My wife & I are looking to move into a larger apartment in the next few months; we may buy if possible but aren’t opposed to renting. Upon hearing this news, my cousin & dear friend “Sam” was somewhat surprised; he thinks I should have bought a house years back, and certainly should now if only to have a domicile that matches my job.
But I don’t want a house. Neither does my wife, for that matter. We like living up high, for one thing. I have zero interest in having a yard and am quite happy to go to the spacious park within walking distance of our place. My wife has different reasons for preferring apartment living to single-family dwellings, but the upshot is that though we’re willing to buy an apartment if that’s what it’s takes to get what we want, neither of us buys into the American Dream of wanting a house.
So is that just us? And, for the bonus: regardless of whether you like apartments over houses, what are your ideal living quarters?
I like the suburbs - with decent-enough plots of land that I am absolutely not on top of my neighbor, but in no way isolated. I maybe would like a wooded 2 acres instead of the blank 1/2 acre I have now.
I grew up in a corner lot with no neighbors to the left or behind us. Now I live in the same neighborhood but with neighbors on each side and one sort of behind (the house is across a field and perpendicular to mine).
I also love having an attached garage.
The idea of sharing walls or floors/ceilings with other people makes me nauseous. I also have no desire to have any sort of landlord, no matter how much time and effort they supposedly save you. I couldn’t stand having to rely on someone else to keep my house running right.
Two awfully big issues conflated here–apartment/condo versus single family home, and renting versus buying. I would never consider a stand-alone house because I live by myself and hate/suck at yard work. But I certainly buy instead of rent–unless you only expect to live in a place for a short (<3-5 years) period of time, or property is waaaay overpriced in your neighborhood, buying is better (long term) financially.
My ideal situation is the one I have- a detached house, on some land, with neighbors that are close enough to walk to in a few minutes but whose houses I can’t see from my front door (OK, I can see the house across the street, but he’s far enough away that it’s easy to disregard). I don’t like the idea of sharing a wall with someone else. My walls are mine, and I can do with them what I want. If I want to gut a room and renovate, or remove a wall and open up into the next room, I want to be able to do it without dealing with a neighbor and their opinions or attitude, or noise, or what have you.
I like working in my yard, and I like having a yard surrounding my house. It’s a form of insulation.
I like that I pay into my home’s equity every month and eventually it will truly be my own. I can’t stand the idea of renting my dwelling.
I think I could be happy in a variety of situations. Currently, I love our house because it is fantastic in many ways. Given a more “normal” house vs. an apartment, I’m not sure I would care as much. If I had plenty of extra money, I’d have a downtown condo and a house in the country.
If I had kids or dogs I might want to live in a house with a garden but having a garden is a pain the hole and I’d happily live in a modestly sized apartment again, a few stories up.
Rent rent rent. I hate yardwork, and if my toilet breaks, all I have to do is make a phone call. I never have to pay for home repairs. And if I get sick of the place, moving is a pain, but not like selling a house. I just move.
My ideal living situation would be to rent on the street that I’m already on, but closer to the center of town. But I can’t afford $5000 rent.
I never want to live in a house, and if I own someday, it’ll be a condo. The idea of a lawn gives me heartburn. My ideal living situation would be a big apt/condo in the city, but not downtown.
I live in a one bedroom. I’m single so I’ve never needed more space than that, and I spent my youth doing yardwork and maintenance on the family home and would rather not do that stuff my entire life. It annoys friends because, well, I’m good at it - my grandfather was amazingly skilled and I learned a ton from him, so friends love when I help with projects. When my grandmother was alive, I often spent my vacation doing home projects for her after my grandfather passed (huge family tension generator, btw). I do enjoy doing it voluntarily, every once in a while; I wouldn’t want the daily grind of home ownership, though.
I’ve been tempted though. About 20 years ago, I came close to buying this old 3-story brownstone for next to nothing in a neighborhood just starting to gentrify, but I decided I didn’t want to spend the next 5 years of my free time working on a house.
Not really; not for us. That is, we’ll buy or rent the new place, depending on what makes more sense. But it simply won’t be a single-family home no matter what, as neither my wife nor I want such a place or so aren’t looking for such.
We have a baby, but we don’t need a yard (US for “garden”.) There’s a large park a trivial distance away, and the city mows and weeds THAT.
I will never live in an apartment if I can help it. My own place. My own space. Renting a house around here is no cheaper than a mortgage and you get to deduct mortgage interest. I don’t want to deal with a landlord. And she has two kids. I have two kids. I know we could all squeeze into an apartment but why should we? Combined we make enough to own a nice house.
I love tranquility and nature, so I live in the country/bush on a dead end road with few neighbours. If I had my druthers, I would live in the country/bush on a dead end road that no one else lives on.
My lifestyle requires storage (e.g. trailer, canoe, kayaks, etc.), so condo/apt living would be (used to be) very annoying for me.
Every time I have lived in a multi-family unit, there have been noise and smoking problems, so again condo/apt living is not for me.
I think my ideal living quarters would be a spacious, completely soundproof condo. I like living in houses, but I’d have to take care of the yard and house and all that, and it’d be too much trouble and expense for me.
I can see an apartment close to work versus a house in the suburbs far from work. Besides that, I’ll take a house. (Or a condo after I retire.) More space for my books, more freedom to do what we want. We can choose to fix stuff ourselves or call someone. It is not like you get that service free in an apartment, it is built into your rent. Plus, we’ve been here long enough that the value of our house has more than doubled, and the equity has done much better than that. As for kids, we’ve got a park near us, but with a house you also have the option of the kids playing in the backyard without you having to get organized.
We have dog also - great to just let her out into the yard when she needs to go at night.
But, if I had to commute into the city, none of this might be worth it.
I own a two bedroom 1.5 bath condo. It’s been nice, but as the place gets older and big repairs upgrades are looming, an apartment doesn’t look like a bad idea at all.
For those looking into buying a condo. Investigate closely how the condo board runs. Trust me.
If I didn’t have a husband who did the yard work, I would totally go for a deluxe apartment in the sky. I like where we live, but I would love some place that I could walk to shopping and entertainment rather than having to drive to everything.
I do yard work at my dad’s house. He’s pushing 80 and suffers under the delusion that he’s still capable of pushing around the lawn mower without crippling himself, so once a week during the spring & summer months I mow his lawn, clip his shrubs, and so forth. More than enough for me, thank you very much.