Which should I do

[KookyAmberRobin]

I live in semi detached very poor soundproofing and can even hear neighbours microwave all bedrooms and living rooms directly next to each other

Should I spend £££ to professionally soundproof or try to financially stretch myself to afford a detached?

I would go for detached. From what I gather, sound proofing isn’t always very successful because noise travels in strange ways. and if you can even hear your neighbours microwave then you’d need some serious work done to block out noise. You could end up spending a shed load on work and still find the noise intrusive. I breathed a huge sigh of relief the day we moved into a detached house and I honestly can’t imagine being joined to another property again.

@gattocattivo thx

Only issue is as a i say will be a stretch as the detached houses are around £80k more round here and soundproofing will cost loads less than that

I had my semi soundproofed and although it has much improved airborne noise, the impact noise remains. I was told of this before I had work done so it didn't come as a shock.

Although I can no longer hear every word they say or them stirring a cuppa, I can hear them going up the uncarpeted stairs, shutting kitchen cupboards and chairs scraping on the floor.

Soundproofing has made the house bearable - I did hate it initially and wanted to sell. So I'm glad I spent the money. I can't afford a detached and if I move to another semi, it could be even worse.

I sound proofed my previous property it was really expensive but it helped a bit (probably about 50%)

also bear in mind soundproofing takes away some of your space (the way we did it at least) so personally I d move to a detached (perhaps a crappy one that needs lots of work for cost efficiency)

I had the same predicament in a previous house and after much back and forth decided to move to a detached house rather than invest in the sound proofing. I did a lot of research and a lot of the reasons have been outlined above- it’s expensive and invasive to do well, you lose a lot of space if you’re going to do it properly, and it won’t eliminate all noise anyway. I feel for you OP, it got to the point that the sound felt really invasive, and I felt like I had no privacy.

Thx all I worked it out based on what I can afford on rightmove mortgage and how much I can save I can do it in about 4 years I am 35