To be embarrassed to live in a terraced house?

[Whysosad]

I know IBU and sound snobby. I'm prepared to be flamed for this post but please read entire post!!

This is an insecurity i have never spoken openly about (although touched on it in counseling). So i may not articulate myself well!!

I grew up poor to a single mother with 5 kids. The houses we grew up in were always terraced houses. Not the nice big town houses or the lovely 3 storey victorians. Think more coronation street. The fact they were massively cluttered and cramped didn't help. My mum decided to send me to senior school in a affluent village away from the poor area we lived. All my friends lived in big detached or semi detached houses or new builds. Their houses were always decoated nicely and were so modern with decking in their back gardens and a nice conservatory. Even my friends who werent so well off and didn't have the latest clothes or go on holidays still somehow lived in a nice house. I was the only person i knew who lived in a terrace house surrounded by terraced houses. I knew one or two people in my year that lived in terraced houses in the village but they were cottage terraces so still nice and smart. The people i grew up with were never aware they lived in what i thought to be 'nice houses' as it was just the norm to them i suppose. Everyone lived in a new build, detached, semi or cottage. The housing association flats on the outskirts were new builds and very modern inside.

I know it sounds bad, but i would be embarrassed to have my friends stay over or see where i lived, even as young as 11. I always wondered what they were thinking as they left their lovely clean minimalised semis or new builds and pulled up outside my terraced house on my grim street. I remember when my mum decided to sell her house to move closer to my school i begged her to get a 'new build' or semi. Or if it had to be a terrace, then a terrace where it was only 1 of 5 terrace houses like the little cottage terraces. To make matters worse my friends dad was an estate agent who sold new builds and when he saw my mum was selling asked my mum to come view the houses he was selling. I remmeber being mortified inside knowing we could never live there. Instead due to costs my mum bought another terraced house on the 'grim' outskirts of the village which was considered a deprived area. There were mattresses and sofas outside peoples houses and i was even more embarrassed. I feel awful writing this as i know she did her best so don't blame/resent her in anyway at all. I remember that in my young teenage mind i couldn't understand why everyone else could live in nice houses and we couldn't. I couldn't understand why even my friends whos parents were shop assistants or worked in a factory were able to live in a nice house but my mum who had a good job couldn't.

Anyway, fast forward to now. I was always adamant and fixated that i would live in a new build or semi or detached. Its been a dream for me (weird i know). Due to growing up skint I've always been very good with money and a saver not a spender. I've got a professional job and a good salary. When it came to buying my house despite my longing, my sensible head decided to override my wishes and i decided on a small 2 bed terraced house as i was buying on my own with no kids.
My mortgage is TINY and i don't need anymore room for just ne. It makes such financial sense.

However, despite being an adult and in my twenties with plenty of time to move up the property ladder, I'm still embaressed about where i live. All my work colleagues live in new builds, semis or detached houses. Literally EVERYONE. My friends who rent, rent nice houses. My friends who own, own nice houses. My single friends live in nice modern flats in the city centre. No one else lives in a terraced house like me. I feel the exact same way i did at school.

In my line of work a lot of our clients live in houses just like mine. I think i find it quite difficult because my colleagues, the 'professionals', all have these nice big houses and then our clients who often live in poverty, live in houses the same as mine.
I keep assuming people think I'm scruffy and somehow inferior. Its illogical thinking.
My friends came to view the house with me and all said it perfect/lovely/cosy. But i know for a fact they themselves would never live there!! It felt almost patronising for them to be praising my little terrace on a shit street when they all lived in their nice detached houses with garages and drives. Its so hard to go from having drinks at their houses with their dining rooms and hallways to then my house.

Don't get me wrong, i love my little house. Its perfect. I've decorated it beautifully if i say so myself. I just wish i could pick it up and place it somewhere else. I'm not even materialistic. I have a 20 year old banger car which i love even though i could afford a new one. Im not bothered about designer clothes or any of that stuff. So I'm not bothered about being showy. Its just this weird complex i have about terraced houses.

Has anyone ever dealt with this? If so how do you get over it?

Does anyone else live in a terraced house and really not care?

Also can people be really honest and state what their opinions are on terraced houses and whether or not they would live in one?

Its such a bizzaire complex i have that i want to get over!!

I empathise with you OP. I came from a very average 3 bed semi house in nice but not posh area and got a scholarship at an indie school.

Lots of my classmates were from rich families and suddenly I was hyper aware of what I didn't have.

Ever since I've hankered for the bigger house etc etc thinking it's what would make me happy but recently I've changed my tune.

I'm 40. We have a relatively small mortgage of total of our annual salaries between me and DH. We live in a 3 bed semi in a nice area, with lovely friends and it's.....enough. And I'm quite happy to stay here and make it lovely and have amazing life experiences and travel and not worry about money forever.

That change has honestly been so liberating.

By the way, you mention work colleagues and their "more impressive" homes....this prompted a memory. Years back while on maternity leave my boss insisted on visiting me and baby at home. She had to travel a long way to do this and I felt a bit invaded, but she did insist. BIG mistake. I had a nice big semi.....she on the otherhand I knew had s small terrace. Boss didn't like this. I could tell she was thinking "well she obviously doesn't need this job too badly"..... life became very hard for me thereafter negotiating a fair pay on returning to work. I am convinced to this day that her seeing my home was a mistake, and I never made that mistake again. I think it's a good idea to keep work and home lives and colleagues well separated OP!

OP your life now is not your past. Be glad you have a home that is warm and comfortable. I undestand about the childhood thing, but you saying that you're in the sort of housing your clients are in, not the des res's your colleagues live in is a shitty attitude to have. Makes you sound like you either think you're better than your clients, or your colleagues look down on you - if it's the latter, fuck them. If it's you thinking you should be living in better housing than the people you help - you need to have a long think about that. Judging people because of where they live isn't a good trait to have,

I felt a bit like this growing up. I went to an independent grammar school on a scholarship, and most of my friends were much better off. We lived in a largish 3 bed terrace on a busy main road. My dad was foreman in a factory and my mum was disabled so didn’t work, which meant money was often tight - I was completely wrapped in love and never went cold or hungry, and always had clean clothes to wear, so compared with many childhoods, mine was idyllic. So I dislike my teen self for the way I felt.

But the one time I did overcome my inferiority complex and have friends round from school, our dog decided to do a massive poo in the dining room whole they were there. It just seemed to sum up the differences in our home lives!

But you are so lucky to own in your 20s - try to concentrate on that. You can always sell and move up the property ladder, if not now then probably in the near future.

I had friends that I was jealous of at school - that they always had new games or clothes, not hand-me-downs, that they had sweets or biscuits available not as an extra special treat, and yes their houses. Although ironically we lived in a detached not a terraced house. I bought a terraced where lived happily for many many years. Still miss it sometimes but love our new hours even more - it is also a terraced although a little more grand.

The biggest thing for me with your post is the bit about the teeny tiny mortgage - that is HUGE! I have friends who have mortgages so big I wonder how they sleep at night. Ours is middling - we stretched ourselves a little but not too much but know plenty of people who really really stretched. They may have massive detached houses but I have no idea how they pay their bills. Some I know got interest only mortgages - and what about if/when a crash comes?

Love your house, you are very lucky to be able to buy one at all. Clear your teeny mortgage, save money and you have your whole life to find or even build your dream home.

I love my current house, its still not my dream home. Maybe I'll get that one day, maybe I won't but I'm happy here and I would have been happy in my old house too. Don't waste your life longing after what other people have. There will be plenty who would love to have yours

Obviously you should NEVER be ashamed of where you leave, no matter your background.

BUT, if you want to get snobby, let me tell you in the snobbiest circles "new builts" are considered tacky. Any of the wealthy people I know (and I mean people with old money) would take a period terraced any day over a detached new built, because suburbs are the death of taste.

I live in one. We're secretly proud we've almost paid off the mortgage already. We don't need a big house. I do sometimes think it would be lovely to have a bigger house, but we've chosen ours so we can spend money on other things instead. I suspect people are confused/snobby but my real friends come to see me, not my house.

I miss my terrace! We had no gardens so we all sat outside and talked to each other. I got to know and love all my neighbours. I live in that naice semi detached now and we're so lonely. Nobody talks to anyone. It's insular and unfriendly.

Homeless bloke and his dog I just bought a toastie and coffee for outside Tesco’s might not feel your angst...You are lucky to have a home. Maybe your problem is not with your house, but with the rest of your life?

Surely the location is more important. A nice terrace in a decent location would trump a newbuild estate rammed full of the same houses.

Your house is your home, your castle. It's what you make it. If it's lovely inside then who cares if it's terraced or not. There are plenty of people that live in detached houses that live in shit!

I live in a terraced house and have a house far less desrirable than my parents house. I have never ever thought about it.
I am a single parent too and so long as I had somewhere semi decent to live , thought that’d be fine!
I guess because I was an older parent I wasn’t too bothered to be honest!

My mums always said she likes a terrace house more she lived in an end house once and said the exposed walls made the house cold well if your sat in the middle you get to steal the heat from next doors house. Now living in an end house I see why they brought a middle terrace it's true I have cold walls lol 😂

OP you sound very immature...but you are immature.

Terraced houses round here are ugly but cost £700k+. It's all about location.

I grew up in a terraced house with a back yard, tiny postage stamped piece of garden, an outside toilet at the bottom of the yard, 4 houses to a yard, we didn't have an inside toilet until just before I started school. It's the part of my life I have the happiest memory of, I was the only child in our terrace of 9 houses, lived next door to the bread shop & there was a paper shop on the end of the block, I had so many people who weren't related to us that I called Auntie & Uncle, I grew up being loved & cared for by everyone who lived there, it was my parent's first house after they spent the first 2 years of being married living with my Grandparents until they had saved up enough money to have their own home, they rented the house & I can remember the rent man calling every week to collect the rent. Everyone helped everyone else, one of the neighbours taught my parents how to wallpaper & decorate, everything was done to a routine, washday was on a Monday, back & front steps were scrubbed every week, everyone took a pride in their home, I was taken round to show the neighbours my new clothes at Easter, Whitsuntide & Christmas, I was put outside in my pram to sleep in the afternoon, I was born with dislocated hips & spent a lot of time in plaster, my mum used to entertain me by going to the bus stop & letting me wave to people on the bus. It was a lovely place to be a child & I wish that my DS could have had the lovely warm childhood that I had, I've never been ashamed to say that I was brought up in a terraced house, I wish I could afford to have one now.

I grew up in a 2 bedroomed terraced council house with my mam and dad. I was an only child. My dad had a good job and we could have bought a house but he and my mam never took risks - never had any debt. I was clever and went to a good school in a nice area and all my friends lived in houses their parents owned in leafy streets. Our house was on a 1970s built council estate built to house people from slum clearance. I remember being embarrassed a bit, actually ashamed is probably more honest.

I think it was why I bought a property as soon as I got a job- just a one bedroomed flat but I was able to buy a house about 2 years later. When I met DH 8 years later he had a flat he owned and we both had a lot of equity. We bought a bigger house. There is part of me that just wanted that security that I felt my parents never had of owning a house. DH and I have a big house and no mortgage and it makes me feel secure.

But I was as proud of my little one bedroomed flat as I am of this house - because it was mine. I loved having friends round to it, and to the terraced house I bought and to the semi DH and I first bought together. I learned as I got older to be proud of where I grew up and value what it gave me and I am not at all embarrassed to tell people now.

Sara. The people you know sound vile. You come into this world with nothing and you leave with nothing. The most important thing in between these times is your health. Terraced, Detached or New Build, it’s all just stuff in the end. I have friends with houses worth around 1.8 million, they are the loveliest people. Snobbery is pure ugliness.

I lived in a terraced house for a long time and became fixated on the idea that life would be better when we moved. Not quite sure why - my perception of A 'better' area - which ultimately is rubbish. My financial situation changed and we moved to a big detatched house in what is 'considered' a better area. I really miss loads of aspects of living in our old house. I can honestly say I have been no happier for the move. What I feel I have learnt is it isn't about all these factors/shopping list of things you want from a home - It is about the life and the love you create there. Please try and enjoy your home if you love it. I know it is easy to say but stop thinking about what you think other people are thinking - ultimately you really don't know. Loads of people love terraced houses. There is so much soul in older properties. Everywhere has positives and negatives (and they will be different for each person). There was a thread in here recently about people hating new builds (might help you feel better to find that?).
Maybe try and put some positive energy into the house you are in. Rid yourself of these negative things you have said to the house. You might move and then see really clearly all the good things about your current place, that you are missing in this preoccupation with the fact your home is a terrace. You love it. Keep reminding yourself of that. Try not to pollute it with the negative thoughts. I miss the high ceilings, the soul of the place. People can be fundamentally unhappy living anywhere - a caravan, a terrace, the most expensive properties in the country. What is it you are idealising about these other types of houses? What is it about the life in these other houses that you think you would have, that you think you don't have now?

I hope you find some peace and allow yourself to love your home as you say you do. It is good that you are saying all this. It might help you to get rid of the power, this thinking has over you and your ability to enjoy what you have. Don't be hard on yourself for idealising other's lives though - I'm in my 40s and only just letting go of that.

I kind of understand this. I grew up on the worst street in the "best area", and I think it's made me very competitive in life.

But, you have the ability to choose how you view things. For instance...

• You own your own home. Most people around the world don't.
• You own your own TERRACE. No studio flat to share between three or four, but PRIVACY and possibly even a spare room!
• You have a "tiny" mortgage and very little risk. Most people would envy this position.
• You know you are good with money, possiby because of the experiences you've had and because you were fortunate enough to have a mum who most people would be proud of and thankful for
• you have an amazing mum and role model. Please tell her how amazing she is.
• you have aspirations to work towards, even better is your future, because you know the future holds great things.

Please stop beating yourself up, you have achieved amazing things, please just enjoy them and congratulate yourself.

Hovering somewhere at the back of my mind throughout this thread is an idea that can be expressed with the phrase 'Bloom where you are planted'.

I grew up in a mansion, got married and lived in an end of terrace house with a downstairs end of kitchen bathroom for 10 years. Moved to a new detached house with driveway, garden etc, and then left my husband and now live in a flat but in a nice area. I’ll be honest and say I prefer the flat as it’s so simple to look after, have much more ‘me’ time. The family home was cluttered and messy and far too stressful.

When my mother left my father we were living in the end of a row of rented terraces and our accommodation rapidly went downhill from there. We lived in other people’s spare rooms and then mum rented rooms for my sister, myself and her to live in. Sometimes they had a garden, sometimes not but the outside space was always neglected as we were children and she had two jobs and no time to tend the wildernesses. We shared kitchens, sometimes with very dodgy neighbours. In short, I can sympathise and understand because ‘nice’ surroundings and housing became most important to me.

However, without a partner and moving to the cheapest part of the country I could not have afforded the ugly little house we bought. I was never ashamed of it as we made it nice and my years of poverty taught me an even more important lesson about where one lives. Solvency is king. Debt is the devil.

If you have a nice terraceed house you like in itself and that you can afford and could keep if emergencies struck, you are more fortunate than most.

I live in a nice house which has been extended and improved by my DH and myself over three decades and we live it. When we were both working our children went to school locally in a the most expensive town in the country. All their friends had huge, detached houses and lived Instagram Kid lives. I had no temptation to join them and put ourselves into hock to move from my nice place with a lovely view of a green, trees and the ex council estate. Being out of debt and safe and secure was all that mattered to me.

Some of those rich families would disappear overnight when the debts piled up! Literally gone:- house, prep school, lock, stock and barrel.

But I suspect, OP, that you will find it difficult ever to lose those thoughts so early ingrained and burnt in by embarrassment. For myself, I can still be overwhelmed by anxiety when I spend money, especially larger sums.

But try to be content. You have a profession and an income. You are respected and liked. Your house is nice and how you want it and you seem financially secure there. That is a lot going for you.

My actual opinion of terraces is that they are great and, yes, I would live in one.

You can waste a lot of time comparing yourself with others and only seeing what isn’t there. Write a list of everything you are grateful for in your life - EVERYTHING! Health, food, money for heating, heating etc

Also consider a talking therapy - this is about feeling ‘less than’ and you will miss your own life and potential if you let yourself keep thinking this way. I do get it - I was raised in poor circumstances and thought other kids - who had a mum or a nice house had far better lives than me and that I would never amount to anything - but i’ve realised that the key to life is being true to yourself - not trying to emulate others - you sound like you love your home (and you should) - so accept it.

Much love

I had a similar situation as you- mum was poor and we had a horrible house, but it was horrible because my mum wasn't house proud, not because it was a terraced. In fact, I went to view a house on the same street I grew up on as it's a lovely house. I always knew my first home would be a terraced house and I actually love it. It's not pokey but has lots of character and history. I love terraced houses! You need to just move!

OP, you mentioned counselling and there is something it may be worth thinking about in your sessions.
I've seen a lot of people saying 'just move' and 'why did you buy it then' but I'm wondering if you don't feel you deserve the kind of house you've always wanted, even though it seems you can afford it.
You seem to have made a pragmatic financial move in buying your house, but I'm wondering if you may still have those deeper feelings of inferiority and not believe, really, that new builds and so on are for 'people like you'.
I may be way off base but I am a counsellor and this struck me as something that may be worth exploring.