A lot of people are pro-apartmemt before living in one, so here are some fun facts:
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Apartments usually have a maintenance cost, that covers as little as possible while still costing a lot. You never really own the flat, the building company does.
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You often have a communal garden; it’s looked after by the lowest bidding contractor. Not all flats have balconies, so you are unlikely to have your own.
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Fear of fire and flooding - if someone else messes up, your stuff is toast/soaked. Insurance companies love that extra risk, it gives them an excuse to charge more.
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No flat has good sound proofing - the baby screaming downstairs at 5am and the thunder of the morbidly obese person upstairs going to the bathroom at 1am will denote your new sleep schedule (i.e. disturbed)
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I hope you’re in for deliveries - apartments have no safe spots to leave things.
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You will not be able to afford a flat with the same floor space as a house. I’m sorry, welcome to your new coffin.
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Good luck drying your laundry (spoiler, your living room is going to have a laundry rack).
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Good luck owning a bike (it’s either the bike or your laundry, take your pick).
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Vocal intimacy becomes a community event.
Living in a flat is a pile of little miseries grouped together.
Apartments works very different in your country. For me it’s like this:
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Building companies build apartments, usually they are owned by whoever paided them. That can be a private company, it can also be state owned, a cooperative, or a collection of privates. It’s not uncommen to buy single apartments here. Depending on the constellation you have a say in what is what done in what way. However: cost like garbage collection, tax,… Are always there. No matter if you live in an apartment or single home.
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Same as 1. Depends on the constellation. Many people living in apartments have a garden plot somewhere else. There are places (close to nature, away from streets) where you can rent a garden and have a place of piece. Quieter than your lawn next to the next house.
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If apartments are that more dangerous then insurance companies will want more money, sure. As far as I looked for my neighborhood the cost seems to be related to the living area, I. E. Same size same price. So it does not has to be more expensive.
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Of course can you have sound proofness. Usually here walls are massive and not made out of paper.
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And houses do? Isn’t it a thing that people steel packages from your doorway/garden in the US? But nevertheless: usually I was friends with other people in the house who could get my parcels for me, like the elderly lady on the ground floor. It does not get safer than that.
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Yes? Flats are obviously cheaper for the same size as a house. You will not find 500m^2+ appartements, but >200m^2 can be found. How big are your houses usually?
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Dryer? Balcony? A lot of apartments have an extra room in the basement, or a sun roof.
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Bike or laundry? What are you on about? A lot of places have an extra bike room. Most of the time you have also your own compartment in the cellar. Bigger apartment complexes here are also required to have room for cars, I.e.you can rent a garage if you really want more space.
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Same as 4.
I am really not sure if you are trolling or houses work differently in your area.
That is pretty pessimistic. I never lived in a big block of appartments but in 8 flat/building houses. We have thick walls, so flooding and noise isnt really a problem. We know our neighbours, they even take deliveries inside (into the stairway) so they dont get stolen from outsiders. We have a dedicated bike-room downstairs, with a dedicated bikeramp from the outside, every house in the area has this. We have a communal parkinggarage with electric charging-spaces.
The cost of living i cannot really compare, the inability of repairing something or our own (as we are renting) is a negative. The fire risk is something I have never thought about but is a fair point I guess.
Big minus is smoking neighbours
You’ve never lived in a large apartment building but you think the issues people have with them are pessimistic?? I wouldn’t have a problem with a townhome but apartments definitely have some trade offs
This would just become a 100 apartment buildings.
Exactly. People who advocate for densification are basically advocating for everywhere to be Amsterdam or NYC with continuous human habitation and maybe small concessions in the form of city parks (a joke compared to real natural areas, IMO).
I’m not sure if they’re aware that this will be the logical conclusion of those policies.
I’d rather have a few cities and a lot of unspoilt nature than no cities and no nature, just suburban sprawl everywhere
Well if that much housing is needed then the idea of not providing it is kind of… monstrous? evil?
Nah mate, there should be laws to how much people can live in some area. It’s inhumane to compress so many people in one place. I don’t want every city to be Hong Kong.
I live in an apartment. I want to live in a house.
Cunt upstairs neighbour smoking cancer sticks on the balcony, making my room smell like shit when he does it, dumbass neighbour to my right who phones some other dumbass at 6 in the morning, screaming into his phone, waking me up. No garden, can’t have a cat or a dog.
I don’t want to live in a suburb where I am forced to use a car, but you can live in a house and still be able to get anywhere you want without a car.
When I see the image what came to mind was that experiment where they had an overpopulation of rats in a cage and how all of the rats turned on each other and killed each other.
Too much human density is not good. You have to be sure to get the percentage of humans to a acre of land just right, to prevent the rats situation.
Nature is important, but Humanity moreso.
This is EXACTLY the kind of point I’m trying to make. Humans keep packing more and more into the same forever-growing cities and it makes the formerly-pleasant harsh, foreign, and unwelcoming.
There exist nice places that have balance - green spaces, slow pace of life, nice local restaurants, uncrowded trails, minimal traffic and short commutes.
Then they become discovered, become popular, and become overcrowded in a way that ruins what made them special to begin with. But they still look small to people from the big cities, who keep moving there. Now increasingly expensive, congested, and losing their original character, the urban zealots who invaded start screeching about cars, walkability, bikeability, and transit. It was perfectly bikeable, and there was no traffic before everyone tried to pile in.
The enemy is GROWTH, and OVERCROWDING, not single family homes and cars.
My concern with multi unit living is that your home is now dependent on the actions of others. You could lose everything because some dumbass next to you dropped cigarette burning on their floor, or overflowed their tub.
It also just gets messy having that many people try to manage a property together. I lived in a high rise for a year. There was constant bickering over who put the wrong thing down the trash chute or who was using the elevator to move furniture without checking it out first. Everyone had to all agree to building repairs, which was a nightmare, and getting them them done took forever. From my understanding our building was pretty well run, but it didn’t feel like it. I loved the idea of high rise life when I moved in but by the time we got out house I was ready to be done with it.
What the hell is going on in your apartments, that an overflown tub destroys everything? Is the floor in your bathroom not waterproof? In Europe water damage typically happens with bursting tubes and that can happen in your own home as well. You are typically insured against this.
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