Are detached houses really worth THAT much more

[EatMeALotOfPeaches]

I live on the end of a terrace of three houses, and my home is worth £220k. I really want to move to a detached house because my neighbours annoy me and I'm sick of living on top of other people. Sorry if that sounds snobby

I've been looking at detached houses and to get the same square footage as I have now, in the same area, I'd be looking at 300k+! I can't justify spending that much more unless it would gain me more internal space as well. Please either convince me to embrace my terraced existence or tell me why living in a detached house is worth so much more £££!

We are in the process of building a house in the middle of a two acre plot with no other houses in sight. This is my idea of heaven. I’ve had annoying (but never deliberately unkind) neighbours in the past and it drove me to distraction.

You answer your own question really - detached houses are so much more expensive because of the lack of neighbours.

I live in a semi detached and the house has minimal noise , then my neighbours are quiet and it was built in the 60s so the walls are not paper thin. I love a detached but they much more expensive unless I move right out to the sticks and I don't really don't want to!
If next door move I'd be so upset if I then got noisy people. They have put up with our home improvements over the years without moaning , so it is a trade off at times being attached.
It is a worry being attached to people. Luck of the draw I guess but family members of mine love to tell me ' we're detached' at most opportunities! They had the advantage of cheaper homes than we did and many people can't even buy a home so , you have to count your blessings.

We live in a detached house. I promise you we can still hear the neighbour's baby screaming her head off and the endless drilling from 8 am on a Saturday morning and the teens two-doors-down playing drums. They don't come with total sound insulation!

We moved to a less desirable area 10 miles away to go detached and it was totally worth it. To go from a 3 bed smallish end of terrace to an average 3 bed detached in our old area was from 230ish to 330ish which we just couldn afford. We now have a large 4 bed and we paid 300. Although the area wouldn't have really been our first choice we absolutely love it now, and I think part of that is feeling really settled in our house not worrying about neighbour noise (which was the main reason we moved, we had people move in next door that had no idea what the word quiet meant). Gardens can still be noisy in the summer with other people's music/children etc, but totally bearable.

@TheGriffle I really feel for you! My anxiety is all self-inflicted. The neighbours have never once complained but they’re elderly and honestly I feel ill at the thought of them being upset or stressed out because I KNOW we are noisy just from living our lives.

So sorry to hear about the shit experience you’ve had. Some people are just absolute arseholes
We’ve been there before in a flat, banging on the ceiling etc, it ruins your home life.

The older I get the more I think detached - and at least half a mile from other people

I live in a detached with a lot of land around it but I find I get irritated with the local wildlife instead of the neighbours 😂

I love the sound of the wind in the trees though.

Think a lot of it depends on your personality and the layout of the house . We have a halls-adjoining victorian semi and noise from next door is minimal, but also what I do hear doesn't bother me - the location and space / style of the house is far more important to me than silence. My parents live in a big semi rural detached of similar value which is totally silent but doesn't appeal to me at all due to location and age of house.

The older I get the more I think detached - and at least half a mile from other people...
and even that has it's issues - my friend is 500m from nearest house in all directions bar the one next door, but has to put up with continual heavy traffic (113 40 ton lorry loads of topsoil to one property, just as an example), always having to deal with people wanting next door (out when she is not), etc

Fuck getting married, having kids or making sure I go to that place I've always dreamed of. A detached house all by myself is my ultimate life goal.

Can you look at the layout of semis? Ours is an Edwardian semi, so old thick walls and the only adjoining bits with next door are the hallway, stairs and bathroom, we never hear them and they say they never hear us or DS who is not quiet ...

@Chickoletta that is the dream right there!

I would love a detached but to stay in the area I want, the £ is quite a jump. This is because the houses tend to have more bedrooms and at least one extra reception room. They’ve all been built a good while too, so the gardens are larger and well established.

My neighbours aren’t perfect, but we certainly aren’t either, so luckily we cut each other some slack. The neighbours on our non attached side I literally never hear, so it gives me a taste of what it could be like! Neighbours can make or break where you live regardless. I guess there’s just less to dispute if you’re detached.

Please either convince me to embrace my terraced existence or tell me why living in a detached house is worth so much more £££!

Well, supply & demand is the reason. Supply is restricted as you can build fewer detached houses on a piece of land than flats, terraces or semis. Demand is higher because of all the reasons you want to move to one!

We have recently moved from a mid terrace to a semi and the noise (or lack of) is so much better.

I used to be driven up the wall by next doors multiple incredibly loud TVs that they would watch until 3am most nights.

The adjoining wall is mostly stairs and one wall of the lounge, but due to the position of the fireplace on the opposite wall, doors and windows, it means the adjoing wall is the only one you can put the sofa, so we don't have tv noise rumbling through. The kitchens are as far from each other as possible in side extensions, so no washing machine noise at all.

I think it all depends on what rooms are on the adjoining wall with semis.

Absolutely; however, I live in a link detached and it's a great compromise

@HowLongCanICallitBabyWeight I wish more semis were built like that. It seems so obvious to me, to put the living area on the outside of the semi and the hall / stairs / landing, bathroom and even kitchen if need be on the adjoining walls. However, in my area they are as rare as hens teeth.

I was at my Dads semi yesterday and I could hear the neighbours screeching at their barking dog (aka joining in 🙄) Bit of a nightmare if you have it from both sides. We're only aware of people around us at the end of our garden, as it backs on to some other gardens so you can hear them then if they're in their garden otherwise silence. I'd swap square footage for privacy/quiet any day.

There’s detached and detached though. I wouldn’t spend £80k to have a 2m gap between the house
So true! Some new houses in our village have just been built, supposedly detached and the gap between them is no wider than a door width, so access/maintenance reasons only.

We moved from detached in the middle of nowhere to terraced in the middle of town and it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. The layout helps, it's hall / stairs / landing on one side and we are only joined upstairs on the other. I wouldn't pay extra for detached but I would trade in one of the kids for off street parking.

Lived in all: Mid-terrace, end of, semi and detached. So much depends on the neighbours, it's pot luck. In detached I've had noise from garden/unpleasant/nosey.

We had awful problems with a particularly noisy and obnoxious set of neighbours when we were in our semi. (And I'm not being arsey here - I'm talking almost weekly Tuesday-night karaoke parties that went on to 3am.) We ended up extending our mortgage by 4 years just so we could buy a detached and we've never regretted it. We have 3 gardens adjoining, so if the windows are open it makes little difference. But when the windows are all closed, the silence is fab.

@Heartzone, an ex colleague of mine lives in a fairly substantial 3 bed Victorian semi. Her bedroom wall adjoins that of her neighbour and early every morning she hears her neighbour’s high heels loudly click-clacking over the wooden bedroom floor.

It’s IMO a mistake to assume that older means well insulated.

I grew up overseas and always lived in detached, and lived in detached and semis here. Now buying a terraced house as I preferred the location and the feel of the house, compared to semis in my divorced single mum budget.

We live in an Edwardian semi, and have no issues with noise at all 🤷‍♀️

@ gettinglikemymother many thanks for this info!
I shall stick to my guns when the time comes for our move, cheers.

I live in a link detached so it is only our garage that shares a wall with next door and I bloody love not having to worry about neighbours. We're looking to move now and had said we'd consider semi detached if it wasn't the living room and master bedroom sharing a wall with another house but when push comes to shove I don't think we'll be able to do it. There's such a variety though, I have family members in older, very solid semis who never have issues with noise so it's not all bad but then again I have a friend being driven mad by hearing next doors' TV through the wall.