are on the town boundary with fields to one side, shops half a mile away and our back garden is not overlooked, as we have bungalows to each side. It was a great choice, DH wanted to go for a semi, but this was worth the extra bit on the mortgage at the time.

I like to have a garden- to sit in (on the one day of sun a year!), for DC to play in, for the dog to play in. Oh, and when it's raining or at night can just open back door for dog to go out to toilet.

This makes me miss my little studio flat in my home country (Scandinavia). It's a long ago now, back in the nineties but I still sometimes miss it. The block itself was a bog standard 60's building, in the attic there was a secure storage cabinet for each flat, a vast area to dry washing, especially larger things like sheets, a sauna where you had an allocated time slot each week to use it and in the basement there was a secure bike storage. Communal areas and lifts were always clean and well kept. And all this was very standard what it comes to flats, it was what your regular citizen would expect to find in a block of flats.

Living in a flat/apartment is quite different concept compared to the UK. The blocks tend to be built in groups of 3 or 4 and have an outdoor play area, bike storage (you never see a bike wedged in the balcony), communal BBQ area etc in the middle. There are rules about not putting your washing machine on after 10pm etc. You of course get anti-social activity and arseholes anywhere but these rules and communal living tends to be more respected than here in the Uk. Here I find the attitude " I well do whatever I like" is far more prevalent.

suburbs = working class

Depends on the suburb. Versailles, St Germain en Laye = middle class, La Défense = working class.

Hell is other people. Fewer common walls/areas = less like living in hell.

Privacy, garden, pets, storage, not having to smell the 24hour weed smoking of your idiot neighbour or the tap dancing and opera singing of your nicer neighbour.

I can't wait to move.

Also, my fellow country men hate nothing more than having to talk to strangers or even neighbours, everybody just ignores each other if they happen to call the lift the same time . If a stranger says hello or tries to chat, it considered they must be either drunk or a foreigner .

Compared to them, Brits are honestly very jovial and sociable nation!

My brother lives in an apartment in Copenhagen. They're beautiful, large spaces, with room for everything and in the middle of each block there's communal space for everyone to use. His building has a playground in the middle, communal bikes for children, huge recycling area, 8 lifts which open onto shared patios. Really family orientated, I love it.

It's an amazing way of living, but it just doesn't seem to happen here on a large scale.

@RidingWindhorses
Versailles and saint Germain en Laye are towns, not suburbs

@duchyduke I don't know where you are thinking of by 'The Midlands' but I know plenty of places in both East and West Midlands where you can buy a house for around £120,000

My poky flat in England has very thin walls, small bedrooms, a kitchen with no window and no (not even communal) outside space.

There is a Scandinavian style apartment block in my town but it's very expensive to buy there.

The difference between 'flats' and 'apartments '

Apartments are the spacious homes you see on TV, where you stay on holiday, or the kind of place the OP is describing

A flat is a residence in a purpose built block, or a divided house where most people in the UK live if they can't afford a house (in the area they want to live)

Versailles and saint Germain en Laye are towns, not suburbs

There are towns in suburbs like Richmond, Wimbledon, Kingston...

It isn’t just British that aspire to have a house. Kiwis do too. I grew up in a house on a 1300m2 plot. We have a porch all around the front and the side of the house, with French doors opening from the living room to the porch. And you can sit on the bench on the porch. A proper front garden that you can’t see the street. A huge back garden. A drive way to park many cars. A lot of trees. We don’t have a swimming pool but many do. You just can’t get any of that in an apartment.

Because the houses are large, the streets are quiet. You don’t overlook any neighbours.

I'm glad to see other people confirm that soundproofing in the UK is as crap as I thought.
I grew up elsewhere and have lived abroad since and never heard any neighbours, whereas every flat I've lived in in the UK there have been noise issues.