Pros and cons of living in a city centre apartment?

[AnduinsGirl]

Hi all,
I'm looking to move from my 3 bed house 12 miles outside the city centre to a 1/2 bed city centre flat. I've found some lovely looking ones ranging from 75k to 150k - I don't know exactly what the bank would lend me but they've hinted toward the upper end... salary is 51k. I rang and enquired about one recently and the estate agent advised me that as well as my mortgage, I'd have a pay a service charge of £200/month. I totally understand the service charge and am happy to pay, but this seems a lot to consider on top of your mortgage?!
Anyway, it got me thinking about potential downsides of buying a flat as opposed to a house. Any words of wisdom are very much welcomed...

We’ve done it the other way around.

Pros are we hardly used the car, could go out on a whim, close to train station so we could head to London at a moments notice. We could pop to the shops quickly and everything was so easy. It’s also easy, stress free living with barely any maintenance or gardening to keep on top of. Totally stress free living.

Pros were noise at weekends/ during busy periods. Also we had a murder take place outside our bedroom window (night out went wrong). Hostage situation. Bomb threat and road closure. Car was vandalised- only once. Can’t imagine any of that happening where we live now. Another minus was limited parking for guests.

The main drawback with leasehold is that the freeholders/ management company have you over a barrel in terms of increasing service charge. You’d want your solicitor to check what safeguards are in place to protect you. A lot of media coverage of this issue for luxury city apartments have caused problems for the sector and many owners/ buy to let are selling up. It’s a buyers market when it comes to apartments now so make sure you haggle to get the best price.

Btw service charge is cheaper if you buy an ex shared ownership flat. This is because the freehold is retained by a housing association: we paid £70 pcm and that included water! They also won’t increase it exponentially, they are very fair. However it would depend on tenants- where I live people who purchase shared ownership are professionals. Block was located next to private block. Won’t be the case everywhere.

Err the second para should read the Cons are ....

If it is a leasehold property then your ground rent could shoot up in years to come. Also, if the lease isn't long it would be hard to sell. You are at the mercy of neighbours re noise. Less space. On the upside, easier to heat and keep clean and well placed for social lifestyle.

Ooh another issue is storage. Our house has a loft and shed, but that does mean we’ve just accumulated more crap

Just to clarify service charge includes ground rent - it’s a separate item. The service charge is made up of evidence based expenditure (eg electricity bill for shared area lighting/ heating) and expenditure which is not easily evidenced / disputed (ground rent, management fees).

I'm so grateful for these replies, they're already helping. So, to clarify, oes a service charge include electric and heating?! If this is the case, £200 seems much more reasonable! I assumed it was simply for the concierge and cleaning of communal areas.
Regarding noise - I have a tough working week so literally sleep through ANYTHING. I'm very aware that the noise could be intrusive but as long as I don't feel like a brick is going to come through my window or anything, I'm ok.
Storage - well, to be honest I'm actively trying to shed as much accumulated crap as possible so if I'm limited to a single cupboard, I can do that quite happily!
Again, thanks for this advice - will consider the other points you've made now :)

Service charge varies depending upon the apartment and set up. Ours included electricity for communal areas only. Each apartment then had its own meter (plus gas) in a cupboard in the hallway. I think our block was unusual in that water for all flats was included. We saved a fortune - it was so cheap. The whole block was on a shared water meter.

Noise insulation in new buildings is actually very good. Conversions not so much. It’s actually the external noise in summer that was bothersome. Which leads me to my next point- apartments are much cheaper to heat, but then can be difficult to cool in summer. Especially if there is lots of glass. I know people who have hired air conditioning units to keep their luxury flat cool in the summertime

We did exactly this a couple of years ago and it’s changed the way we live! We’ve gone down to 1 car between us and, tbh, at the weekends, it can sit there and not be used. We walk everywhere - supermarket, restaurants, cinema, theatre, coffee shops - bizarrely, the only place we have to use the car for is to go to the gym (outside of work).

We bought a garden flat in a converted Victorian villa and own a share of the freehold so don’t suffer from a lot of the issues pp have described.

Cons? It’s noisier, the streets are definitely dirtier, we have less space (2 bed flat from 3 bed house) and, because we live so close to everything, we definitely spend a shedload more money on going out!