Would you ever buy a semi after living in a detached- can you hear neighbours?

[LooksForGlasses]

As above.

Do you get noise?

In time I may move and one of the choices would be a Victorian terraced house - a semi.

I like older houses but have always lived in modern houses, first a semi (with a very elderly man next door) and then detached houses.

I would be older by then in my 70s (moving closer to family) and very quiet!

I can't stand noise now and noisy neighbours would send me crazy.

I lived in an end terrace Victorian and a 1930 semi before moving to a detached 10 years ago. We couldn't hear much in the former houses unless it was a particularly loud noise, like loud music or banging or shouting. Obviously can't hear anything in the detached, but it comes with other issues such as it's harder to heat and there is more maintenance because of more outside walls. I would definitely move back to a semi but only an old one with good walls.

We used to live it a semi. 70’s built I think. Next door had one kid. A lovely teenage girl. But she was incredibly giggly and noisy in general especially with her friends. You could hear everything! Laughing, coughing, sneezing, singing. Banging doors, the tv and even the hairdryer.
But…I had 3 kids including a newborn so I can only imagine what it was like for them! We did love that house and have lovely memories and still meet our old neighbour sometimes but I don’t think I could do it again. We live in the countryside now and it would be hard to go back.

We've just moved from a Victorian semi. To hear the neighbours you'd have to be up against the adjoining wall with your ear against the glass! We didn't hear a thing in eleven years and two sets of neighbours. Admittedly it was a large semi over three floors.

We now live in a 1930s semi and although I very occasionally hear the neighbours if they're having a party, there isn't as much noise as I'd expected.

We live in a 124 year old six-bed three-floor Victorian semi; we are a family of five (two away at uni so home intermittently).

Our adjoining neighbours have only one child yet are the noisiest people, so much so that when we eventually downsize it will be to a detached house.

I will never again live in a semi.

They constantly entertain and we can hear multiple children running up and down the length of the house, the stairs, the screams, the laughter, the sneezing (the man has a very annoyingly loud and unique style of sneezing that irritates the hell out of me 🤬) their tv, music, vacuuming late at night; there are fireplaces in every room and noise travels up each chimney space but in one of our bedrooms we can even hear noisy bath times, fitted wardrobes in the bedroom alcoves being opened and closed etc.

Whilst they are home there is a constant stream of low level noise (their child is an only child and has a friend over most evenings and sleepovers most weekends, more in the school holidays) our teenager grumbles he’s fed up of having to listen to all the shrieks and screaming of girls at night when he’s in his room; they do seem incapable of being quiet.

At times we also make noise, mainly at Christmas and birthdays, but we are quiet in comparison.

So whilst we love our big old period home, with all its draughts and high energy costs, we do look forward to the day we hand it over to the next custodian and can enjoy the peace and lower running costs of a more modern, detached house!

The quietest house i’ve lived in by far was a Victorian terrace. Never heard a peep from either neighbour in 20 years. I now live in a detached house with a big garden and am surrounded by never ending chain saws, leaf blowers and lawn mowers, plus the neighbour who plays loud music outside quite often which comes straight in my windows. Could be worse though - all the neighbours are nice and they’re mainly just maintaining their huge gardens.

We live in a Victorian terrace. You can hear everything. The internal walls between the houses are not load bearing and are only 15cm thick. When I’m in the bath I can hear every conversation from next door clear as day, regardless of what floor they are on. They have an autistic child and the screams and tantrums can be unbearable sometimes, we wear noise cancelling headphones around the house when it’s peak tantrum time.

We like to listen to music and they can hear that through the walls, too.

We all tolerate each other’s noise, but it’s certainly not for everyone.

1925 semi. Only hear anything is it’s very loud eg playing trumpet we can slightly hear if we don’t have tv or music on

In my old Victorian house the neighbours and us more than once said 'bless you' when someone sneezed on the other side of the wall... they were generally not overly loud people thankfully, but you could hear everything. Single brick between the two houses. In a 60s semi now and the only thing I occasionally hear is the plug sockets, weirdly - never hear them talking/TV noise/their dog etc.

We lived in a Victorian stone terrace for years and were only ever aware of sex noises weirdly. Now we’re in a detached and whenever we visit our daughter in her Victorian stone terrace it sounds like her neighbours are in the house with us. It’s awful.

Wonder if you just get used to it.

I wouldn’t risk it. I love my peace and quiet. My DS lives with his family in an old semi. They hear noise from next door and it drives them mad.

I can't stand noise now and noisy neighbours would send me crazy.

If this is the case it's not worth the risk.

I moved from a detached house to a back to back cottage, it has very thick stone walls and I never hear a peep from my adjoining neighbour. That said, all the time I was in the process of moving I worried about it. I've been lucky but it could have gone the other way.

It depends on the house itself. I have a new build adjoining house and hear nothing as the sound proofing is excellent. However our adjoining neighbours are horrible abusive people so having had that experience i would never buy an adjoining house again.

Completely depends on the neighbours.
we’ve lived in the same semi with the same neighbours for 27 years. We only hear when they are doing DIY, they’ve mentioned they can hear our dog barking occasionally. They have never had kids living there, we only had one, fairly quiet son.
His bedroom is next to theirs and says he can hear them arguing sometimes, especially in summer when the windows are open.

I grew up in terraced houses and some neighbours were loud and you could hear everything, some you never heard at all.

So I agree with 'depends on your neighbours'; we're in a semi and have been lucky for many years. But a few doors down there's two adjoining semi's one with a baby & kids the other with loud older teenagers, either could have moved in next to us. We had new neighbours last year and the stress over what they'd be like wasn't fun. So yes agreement there but just as much, I'd like to be noisy without worrying the neighbours might come round and cause a stink over my loud music. It would be nice to have a more private garden too.
So hoping to look for detached after the coming budget.

New build semi and I never hear the neighbours unless they were literally drilling holes in the walls. Otherwise no, not a peep.

I think there’s a really big difference between the build quality of a Victorian terrace and a Victorian semi - the noise travels very differently between the two. I grew up an a halls-adjoining semi, and you literally could not hear a thing from next door and at one point we lived next door to 4 children ranging between 3-11 and their very highly strung mum who shouted a LOT (we did hear them in the garden, and when their windows were open… 😁). As a few people have mentioned, the sound travels more in terraces - you also have your living space much closer together.

We’re now in a 1930s semi and I worry about being the noisy family as there are 5 of us - our neighbours are an older couple who are semi-retired but I do sometimes hear his big sneezes if we’re sitting quietly of an evening!

If noise transfer is an issue to you, and your budget only allows for semis, I’d make sure that you were looking at halls adjoining properties only. It’s too neighbour-variable otherwise.

I wouldn't! I grew up in a detached and we moved to a Victorian terrace when I was in my late teens/early 20's. I could not BELIEVE the noise!

As an adult, I live in a semi, which isn't too bad (older neighbour, but the dogs are horrifically loud), while urgently saving up for a detached in a quiet remote area 😁

I have a detached house and I couldn't go back to a semi at all.
We have complete and utter silence and can have loud screaming sex whenever we like, without worrying of offending anybody 😂

Never. You live under the same roof as another family/people.
of course you hear each other.

Moved from detached to a semi. Three sets of neighbours since we moved here and very rarely heard anything from next door ( unless they’re having a party). But we bought because of the layout of the houses ( dormer bungalows) the attached rooms downstairs are the bedrooms and bathrooms. I don’t think I’d buy a house where the attached rooms were the sitting rooms, more chance of noise from tvs, kids etc.
ours is 1980’s build.

We did it. No, we can’t hear the neighbours.

However, the dividing wall is about three feet thick (old stone house).

I think it depends on the person and you’ll only know when you live there, I’m from a city so don’t notice noises, in fact I find it all comforting, dh used to hate it when we were in our apartment and then semi detached houses, he said it felt like they were in the room with us.

I have quiet neighbours but I quite like gentle sounds of other people - if I lived alone I think I'd like that even more. People who notice when you haven't followed your usual routine, for example.

Not all terraces and semis are created equally (irrespective of their build quality and characteristics e.g. chimneys as a PP mentioned). Layout makes all the difference.

One thing that is a hard rule for me is no (or minimal) adjoining rooms. First flat (owned) was horrific, generally no one was noisy or inconsiderate - nice people - but underneath neighbour's baby would wake me nightly (i'm a heavy sleeper, and the baby was mostly only fussing rather than wailing, but it was like it was in the next room - awful). And i could hear upstairs plug things in the sockets, i swear it rattled the shitty plasterboard walls. So noise minimisation was a huge one for us - we had an Edwardian semi in London, halls adjoining, meaning front doors were side by side and the stairs ran straight up the middle party wall too. Only our kitchen and family bathroom touched the party wall, and our 'study' (box room, which had been pinched from the original master bedroom when the loft was done to create a 4th bedroom. Was fab. You could get this same setup in a terrace as long as you were end terrace and your front door was not on the outside wall.

Second house is also a semi, a cottage (not in UK), and floorplan was crucial. Noise sets me off - i can happily live near a road or a school playground (noise that is 'meant' to be there) but if i can hear a neighbour's telly i just lose my mind!

A single straight hallway runs the whole length of our house with rooms off it, except the living room which is 'open plan' (no wall with hallway). But we snooped around the floorplan of NDN from when they bought several years prior and that was a bedroom, so we figured we'd bother them more than they bothered us (and hopefully not at all, we are super considerate i promise!) We are on v good terms and have told them to always let us know if they can hear a TV or anything and they swear they hear nothing.

Our house is a very cute weatherboard shack, shocking Victorian hot climate build quality, but being halls adjoining means we still hear nothing. I can only ever hear NDN playing and chilling in the garden even though they have a 1 y/o and 3 y/o.

p.s. obviously if some idiot has ripped down the wall in a period halls adjoining semi or terrace to create a lovely open plan living with the stairs in it then you lose all the benefits of this natural sound proofing (and generate yourself a lovely heating bill!)