Why does everyone prefer houses over apartments?

JustAThought

I’ve lived in some beautiful appartments in Dublin where there was zero issues or problems with noise or neighbours but they were small by comparison with what you get in a house.

I’ve also stayed/shared in appartments in Dublin where there was noise and parties due to their handy city centre location , where the screaming and howling from drunks coming out of pubs and clubs at 230 am wake you every night and you swash through vomit crusted doorsteps and over drunks and junkies and dossers every morning dossing down in your city centre doorstep.

I can’t imagine what it might be like to have someone or families of these IN the appartment block - having been placed there almost free of charge by the taxpayer and with e700-e800 cash handout to spend or drink or booze every month and nothing to do all day. Nightmare. New trend in the superexpensive appartments built around google HQ and charlotte dock where the government has just spent up to a half a million per appartment buying them to put itinerants and social welfare people in - imagine having your lifes savings/borrowings invested in that and how it will totally screw your re-sale value and negitive equity.

I’d now also be concerned about the likes of what happened in Belmayne and Smithfield with appartments in high density areas being used by the prison and ‘reform’ services to house convicted rapists and paedophiles when they get out of prison- if it wasn’t for the work being done by the Herald people would have no idea - no doubt we all read the story of Larry Murphy turning up at a ‘neighbours’ BBQ and having to be asked to leave - brave man who did that to protect his family. Imagine that in your life at night or in the common areas where wives are and children play.

Renters wrecking the place - moving on and the others or owners being left to pick up the bill - famaged common areas/ prams and bikes in hallways damaging plaster/BBQ’s on balconies burning holes in wooden floors/cealings etc and people who have outgrown the space but cannot move making it into shanty town with old couches and childrens plastic wendyhouses on balconies and junk covered in noisy plastic covers etc. Remaining owners/renters management fee then gors uo the following year. Headwreck.

Noise.

Antisocial behaviour.

Living in close promimity to people whose values you don’t share.

Unpredictibility and fear of living in close quarters to methadone users/ junkies/ crackheads.

Unpredictibility of living in shared facilities and communal corridors with high volume of mostly untracable strangers who you have no idea where they are from or what they think is ‘normal’ or acceptable behaviour.

Bins left on corridors leaking godknowswhat onto communal carpets.

Noise of communal bins being lifted and emptied - ditto issues around not putting lids on properly, overfilling and rats.


Shared Parking - total headmelt.

Clamping - total headmelt if someone has dumped their car in your spot and you have to park when you get home late
from work and you are then clamped.

Sinkfunds or lack thereof & disappearing sinkfunds.

PrioryHall/GorseHill situations.

External maintenance.

Unregulated so called ‘management’ companies.

Endless headwreck administration for basic life.

etc

Darc19

ladystardust wrote: »

I cant wait to own a house so that I have only one adjoining neighbour, my own front door, a garden, and a press to store my Hoover.

Go semi rural and you'll never look back

I'm a 30-40 min walk to Kildare Town, I can sunbathe naked (no I don't ) I can hear the birdsong, I can breathe fresh country air and neighbors would go out of their way to help each other.

If I was offered a free house to live in Dublin, I'd refuse it.

Caranica

Plenty of houses have management fees too.

My 3 bed duplex is bigger than my sister's 3 bed semi. I've also got more storage (including attic) and more bathrooms.

It's not perfect, neighbours on one side did renovations earlier this year and since then I'm having noise issues I never had before. Hopefully that can be sorted.

Newbie20

Daxton Mealy Optometry wrote: »

Drying clothes is an important one for me too. I like my clothes line dried.

Or you could do as my apartment neighbours do and dry their clothes on a clothes horse out the front! Looks awful.

To be fair the people in them don’t cause any real bother and I’m sure lots of apartments are lovely. But in my case there is no doubt that it is harder to keep an area looking nice when there are apartments there. They don’t have the same interest in keeping the place looking nice outside, picking up rubbish on the ground etc. Just my personal experience, I’m sure there are some lovely apartment blocks around.

Royale with Cheese

There needs to be a certificate rating brought in for noise proofing in apartments/terraced/semi d's in Ireland similar to BER. It is an absolute fúcking joke what some developers can get away with, and it's very hard to tell what a place will be like until you've lived in it a few months. I thought my place was fine for 6 months until somebody moved in to the vacant apartment upstairs.

That said it should only be brought in after I've sold my place...

JustAThought

Appartment blocks allowed be built down the quays in the 1990’s with no lights in the commin corridors - every other appartment has a lamp cord under its door and a lamp outside their door so they are not walking putch balck corrudirs to get into their appartments :0 Of course that’s to do with building regulations and planning but still a headwreck.

Appartments allowed to be built with no fire escape stairwell - lift only deathtraps. Functioning in Dublin and rented out as we speak.

Appartments built out of wood - with no firebreak between appartments. ‘Discovered’ by firemen in a huge apprtment complex estate when putting out a chip pan fire that spread to adjoining (wood build) appartments - one block required everyone to move out but the remaining blocks not checked and never fixed - deathtraps. Still fully rented and functioning.

Fire in Belmayne (I think) 3 storeys up over 2 storey high ground floor retail units - Dublin fire brigade do not have enough high rise hydraulic ladders for rescuing people in our new appartment builds - hydraulic high rise ladder unit stored in city centre depot and has to be driven to and unit retrieved before attending fire - imagine being told to wait when your family is burning to death because of traffic on Pearse St and your local station cannot reach your window with their 1980’s planning compliant equipment.

These are all regulatory/ health & safety/planning/ government compliance issues - all being utterly ignored by RTE, the rest of the sleeping media, politicians and governemnt bodies.

Get a house!!

r93kaey5p2izun

Newbie20 wrote: »

Or you could do as my apartment neighbours do and dry their clothes on a clothes horse out the front! Looks awful.

To be fair the people in them don’t cause any real bother and I’m sure lots of apartments are lovely. But in my case there is no doubt that it is harder to keep an area looking nice when there are apartments there. They don’t have the same interest in keeping the place looking nice outside, picking up rubbish on the ground etc. Just my personal experience, I’m sure there are some lovely apartment blocks around.

Personally I think there's nothing wrong with drying washing on a balcony or in public view. It's the norm across half of Europe too. I think this view of washing as unsightly is weird tbh, especially when it seems to take greater priority than function and practicality.

JustAThought

Daxton Mealy Optometry wrote: »

Personally I think there's nothing wrong with drying washing on a balcony or in public view. It's the norm across half of Europe too. I think this view of washing as unsightly is weird tbh, especially when it seems to take greater priority than function and practicality.

Its not the norm and is banned in most appartment blocks for good reasons. It is unsightly, it runs the real risk of items of drying contraptions being blown down to street level and maiming someone or causing a car accident, it runs the risk of the external windows being hit and damaged by flapping zips or buttons leaving the fellow renters or owners with an increased mgmt bill to fix or replace the windows etc. It also is a noise nuisance to adjoining neighbours, and seeping water from clothes presents a draining problem on balconies or nuisance to neighbours below whose outdoor area is wet or stain damaged by seeping clothes.

Most civilised countries have common drying / storage with lines areas in the basements or block utility services - not here of course - far too
much effort for the government to regulate or force builders to plan for.

ladystardust

Newbie20 wrote: »

Or you could do as my apartment neighbours do and dry their clothes on a clothes horse out the front! Looks awful.

To be fair the people in them don’t cause any real bother and I’m sure lots of apartments are lovely. But in my case there is no doubt that it is harder to keep an area looking nice when there are apartments there. They don’t have the same interest in keeping the place looking nice outside, picking up rubbish on the ground etc. Just my personal experience, I’m sure there are some lovely apartment blocks around.

Unfortunately any washer/dryer combo I have ever had has been useless so unless you are lucky enough to have more than a galley kitchen in an apartment, then clothes horse is it my friend. My kitchen has a press for plates/bowls and mugs, a press for pots/pans and a press for food. Drawers currently storing jam/preserves/ sugar/ spices. That's it for space. I'd love a dryer that works and space to put it. But for now, I've got my undies drying on a clothes horse on the balcony for all to see. For shame!

Newbie20

Daxton Mealy Optometry wrote: »

Personally I think there's nothing wrong with drying washing on a balcony or in public view. It's the norm across half of Europe too. I think this view of washing as unsightly is weird tbh, especially when it seems to take greater priority than function and practicality.

Well see they don’t have a balcony, it’s on ground floor level. Yeah I get your point and realise that a lot of people feel the same as you, it’s just a personal opinion that it looks very bad and not what I envisaged I’d see out the front when I bought my house. I suppose if it was the norm in Ireland maybe I’d feel different but it’s definitely not the norm here.

They do have room out the back to do same so it doesn’t have to be in full view and I’d have no problem with that. In theory, if every apartment followed suit then there could be 20/30 clothes horses outside at a time and it would look like some kind of outdoor laundry service.

JustAThought

<SNIP>

DoozerT6

I flip-flop over which is better at times. I (female, single) bought an apartment in the 'burbs (it was all I could afford at the time) and have lived here for years, and always swore blind that I would eventually upgrade to a house. But I never had the opportunity, and now I'm not so sure. Yes, I could do without the constantly screaming baby next door, having to go outside and behind the building to get to the bins, and the noise from the communal hallway, but I also never have to worry about garden or building maintenance, randomers knocking at my door etc. I can see how storage could be an issue for people as mine is a typical 'went up in the Boom' apartment block and there is only the one storage cupboard in the hallway. There are families here with kids bikes in the hallways (not blocking access or egress) because there is nowhere else to put them.

I'm a couple of floors up, which adds to the feeling of security, and yet still, at times, I yearn for a place where I'm not so close to everyone else and I'm not constantly hearing traffic from the road outside. Also, the management fees here are so expensive.

I dunno. Someday, when I'm big (lol) I'll know what to do.

PukkaStukka

JustAThought wrote: »

Most civilised countries have common drying / storage with lines areas in the basements or block utility services - not here of course - far too much effort for the government to regulate or force builders to plan for.

This for me is the knub of a big issue with our planning system. Builders and developers are let do what they want and we then have a planning system that is developer led rather than consumer led. Local authorities then have skin in the game in the form of development levies. So the more that's built, the more levies they accrue. The emphasis is usually on quantity of build rather than quality, and all too often we hear about X number of houses being built with poor infrastructure etc.

We need to overhaul the planning model here completely and look at what our continental neighbours are doing there to make apartment living both desirable and sustainable. We
are not learning from their success.

JustAThought

Criminal grade apathy, incompetence and dereliction of duty by out planning, regulatory and statuatory ‘authorities’. Brown envelopes and everyone look that way are not things of the past.

Graham

Mod Note

JustAThought, stop dragging the thread of topic with your soapboxing.

Do not reply to this post.

Normajeanjones

Do people regard own door duplexes in the same way as apartments? Or would this be considered similar to a terraced house?

Of course a detached house would be lovely but as a single buyer in Dublin my budget is more suited to an apartment, but could probably stretch to an own door, three bed duplex. Thoughts on these? Just as bad as an apartment?

HamSarris

Apartments will be a great investment in the future given the increase in single people.

Where will all those 40-year-old women waiting on Mr. Right and all those 40-year-old men still trying to get with college girls live?

Caranica

Normajeanjones wrote: »

Do people regard own door duplexes in the same way as apartments? Or would this be considered similar to a terraced house?

Of course a detached house would be lovely but as a single buyer in Dublin my budget is more suited to an apartment, but could probably stretch to an own door, three bed duplex. Thoughts on these? Just as bad as an apartment?

I have an own door 3 bed duplex. Generally love it. I feel safer than I did in our old semi d. Yes there's management fees but low maintenance costs.

As with any conjoined housing neighbours a make a huge difference to your experience.

FVP3

The hostility to apartments here explains why Dublin has such a huge problem with sprawl. We live in a nicely run apartment near the sea and Dart, my sister and family lives in a 3 bedroom house past the M50. I know which one I'd prefer.

We dont have kids yet but when we do we can probably stay here for at least one. There is a family down stairs with two kids.

FVP3

Normajeanjones wrote: »

Do people regard own door duplexes in the same way as apartments? Or would this be considered similar to a terraced house?

Of course a detached house would be lovely but as a single buyer in Dublin my budget is more suited to an apartment, but could probably stretch to an own door, three bed duplex. Thoughts on these? Just as bad as an apartment?

Assuming that "apartments are bad" in the first place there. But let's go with it.

A duplex is a house that happens to be on top or below another house. It doesn't have a shared corridor so you don't really share with anybody.

Tork

I've seen these sorts of threads before. The people who like apartments cite things like lower heating bills, no need to maintain their properties and a feeling that they're safer as advantages. It is true that there are some lovely apartments out there but you need to kiss an awful lot of frogs to get there. There's no point in going on about how wonderful European apartment living is. In Ireland, apartments are largely built as a way to maximise profit from a limited parcel of land. I'd argue that the experience of renting apartments is one factor which put many people off the idea of buying them.

For most people, an apartment will constrain their lifestyle and that's off-putting. Have some kiddies, take up a new hobby or even buy a second car and you're in trouble. Apartment living suits some people down to the ground and that's nice for them. For most people, the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.

It will be interesting to see how apartment values hold up when we exit the lockdown. If I remember right, they didn't do well after the last recession and at one point it was pretty hard to even get mortgage approval for one bedroom properties.

jrosen

I liked living in my apartment. It was a great size, decent storage. I was single at the time and had a great sense of security. It was a small development and we did have a private outside space.

Ive lived abroad too and also in apartments and the benefit there I found was maintenance teams, communal play spaces, gyms, basement laundry facilities, door man. Someone to take in your parcels and groceries if you were not home.
I think if you have a well maintained, well managed apartment, with good sound proofing and close to local parks and outside spaces it can be as good if not better than a house.

KaneToad

JustAThought wrote: »

.

Living in close promimity to people whose values you don’t share.

This is it, in a nutshell. A house allows some mitigation against this. An apartment, in Ireland, doesn't.

jrosen

KaneToad wrote: »

This is it, in a nutshell. A house allows some mitigation against this. An apartment, in Ireland, doesn't.

Funnily enough in all my years living in apartment I never once had a negative experience. Fast forward to a semi D and that all changed.

Vita nova

I'm heading towards retirement and I wouldn't mind living in a US style large apartment/condominium complex where there's a swimming pool, a gym, games room and the usual storage and laundry facilities. Even better if it's located on the coast with a view over the sea/ocean.

When I'm older, I don't want to be maintaining a house, gardens and a heating system; it would be nice for all that to be taken care of even if it costs a little extra. I haven't seen any similar complexes in Ireland but they are common in other countries and are popular with retirees.

Tork

Mr.S wrote: »

I don't get this paragraph, what you're saying is mostly about available space / size of the property? If you pick a small apartment (or house) then that will constrain your lifestyle if you need more space then what's available to you.

If you have kids, you get a bigger apartment.

If you have a second car, you find an apartment with 2 car spaces available.

Not sure what the hobby point is

You have no option but to sell if the apartment gets too small for your purposes. And hope that it has increased in value enough for you to have enough to buy another one. You can't build an extension or tweak the front garden so you can have your two cars parked at your front door.

No large apartment is a substitute for having somewhere safe to send the kids to play. It must be hell for apartment living parents trying to work from home at the moment, with over-energic kiddes about the place. What do you do? Get them to run around the balcony?

By a hobby, I meant something that needs equipment. Any apartment I've experience of had piss poor storage. At best there was somewhere to put a bike.

Anyway, I'm not going to derail this thread. You love your apartments. I wouldn't buy one in a fit.

ED E

People are so quick to discredit them as we only build shoeboxes. Families don't want to live in apartments because we only build small/cheap ones so developers don't build bigger so families don't want so developers don't build....

You see where I'm going? It works well on the continent. Check out how the nordics do it, massively well insulated and with only one exterior wall = very energy efficient. Noise was never an issue.

Charles Babbage

This entire discussion boils down to the fact that you have some control over your own heating bills and suchlike, but you have no control over noisy neighbours.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

I suppose and interesting question would be what if the apartment is bigger (excluding gardens for a moment). Would you pick an apartment in a great area or a house in not as nice area? Maybe 30mins commute in the apt vs 1+ hour's in the house.

guyfawkes5

There's legitimate day-to-day reasons for preferring apartments or houses, but there does seem to be a weird seam running though Irish people, tilting towards the older crowd, where there's a hostility towards apartments that leans more towards unreasonable expectations of control that even houses don't really have.