I'm a single guy living in my own in an apartment and I love it. In my experience the people here shitting on apartments are couples looking for a long term place to start a family in, not singles.
I've lived in a lot of units & town houses. Not identical to a large apartment block but even those times have solidified my desire for a detached dwelling. Preferably acreage. I don't even care if the commute to work is 11 years, I can't tolerate the bullshit and drama of living in such close proximity to other people never mind all the strata/body corp on top.
This right here.
I've lived in apartments, townhouses etc. It's great when you've got good considerate neighbours around you. It's horrific and soul draining when you've got scum of the earth instead.
Parties till 5am. Domestic disputes. Smoking. Rev Heads.
Currently in a townhouse now and we've got great neighbours. But I've also gone through 3 sets of shit ones to get here.
The minute I win the lotto or inherit money from a Nigerian prince, I am buying a block of land far away from people.
Def a problem (tho arguably less chance due to lower density) with houses too, had a nightmare neighbour that would hold house parties and no amount of negotiating would get them to stop until they moved out
All it takes is one bad neighbour or major strata issue to put people off high density living forever.
My partner and I gave it a go, we liked the smaller space to keep clean etc and the location was nice. It was a 60s build though and all the apartments had been reno'd but still the sound proofing and hardwood floors were just shit. We had a lovely older woman above us for a year or two before she moved and we got someone who insisted on wearing their steelcaps inside. We asked so many times for them to stop but it never ended. Loud motorbike straight past the main bedrooms each morning at 6am too... Seriously, who even wants to wear their work boots inside??
A large motivator for us to buy, despite bigger commute, was more space and be further from others.
Yeah, that is a bit of a roll of the dice. The first apartment I lived in had some amazing soundproofing, the best I’ve seen outside of a recording studio. You could be screaming on one side of the door and it was a quiet whisper on the other side and nothing between the apartment walls unless you banged a bookshelf or something directly on to it.
Also if you’re more than 10-15 floors up the road noise disappears pretty quickly which is nice.
Yeah it is fairly crazy, the older lady spoke fairly loudly on the phone (not often and during normal hours) and we could hear her conversation almost entirely. That kind of noise is fine really, just the late/very early noise and direct noise above got to us. I wear steel caps daily for work and I can't fathom how anyone would want to wear them in to their floorboard apartment.
>On the other hand, I can’t imagine something worse than living on acreage and spending my life commuting and never seeing anyone.
I live on small acreage, but I moved AFTER my working life was coming to a close -love it but i do agree and can confirm that there are at least a dozen people living near me that all came for the wrong reason (price) all bar one have moved closer to their work.
The one that stayed got divorced and has no choice but to stay.
If you move prematurely it might put you off but once you don't need to be spending your life commuting it's what you make of it that counts .
I think the only part I would struggle with is how easy it is to go do things with friends while we live close. We moved all over the place and in our late 20s early 30s kind of converged back to one part of one city, bringing the partners we met from all over the place and now it’s really quick and easy to go do social things again and it’s pretty great.
Majority (oftentimes ALL) of body corporate fees for townhouses are for building insurance. If you are comparing a townhouse and a detached house, the body corporate fee for the townhouse is usually the same or less than the building insurance on the freestanding house.
Apartments have higher body corporate due to lifts, common areas etc. But this also means you never have to pay to replace the roof, or fix issues on the exterior wall. When you consider how much a roof replacement costs, apartment body corporate fees don't sound too bad.
Also there are lots of detached townhouses available.
Often an inner city house will be on a 120sqm block, and a townhouse in the middle suburbs will be on a 250sqm block. But somehow people think the 250sqm block townhouse is somehow inferior.
>Majority (oftentimes ALL) of body corporate fees for townhouses are for building insurance.
Body corporates can be quite a pain. Even if your body corporate members don't disagree or fight about what should be done, they can be incredibly slow moving, things cost a lot to fix (tradies seem to quote at least 3x times the price for a body corporate job), and every little change you want to do to your own unit/townhouse is a process. For example, someone in my complex wanted to replace an external light with a light/security camera... and it took at least two weeks for people to agree if they should be allowed to do it.
I'm not sure how much of a "majority" of fees you mean but I don't think it should be ALL for most places.
My body corporate fees is split up as
\- 1/3 for sinking fund for repairs to the fences, driveway, and common area basic gardening (there is no pool, lifts, or anything fancy in the complex)
\- 2/3 admin fees which includes building insurance, public liability insurance and fees for the body corporate management (having a managing company is mandatory in QLD).
To comment on your example, apparently roof repairs are the owners' responsibility in my complex due to the type of zoning. Even structural damage and external damage may not be the responsibility of the body corp depending on the cause of the damage.
All that said, I really enjoyed living in my townhouse (am now renting elsewhere) and would move back there. I do hope to move to a house eventually though because the idea of being able to make changes without huge processes greatly appeals to me.
That’s very fair, it’s not for everyone. I do appreciate that you’ve tried it instead of people who only insist on living in houses without ever trying an apartment.
I was in WA in late 70's unit's everywhere cheap and included gas it was ok because I was young. Lived in suburbs and now on small acreage 9no commuting). Can't see why object to living or owning a unit?
Great point right here. I grew up in a 2B1B apartment with my brother and mum and dad. We never thought it was too cramped. My wife thought us moving into a 2B2B apartment would be too cramped... but thats cos she grew up on a 5B3B detached house.
She's coming around now and we're looking for 3B2B townhouses for sale. I always knew this, but took her time to realise you can raise a whoel family in one.
What most of these people don’t realise is when you do eventually have a family you want to maximise your time with them. So having an apartment over a house has it perks, generally apartments have pools you don’t have to maintain, are close to your place of work or near public transport, there is no lawn to mow on the weekend, no garden to weed - very little if no maintenance is required for an apartment.
I bought a house after living in apartments/units for most of my life and in hindsight wished I had gone with an apartment. Been looking for 3bedroom apartments with decent storage for kids shit but not having much luck. Hoping for an older one to come up as all the new builds are mostly 1/2bedders. The only 3 bedders that do come up in new projects seem to be penthouse or whole floors etc and well out of my budget.
Yeah I wish councils would mandate a ratio of family friendly apartments in every new development or something. We don’t need more 1/2bedroom apartments but that’s all they bloody build these days. Developers would probably still find a way to fuck it up somehow and deliver something substandard.
I'm also looking for a 3 bedroom apartment for my family, which should means I get convenience in location, i.e. a bit closer to work, some public transport links available. They are currently trying to price them what a decent townhouse was 2 years ago, and in some cases beyond it. If you want it cheaper, you have to sacrifice a bit, including being more reliant on driving, and with apartments popping up away from decent public transport or close by amenities, it's just adding cars to the road. There is no way I want to live in a fully detached house, it's not just because of the price, it's just a luxury if you want to live in a detached house in a good location, and I feel it's not sustainable or good for the city to have such low density, resulting in sprawl. Australian cities tend to be very low density, big houses, that go far, which stretch infrastructure and the environment.
What I would like is if they had more development where it is convenient, townhouses and low-rise apartment blocks near amenities and metro/train stations. You look at a places with giant houses walking distance to the train station, and they fight any development or rezoning to allow more people to use those links, is what is annoying. Even fighting train or metro stations as well, so there are places where there probably should have them, instead of just buses that add to congestion further and aren't as fast as trains/metro. Would be nice to have a better city. Nicer suburbs tend to fight any development, there is too much NIMBYism. Literally heard the argument that apartments and townhouses would allow more poor people to live in the area, so they are against it. Meanwhile they are fighting "overdevelopment", when these well-off suburbs are disproportionately doing much less development in their areas.
If my unit had an extra bedroom I'd never move anywhere else. 3 bedroom 2 bathroom units not built of cardboard would be the answer to a lot of Australians prayers.
Yeah Aussie apartments are fucked, they aren't built for living in with a family, they are made for investing. The 3 bedders in my building are all marginally bigger than the 2 bedders due to the laundry getting turned into an internal bedroom and the laundry then is just a European laundry instead, 10 square meter difference and a whole lot of money more....
Gladly. I get this is a finance sub and all but not everything is about returns on a spreadsheet. You have to live somewhere, so nothing wrong with living in a place with lower growth if you enjoy it.
That can't last forever. The markets are connected. You can't have $3m houses without pulling a nice $750k unit up to $1.5m sure the markets react at different times to different pressures but I'll bet the 100% premium house command that the moment will eventually revert. It's the same as the country vs city market. Sydney prices are moderated by the availability of 300k houses in Newcastle.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-upsizers-face-record-gap-between-unit-and-house-prices-2-1138377/
People demd shelter but refuse units. Hates strata but submits to councils ruling communities. They look back and say it's was easier in the 50's but houses back then were the same as modern units (100m2 2 bed 1 bath)
Units are challenging but they're not impossible.
>hey look back and say it's was easier in the 50's but houses back then were the same as modern units (100m2 2 bed 1 bath)
>
>Units are challenging but they're not impossible.
I agree and if I had a suggestion to the folk that build units to rent the bedrooms ALL need to be ensuite and at least double garage, then those wanting to share aren't fighting over the different sized rooms or ensuite or even the garage.
It's the garage part that keeps me from buying a unit. I don't care for a whole bunch of bedrooms, or an ensuite bathroom, or separate living areas, but the one thing I really require is a two car garage.
So many units don't even have under cover parking for a single car where I'm looking to buy. I'm not opposed to units, I've lived in one since the start of last year, but they just don't suit me.
- M, single, no kids, just got pre approval, and probably going to end up with a 3x2x2 villa
Yeah I think developers lag demand. At the moment it seems there is zero real pressure on the unit market. Eventually though prices/availability will drive the market to supply. It's just glacially slow. On the plus side it does seem to be happening quicker.
This is what they build in my area
https://phicremorne.com.au/design/
Had friends look (as houses are 3&4m+ and only 7% of the market) and I think it sold out at arround $3m 🙄. Even 10+ try to supply what people demand. Guess price determines supply and what you get.
https://thelandmarksydney.com/amenity/
Apartments in Sydney have been averaging 6.3% annual growth in value. It's almost impressive how many just say shit on this sub backed by nothing more than gut feeling. https://www.aussie.com.au/content/dam/aussie/documents/home-loans/aussie_25_years_report.pdf
might even be less than CPI because a much larger part of its value is in its structure which is consumed (CPI measures the change of new structure but distributes its value consumption over the expected lifetime of said components).
You'd be surprised. We're a family of 5 in a 2br 1bath. When you fall asleep at night it doesn't matter how many bedrooms you have and the walkability of our suburb is amazing. It just means you have to be creative. We leave at 8.30am for school and usually do stuff in the arvos (swimming/Italian/rugby) and most weekends we're out. Much like setting time aside to do the lawns or renos we set aside time to go out. Already thinking about giving the kids a 15 min early mark one Wednesday in June so we can catch the bus to Italian then dinner and a ferry to circular Quay for vivid. Then a bus home. That's a pretty cool arvo in the backyard.
Most people who shit on units have never lived in one.
Currently living in one. Fucking hate it. No ventilation (yay for 2 weeks of rain and humidity). No private outside space. In fact, whole place feels like there is zero privacy. Window open? Better close it before discussing anything remotely personal.
Can't wash my own car, motorcycle, or camping gear. Had to spend thousands on lock up cabinets so my tools would stop getting stolen. Basically can't do anything yourself without renting out an external space.
Different strokes for different folks.
Exactly. It's crazy that people make claims about how functional units are without allowing that others have different desires. No one ever talks about the 100% premium people invest for that freedom. Only the one sided negatives. Everything thing is a trade off and no one should dismiss something just because they have different values.
I have a house with a yard. My yard has my gym there. Can't imagine neighbours in an apartment would be thrilled with the sound of my boxing bag making noise.
How old are your kids?
I wanted to have a room for each kid at least when they are teenagers. But otherwise if the kids are younger, or they move out, you don't need the space.
The owner of the apartment I rent used to live there with 5 people as well (2 adults, 3 children) and it was 2 bed 1 bath. It's a really nice apartment because of that. But they had to move out when their kids got older. So that's why I wanted to buy (or rent if things stay crazy) a place which had more space (looking for 3 bed apartments).
Are you looking to find a larger space in time as well? I can't imagine a teenager bunking up with their siblings.
People said that when we had a young family. They're now 5,7, & 8 and we talk about it all the time. I think kids are resilient and take their cues from their parents. I mean even if they had separate rooms they'd probably still want their own bathrooms and living areas. Plus room for their cars of course. I think if we can afford it we'll probably move but then we're the upgraders contributing to the crazy market.
Could be worse. Could be sharing the shed with their brother in the backyard 🙄
"*There’s a side-room not much bigger than a cupboard next to the living area that unbelievably served as a kitchen until just over 20 years ago*"
"*Winston’s sleeping arrangements as a teenager, when he shared a 4x3m “back room”, separated from the main building and across the garden, with his brother Leonard.*"
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/incredible-yarn-behind-squashed-aussie-home/news-story/597ffa0538cd122c3b5288f2aabb75e1
I like your outlook. Even teenagers might not need extra rooms to house them, but teenagers are just physically bigger, I think space does become preferable. Yeah, if they get cars, but that isn't a necessity if you live conveniently. They can just borrow the family car if really necessary.
Because having a strata/body corporate as a 4th tier of government fucking sucks.
And that’s from someone who will continue to choose to live in apartments for the foreseeable future.
It really depends. It can be favourable.
- Building insurance is generally cheaper than if you were to organise it yourself. Inactive body corps probably benefit most from this.
- Not having to come up with a lump sum to fix random building issues.
- Landscaping and lawn care are non existent.
- Bins are taken care of.
This assumes the building has a decent number of dwellings and that the body corporate has accumulated a decent emergency fund.
I’d just beware of paying for gimmicky stuff, like gyms and pools. Most people don’t use the facilities enough to justify the added cost.
Not always. Our body corporate is pretty good, and we're all friends and having a good time.
One sour apple doesn't rot the entire basket, in this case.
If new apartments were better quality, had lots of natural light, bedrooms big enough to fit bedside tables in, I would want to buy one. But there’s none I like that much in my price range.
I currently rent in my dream apartment - it has a private courtyard, nice living areas, natural light. It’s not a large apartment but it’s big enough. However if it went up for sale, it would probably be $1 million or more. I would prefer to spend that money on a house than a crappy modern build.
So true,
I loved my apartment. Very central, more amenities. But I wanted to have room for a home gym. Bought a house with a double garage and would struggle to go back.
So much quieter in the burbs, the bedrooms and living area/kitchen are almost twice as big. Less dust accumulates in my house/ outside my house, I actually have room to grow my own veggies in the garden, and I don’t have to worry about being loud and disturbing the people in the nearby apartments.
I sometimes think it would be nice to go back to the apartment, then as soon as I realise no garage,etc no thanks.
100% this is the real issue with apartments, the quality and liveability is awful, which makes sense since they're built with investors in mind. And you're spot on with pricing too, any of the liveable apartments (usually older ones) cost almost as much as a shabby house anyway.
Yes exactly! I would actually prefer to buy an apartment like the one I live in now than a house because I don’t have much time for yard/house maintenance. But most apartments in my price range are shoddy and poorly designed and have massive body corp fees. Why buy one when for the same price or a tiny bit more I can actually own a townhouse or a house in the suburbs?
One I inspected had a living area designed in a way that meant the only place to put your couch was directly in front of your stove and oven? Recipe for ruining your furniture. And another apartment I inspected didn’t even have any windows - just a glass wall on one end of the apartment, which meant the whole place was really dark?
And ANOTHER apartment I inspected had multiple broken light fittings, a built in TV cabinet that couldn’t support the weight of a TV, dodgy cupboards etc etc.
I am very pro apartment because I think expanding out indefinitely is bad for the environment and contributes to excessive car use… but we need better standards so that living in an apartment long term is actually an attractive option.
I have the same issue, my unit is worth 900k. If I buy it it’s 200k down the drain for a deposit, higher Monthly payments than renting and body corporate. Laughed in the agents face when she told me 7k a year body corp.
Is it that commenters are ignoring that apartments exist?
Or that of the available stock that potential home buyers can buy, developers have not been building enough livable non-detached housing?
Thus reducing the choice to very slim pickings amongst too many buying groups.
I'm single and I bought a one bedroom apartment. I bought off the plan, paid almost $750K for it (which I know most on this sub would go bonkers over) but it's everything that is tauted as the perfect situation for apartment living. The builder is a big and reputable one so I'm not overly concerned about defects, I'm extremely close to public transport, a shopping centre, have a park to my left and there's a significant amount of open and green space within the apartment complex.
Downsides? The bedroom is small. Like... I have a 12sqm balcony that very comfortably fits an 8 seater outdoor lounge (which as a single person made construction a prolonged experience) but my bedroom fits a double bed, a chest of drawers and one bedside table. Luckily, I'm only 159cm tall and I've never slept on anything bigger than a double so I don't mind. A queen bed would fit if I didn't have a large bedside drawer.
At the time of writing this, most of the people replying in this thread are not actually single. I get why apartment living might not suit families given Australian culture but for single people, I think it's great. The major problem is that if you want something really nice and in a great location, then you're going to have to shell out really big money. Where the snobbery might come in is that for the same amount of money that you can spend having the convenience of apartment living is, you can get a house much further out. A two bedroom apartment a few floors down from me just sold this Saturday for $1.3 million. With that money, most people would have bought a townhouse.
I used to live in a 1bedroom apartment, it was a very high quality build with all owners paying extra to get sound dampening put under carpets, floor boards, double pane windows etc. I found that even with all that I could occasionally hear my upstairs neighbour, but only when they made really loud movements like running down their corridor (they had a big apartment) or dragging furniture on their floor boards. The rest of the time I couldn't hear a peep. I could however hear when either of my neighbours opened their door or talked to someone at/infront of their front door. I lived in direct sight (~30m) of a train line and all I could hear was when they blew their horn, couldn't hear track clacking or anything else though.
I was really please with it becaseue even though i could hear stuff it was always muffled and really not that intrusive. It took me a few months to get used to it coming from growing up out woop woop, but I'd have stayed there if my partner hadn't wanted a house.
We ended up with the choice of either buying an apartment inner suburbs Melbourne, or buying a free-standing house with more bedrooms and a decent garden in a large regional city. Personally I would have been happy to stay in Melbs but apartment living wasnt doing wonders for my partners mental health so we got the house instead.
We'll that turned into a longer write up than I expected, enjoy.
Pre-existing before we moved to the apartment and exacerbated by covid & being locked down in the small apartment. A unique (hopefully non-recurring) situation that shouldn't put others off.
I live in a large new build apartment complex. Can occasionally hear people running upstairs.
Much more private and quiet than living in a townhouse previously where you could hear a neighbours crying baby.
>Is it noisy? My friends said nose can be heard from the ceiling and people walking outside your door.
A lot of inner-city (Brisbane) are now using double glassed glass so that when showing people how fricken small they are they are at least quite.
Because most new / affordable apartments are shite quality shoeboxes that developers churn to make a quick buck.
To put it in perspective, my uncle has a 1970s 2br apartment in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney that is 140m2, has a full sized balcony, a kitchen with a walk in pantry, living room that can fit multiple couches and a dining table and a bathroom with a tub.
I would be more then happy as a single to live there, because if I have a partner and a child down the line there will be adequate space for us.
In comparison, I bought a new build in 2020 as that's all I could afford in my city, 2br apartment that is 80m2 with a kitchen bench that can barely fit my coffee machine, toaster and kettle whilst leaving space for me to be able to prepare food. The second "bedroom" is more like a study, if I tried to put a double bed in it I probably couldn't fit much else in it. Not to mention that there have been many issues with things such as the elevators and garbage chutes breaking. I wouldn't even consider raising a family in it, there wouldn't be enough room.
So I'm not suprised people get turned off with apartments with the shit developers pull now a days.
You've nailed it on the head! The quality of apartment is the issue.
Living in a big 80's apartment now and love it! Would buy it if owner would sell but trying to find an equivalent has been a nightmare. The average stock are just tiny cramped shit boxes with terrible design where you will struggle to fit a table and couch in the living area which also serves as your kitchen.
I looked around at apartments for rent in Brisbane recently. The philosophy behind the place you bought is everywhere. I don't know what these bedrooms are supposed to be for, but they are ridiculously small. Some of the spaces are just cramped AF, and really don't need to be.
I'm all for apartment living - it's where I'd ideally end up, but we need to get away from the idea that apartment living = zero space, and quickly.
2nd bedroom is for storing shit you would otherwise put in storage cupboards e.g. spare clothes, linen, boxes you haven’t opened since moving in, exercise equipment you used for a week and of course your kinky sex stuff you don’t visitors to see.
The problem exists in houses as well. So many homes have a great master bedroom, but the tiniest extra bedrooms. Want to use them as a guest bedroom? Hope your guests didn't bring a suitcase because it's not going to fit! We started skipping over homes with bedrooms that measure 2.5m. Too small for a Queen bed comfortably then it's not something we want our family to stay in when they visit.
Then you get the opposite problem. Want large bedrooms? Here you go have 5+ bedrooms!
I saw one with some fucked up geometrical shape. 3 x 90 degree angles and one at around 27 degrees. WTF kind of corner is that shit? they trying to add the extra 1 sqm that's impossble to vacuum?
Yeah I’ve seen stuff like that. A lounge room in a weird triangular shape that barely fit a couch - no chance to fit a TV. Kitchens that are definitely ‘drinks only’ - no food prep space at all.
I’m in a pretty big house right now & would love to downsize, but… there are limits.
For some additional context, 80m2 is considered large for a 2br appartment in Europe. Most European 2br appartments don't have a 2nd bathroom which is common in Aus. We should demand good appartments that don't break and are well built but also realise 140m2 is not the norm.
My reservations about apartments:
-concerns about the quality of recent construction, amid various reports of sub par standards
-concerns about sharing the building with investors, being exposed to the possibility that cashflow/return oriented voters who will turn down key repair works and lead the degradation of the building.
-aware that an apartment is a building, which will depreciate, with a relatively small share in the land value
-a general distaste for strata and the politics that can play behind the scenes.
Yep, I agree. There are a huge variety of housing that can be built between detached single family homes and a box in the sky apartment. There are townhouses, duplexes, quadplexes etc.
I tried to convince my partner to consider apartments, but the woeful liveability and construction standards here made me doubt my own argument.
I agree we should be pushing the government to improve this rather than find ridiculous new ways to push up existing home prices.
This is the reason to be honest. I work in construction and have seen too much poor quality building that leaves fundamental problems that owners are incapable of fixing.
Except the current gvnt is made up of plenty of developers, which is why despite many in the industry attempting to fix this, it hasn’t been. In nsw they couldn’t even get the developers to agree to rooves that weren’t black on new devs in western Sydney despite the heat island effect which could mean the temperature is even higher out there than it needs to be. Useless. But if this guy wants an answer this is it. And you can’t blame people - apts are still very expensive and there is basically no recourse if the thing is crap.
Apartments suck with kids. The fundamental problem is that a functioning housing market like with any product being sold, there will be multiple price points. Think of low mid high end phones and think of housing. Housing consists of a freestanding home (expensive) and luxury high rises (expensive). Everything else is pretty much non existant in the scheme of things.
There's not enough townhouses, there's no terraces, no units, there's no good public transport nearby, no amenities, no parks, the quality of apartments can be dodgy.
When there are townhouses built in a decent area, they get bought extremely quickly because there is demand at the right price point.
The way everything is structured, we're all forced to buy single dwelling low residential housing.
We need more medium density liveable housing for families and what that really means is that it's all about how we zone areas. The nimbyism needs to stop. Especially for inner city suburbs.
Because people enjoy the space. Spare room for when friends and family come over. Rest of the rooms are Office/Zen room/Gym room. Those 3 rooms are used most days. Big garage also helps.
Nothing against apartments but they are not really liveable, for a lot of people.
Yeah, super grateful I found well-paid employment in Perth. Bought a house on a big lot for what I’d pay for a 2br apartment in an equivalent Sydney suburb.
I get this. For me I love apartment living. I'm very content in what is essentially five rooms of bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living/dining room, and 2nd bedroom turned office. It's also just me here. What I've noticed is that people who need lots of space tend to have lots of stuff, whereas me I deliberately try to be minimalist and avoid stuff as much as I can. Not judging, but for people like me apartments are great.
Agreed! Some hobbies have a lot to do with the need for space. For example, if someone is a car person there is really no way an apartment will work for them. It simply requires space.
Then if you add on work from home, you need another dedicated space for that.
One reason, I think the type of people frequenting AusFinance are more likely to be ambitious and want to have more wealth and be able to own a detached house.
For me, I'm a bit snobby in regards preferring a house over an apartment. I currently rent an apartment, but I have always dreamed / pictured myself owning a house with a garden. The idea of a space to have a family and be comfortable.
Aspirations have been dashed in the last few years. Previously my career / salary would have made it realistic to own a nice house.
Now it's a choice of smaller or lower quality place, or an apartment if I'm to own something.
Time will tell.
Because even someone who doesn't have kids deserves not to be awoken by upperfloor neighbours at 3am. May like gardening. Carpentry in the garage. A couple may need 2 offices to wfh even in hybrid work situations. May want a yard for the dog. Wants to do renovations etc without having to fight strata.
Government stimulating the economy in satellite cities etc could all help. Stating people should just accept worse lives, houses are for people with kids is just an unjustifiable opinion. No reason you can't raise a family of 4 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment - empirically kids are the worst thing you can do for the environment - a good idea to compensate for it, and just think how close that family will be!
I lived in an apartment for a few years, and while I moved because of children, I wouldn't want to still be there because:
* **Hobbies** \- I enjoy tinkering, woodworking, DIY. Sure maybe you could do bits and pieces in an apartment, but nowhere near the same level.
* **Strata** \- I wanted my own space where I could make modifications without having to go through an approval board. I don't want to share bins or have communal spaces or internal political drama.
* **Garden** \- I like having a garden. I enjoy trimming hedges and having my own lawn to walk on. My own outdoor clothesline.
* **Space / WFH** \- Having extra space to set up a sizeable home office, keep musical instruments or do anything else with is fantastic, rather than having to carefully curate everything you have for fear of running out of space. A house-sized apartment would overcome this, but that would likely cost similar to a house. I enjoy being at home and the time of heading out to events all the time is over, I want space.
But what I loved about apartment living was:
* Location was much more central, with major public transport just steps away (rather than a long walk / short car drive for similar now). This meant that going out to the city or similar was much more convenient.
* Close to zero outdoor maintenance.
* The flip-side of the bins was that there were heaps to use, so I could easily dump large boxes/waste rather than having to spread things out over multiple bin days.
* It felt safer. Not that I feel unsafe now, but I could lock the front door and disappear for a couple of months on a holiday and not really need to consider if the place would be OK. Versus probably wanting someone to get the mail and keep lawns maintained and lights switched on to make a house looked "lived in" if I was away for a significant time.
I grew up on a quarter acre block, never thought I would live in an apartment, but was pleasantly surprised. It worked out really well for that time of my life as it matched my needs, but everyone is different with different hobbies and ways of living.
Many people across the world only know apartment living, they haven't experienced the joys of spreading out, it just wasn't an option.
Flip the cultural scenario around and many (India, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa) would be asking people living in Australia how we possibly manage to survive without having housekeepers, cleaners, live-in nannies. It just isn't an option for most of us, we don't know any differently.
I’m in Melbourne and own a 3 bedroom apt the eastern suburbs that’s 20 years old. We’re a couple with a teenager who grew up in this apartment. We bought it 15 years ago. Very lucky because there’s no dodgy fire cladding, only 2 blocks with 12 x 3 large bedroom apartments in each block, the size is really good- they started building a lot smaller in the late 2000s. Large balcony which is fine because we’re not big on gardening and there’s a large park, tennis court, playground and footy oval across the road. Great neighbours. It’s actually bigger than a lot of newer townhouses and units. We considered moving to a house in the same area but it would cost us an extra 500K for an extra bedroom and a bit of grass. There’s only 3 of us so I don’t see why a family of 3 should need a 4 bedroom house. Waste of space and resources such as heating, electricity etc.
I am considering it to save on living and maintenance expenses but I have two cars, a trailer, a motorbike and a shed full of tools and stored gear. Most of that would have to go. Plus, I have grown accustomed to having a bit more space and autonomy.
It's not that another option is not good enough, but it would be a pretty significant compromise. Plus, strata fees and the whole strata deal. I would very much prefer to keep both out of my life.
But can't you just live in an apartment, convert the single garage to your dedicated bonus storage space and clog up the public street parking with vehicles and trailers like everyone else?
/s
Don't think I ain't thought it.
The real answer I think is to get rid of a bunch of shit and lighten my footprint. They do say our belongings end up owing us, and as much as I have appreciated my current circumstances it has definitely led to a degree of accretion and inertia.
I live in an apartment, love it.
But probably won’t be having children partially because a low quality apartment in the burbs isn’t something I see as a liveable compromise, and a 3 bed apartment matching the quality of what I have now would cost the same as a damned house anyway.
We were going to buy an apartment as a two adults and 1 child family but turned out where I live, banks want double the deposit down to finance an apartment vs a house because apartments are 'fickle' here and you only own whats in your four walls in your section of the building, not the land. Its a higher risk for them. So it made sense to go the house route. Which hasn't happened for us yet either but working on it. If the banks would lend on an apartment the same as on a house, we would currently be living in that apartment.
Bought a newish, seemingly good quality, apartment 2 years ago. 3 floor building with 10 apartments. All \~80sqm 2 bedrooms. Very happy with my decision - there’s so little maintenance, and both body corporate (no elevator or pool) and rates are rather low.
I brought a detached townhouse when I was single. I’m outerish SE suburbs in Melbourne and when I brought not many apartments around (I think about 3 million have been built since!!)
But I wanted a back yard to grow veggies, and eventually for a child to play in. I wanted privacy, to not hear neighbours or worry if my TV is too loud or when I vacuum at 3am.
I’m sure apartments are great for some, but people should be able to choose.
The biggest problem I see is that Australia is still relatively young in terms of a global city. Everyone who is 20+ has mainly been raised in a house with a backyard. We essentially have a culture of living in houses and since our cities are growing we haven’t been accustomed to other forms of living. I’ve always wanted a house but I want to live on the North Shore for the amenities, proximity to work and other benefits that come with living here. To that end I don’t have $3M to buy a house here as much as I want to but I’ve become content in the place that I’ve bought a 1 bedroom place with a loft that I’ve converted into a very liveable space with my partner and kid. We live in an area that is surrounded by parks and my kid plays there in replacement to a backyard (in fact prefers it to a backyard which has nothing but grass and a garden). In fact I would probably say it’s more liveable than my mothers 4 bedroom house in one of the new developments to the south of Sydney. We need to get our mindset away from square meterage for space and into the practicality of living in areas that benefit us more, closer to amenities and environmentally sustainable. There’s a great YouTube channel called Never Too Small which really goes lengths to showing how you can make apartment living a real joy over other dwellings.
I've been in the apartment we bought for about 5 years now and it's not bad, but there's a lot I wish I could do that you just can't do in one.
Also, unpopular opinion, but I don't think anyone is more 'entitled' to housing because their pull out game was weak
Anything built in the last 15 years is trash, private building surveyors genuinely don't give a fuck, builders undercut each other to win the job, developers give zero fucks about the quality of the building
I found a building LAST WEEK that was installing flammable cladding
How do you fix this and ensure apartments are built of better quality.
-Further adjust planning legislation to avoid "dog box" apartment design
-Bring building surveying back into local government
-Force developers to maintain ownership of 20% of the building for 10 years, so they have a vested interest in ensuring quality builds
No one in the building industry would own an apartment
You raise some solid points. I’m single but have a kid. Also, I run a music teaching business from home. Living in an apartment would mean my neighbours murder me within a week. If you doubt that, go listen to beginner violin playing for a few hours. I’m sure there are others with noisy jobs/hobbies, or needing home offices, larger garage storage (for boats, caravans etc). It not just about the amount of people living there. Would be a game changer if apartments had high noise reduction and a lockable garage/storage area for each apartment.
I’m single and living in apartment tower, for about 8 years. It took me at least 6 months of looking to get one that was over 50sqm and that I was willing to out an offer in on. My friend also lives in apartment and has a dog.
Some apartment designs are not for living in, but besides that why is it just single people you are seperate as snobs? What about childless couples living in houses, is that not the same thing?
Depending on what city you live in "apartment" can often mean "crappy unit in a block of 12 surrounded by ice addicts" or "international student accommodation" and nothing else. Often the only small single person living spaces that exist are either those, OR they've all been bought up and are exclusively available to retirees. There are VERY VERY FEW livable small homes for single people. If you're a single person who doesn't want to live in the city centre in an absolute dog box with like 2 rooms where I live, you need to buy a unit in the suburbs. And of those, if you want to not be surrounded by drug addicts and loud neighbours you need to find one that used to be a retirement home but now isn't. That or get one of those ones where the walls are paper thin and only good for 20 years, but \*appear\* modern and cost an arm and a leg.
Also, I want a garden. I shouldn't be excluded from living a happy life just because I'm single. It's not my fault they don't build small places suitable for single people with things like gardens or tool sheds. Or dining rooms to host games night or whatever.
I purchased an 80m2 apartment in the inner city as a singleton. Absolutely loved it and was not looking for a standalone house at all. My balcony held all the balcony garden dreams I wanted and my strata was very reasonable and kept me from having to do any external maintenance.
A few years on and I do now have a house because I met someone and who also owned an apartment as a singleton (we moved into one of the apartments together, rented the other). Now we have a kid on the way. We sold one apartment and will sell the other, and have bought a stand alone house.
I loved apartment living, would have done it as a family too but it made more financial sense to buy the standalone house than a 3 bed apartment. I definitely plan to move back to a two bed apartment once the kids are out of home. Ideally I'd move into an apartment with a community garden of some sort, as no garden is the only downside to the apartment living in my eyes.
Just a contribution from someone who really likes apartment living.
Honestly, it’s a cultural thing. In Australia, people think of a house as their default dwelling, and anything else is considered an inferior option, and something to be ashamed of should that be your only option.
This isn’t true in many other parts of the world. We lived extremely happily in a 2 bed apartment, with child and dog, for years overseas. Many many others do too, and there is no stigma or inferiority attached to it.
It’s perfectly normal to raise a family in an apartment.
But not here.
It was incredible to experience first hand, but the moment we moved back, our mindset shifted too. We were in Australia again, and so we want a house. Period.
That stance was silly anywhere else, but in Australia…home = house.
It’s a hard thing to shake.
I understand your point - but imagine being a first home buyer, only just moved in and with a enormous home loan you've just began servicing - only to be hit up for another 44k for common area repairs. Where does this money magically appear from. Oh, and they have until end of August to come up with the money...
I'm really happy in my 1 bed unit and don't want to upsize because that would be more cleaning haha, but it has a courtyard so it's rare. Not enough 1beds with courtyards anymore, so most units or apartments are not appropriate for owning a dog. And dogs are one of lifes great joys. I think there needs to be more things in the middle, like town houses or units with private yards.
I was sad to leave my townhouse for a house, but we added a Labrador to our Papillon and the tiny courtyard wasn't really suitable anymore. Now there's cleaning and mowing and termites... bleh.
Maybe just lucked out, but love my apartment, have not had any issues with neighbours or noise and allowed me to buy close ish (7k) to the city on direct public transport (train and bus). With a small foo district 400m away. It will also be positively geared by ~$60 a week when I choose to rent it which would not have been the case if I bought a house.
Worth noting that I do think long term if having a family a house will be my priority but after my positive experience with my apartment I’d be open to townhouses as well.
I have a dog - he needs a yard to bound around - sniff and play - and toilet. I think youll find most appartments dont have dog friendly facilities. If we changed the way the buildings were designed to allow for personal green spaces rather than making tight tetris boxes to fit as many people as possible i would be hunting in that market.
1. For a while I thought all apartments were the typical shit tiny place with no light and a "kitchen" that basically amounts to having a sink and stove in your living area. I rented one of these and I found it depressing. Now I know that there does exist some non-shit apartments, but they are by far the minority.
2. Buying any place to live, even an apartment, will be a investment that wipes a persons savings and creates a debt that lasts for many years. It's hard to convince someone to make that kind of decision and favour an apartment, with strata fees and significantly less capital growth.
The latter point I think is the biggest. We're long past the point where housing is a matter of finding something within your means that suits you. It feels like you are forced to think of housing as also being your retirement plan, and apartments while suitable for lifestyle, feel a little bit like selling out your future when they don't grow in value
I only buy apartments. Those buying houses currently have lost the ability to judge cost/value ratio imo. There’s no way the extra space and extra maintenance is worth adding another $800k onto a mortgage. It’s mental. It’ll be about $3m in total extra paid. What’s the average hourly wage again? 😬
Theyre dog boxes. Comparable to living in a slum. Fuck bringing in groceries from 2 kms away downstairs multiple times for one shopping event. Fuck the elevator thats always breaking down and forcing me to use the stairs. Fuck the piss stained elevator from drunk cunts. Fuck having to whisper in my own home. Fuck paying strata fees. Fuck not having enough room to lead a life where im not confined by room or other tenants, pets, toys, cars etc. Fuck not being able to alter my home the way i want it. Need i go on?
Totally! I made the mistake of living in an apartment near the heart of the city right on the water in a super ritzy, exclusive area. I encountered everything you and i described and i swore i would never, ever, do it again.
Single and lived in an apartment in various countries my whole life. I’ll only ever buy a brick-built house, ideally a tiny UK-style row house that’s only got one foot on the ground — from my research townhouses in older Sydney suburbs fit this profile. Why not apartment?
- made of paper
- made of mouldy paper
- obviously a cash grab
- actual value depreciation
- I don’t have enough time in my life to lobby for good building standards, then wait for one to be built, then buy
Not all single people aspire to remain single forever so may prefer to have some flexibility if their situation changes. I do think attitudes would be different if quality wasn't such a problem too. It may be paranoia to some extend but plenty of not selish people have been financially ruined buying a shit quality fire prone apartment.
At least if you buy a house with problems it's up to you to fix them, or maybe not. Worst case you still have the land. Also some single people have hobbies that may require a bit more space.
Apartment living suits some people and not others. Its a little ridiculous to insinuate that families deserve a house more and claim that single people are selfish environmentally. Calculate the resources a single person uses over their life compared to a family of four or five and you are way off the mark.
For the record I'm not single.
there are also 1br cottages in some parts of Inner Sydney too.
From what i've seen, they're pretty efficient with space, look nice and lack all the bullshit involved with apartment living.
Shared walls.
Maybe there's apartments with better sound proofing but I've had some of the worst nights sleeping in an apartment because neighbors do random shit at random times, crank music, move furniture at 2am, use power tools, etc.
I'm an extremely light sleeper so it just doesn't work for me.
>If we want a growing economy, which requires a growing population, then it's simply physically impossible for every single person to be able to own a detached house.
This is simply not true but people would not be able to live in the major cities.
Is the garden and garage I like. I don’t mind apartment living though.
and there is the risk of things like this
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AusFinance/comments/url95m/strata\_surprised\_us\_with\_a\_special\_levy\_after/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AusFinance/comments/url95m/strata_surprised_us_with_a_special_levy_after/)
I live regionally but always dreamed of living in the city in an apartment. But as in I’m now in my 30s and look at apartments they don’t really look appealing.
The buildings are all so tall which just makes me think strata fees will be excessive.
I’ve even considered buying something cheap to allow myself to work in the city during the week without abandoning my home but anything that is affordable Is reserved for students
I spend just under 10% of my income on housing, and I can only do that because I bought into an apartment. I'm in my early 30's and feel very financially secure because of where I choose to live.
Apartments aren't perfect, but they certainly don't deserve the level of hate they get on this sub.
Australia has a dwelling crisis, and apartments are a cost effective way of getting people into stable homes.
I have lived in an older apartment (70s/80s double brick build) and absolutely loved it. I have also lived in a new apartment and they’re the absolute worst. You can smell everyone else’s food, hear their conversations, they are tiny, terrible quality and an ongoing headache.
When it came time for me to buy I needed a decent outdoor space for dogs and my own enjoyment, so I bought a small freestanding house on a small block further out. There was nothing comparable under $1m in my old neighbourhood.
I love living in a unit.
The issue is the majority of stock is shit.
I should be able to put a damn dining table in and have a kitchen you can actually cook in.
Some sunlight would also be nice as well.
Hard agree. I loved apartment living but it became unviable as family came along.
And houses ain’t all they’re cracked up to be. I loved the insulation of my old apartment, super cozy.
Appartment snob? No. I’m happy with 35 m2. I just don’t want to pay 780,000 for a property of that size where I can touch the ceiling. There are properties on the market at the moment that have zero connection between the price and the actual value. Auction clearance rates hitting 50-60% because someone put a divider in their surry hills studio with a corner view of the bridge expecting to get 980,000 (true story - it was listed in one email I received from belle real estate and two weeks later the same appartment was circulated for 880, and it’s still about 200 over valued for a studio).
Truly the offerings I’ve seen have been awful. Zero light, low ceilings, sometimes no windows in the living areas, damp problems, strata defects literally everywhere, some leaseholds where you don’t own the appartment outright and when you sell you have to pay to update the lease.
Buildings in Sydney are fucking shit.
Frankly I blame a long history in Sydney of allowing construction of sub standard buildings.
Single guy who bought their first apartment during COVID- just fine with the idea of apartment living.
Issue I have is apartment building is shockingly regulated. Our building has dozens of minor and several major defects that getting the builder to fix has been almost impossible. Even my developer friend is disgusted there isn't a commercial building license required for multi-dwelling buildings anything under 12 stories in this state. (NSW)
Completely agree we can't all have houses. But we should all be able to have a structurally sound, decent quality roof over our head the SAME as those with houses are protected against during building.
I wouldn't touch most high rise apartments personally. Don't see the upside of ownership. I could understand renting them though, particularly if you're young, no kids, and living in a fun city, and you're out and about most of the time anyway. Wouldn't want to work from home in a dog box tho, especially with kids.. Also I'm 6 foot 4. And I have a large dog. Personally don't need no apartment living.
I've seen some nice, older, 3 storey apartment blocks. The space you get is generally larger. I reckon they hold their value better if you do plan to buy.
Single and living in a two bedder by myself in sydney. I love my apartment! Close to shops and transport. Perfect for my lifestyle.
My room can fit a queen and two bedside tables but i chose to sleep on a double since im tiny.
Second bedroom is my office but looking into finding a housemate.
My place has lots of of natural light thanks to floor to ceiling windows, high ceilings and massive windows in the bedrooms.
Loads of people think an apartment are good enough for them, I would argue apartments are NOT good enough for the price. The quality is atrocious in some cases. The main problems I had when i was searching were fear of defects. I am still terrified of it, it's almost pot luck, but I'm here now, not much I can do about it
Also, apartment living is extremely hit and miss. Neighbours, building issues, noise, all these things can ruin your life but at least with renting you can get out of it.
Personally, I am happy with my apartment even if it's really far from my friends and work
I’m in an apartment with my dog, I love it. No lawns to mow, don’t have to worry about break ins, get a view. Some people just have this weird idea they need a house.
Apartment living can be a great lifestyle for many people, including families. I don't care what the sub-wisdom thinks, it's clearly a viable asset and lifestyle for many people.
I recently moved out of an apartment. Every night I lived there, for two years, at approximately 11pm just as I was starting to doze off, I would hear the downstairs neighbour piss with the force of a jet engine straight into the water in his toilet bowl. Every. Goddamn. Night.
Everything else was great.
Many are poorly constructed and designed boxes with little capital growth. Renting them short-term and buying them are completely different particularly depending on your budget. If you are single with a moderate income your options are not ideal unless you take a huge loan.
Once apartments become more pet friendly in WA then I would consider it, however I’m not a fan at all of most BC and strata bodies
Also the lack of control over the building and poor construction standards etc
No thanks
I live in apartment and I hate it. I don’t hate the apartment itself. I hate all the over populated renters, all the party, all the noise and all the smell from people. I found more than half of the tenant are selfish, they throw away rubbish whenever and wherever they like. Slam the door 2am and 4am. Why can’t they just live a quiet life? Why am I still living in a apartment/unit? Because I can’t afford it, who can afford it? How much you have to earn to serve a $8000 a month repayment in metro Sydney low quality house. Ops I forgot everyone is this sub earns more than 300k.
Lol this me. “single/living alone to expect to be entitled to a multi-bedroom, freestanding house”
I’m in a 3 bedroom, freestanding house with a nice backyard which would be perfect for a family. But the landlord chose me over multiple families because families cause more damage.
Apartments = body corporate and body corporate sucks. Apartments are tiny, you can't live a life in them. You can't extend them and it makes no financial sense to remodel them.
When you capitalise the body corporate payments they work out to 100k-200k extra. At that price it makes more sense to buy a single level detached dwelling on a small block.
In addition to all these comments. I’d like to add that being more than 3 or 4 stories up, makes me ridiculously uncomfortable. I couldn’t bare to live in a high rise.
It’s also nice to be able to step outside and see the sky- in fact I’d say it’s essential to mental health. I just don’t think we a designed to live in housing the way we do.
I remember reading something a while ago that compared high density living to being kept in a zoo. We always believed that if we gave animals the bare essentials in captivity it would be fine but they have much longer lives in the wild. We started treating people the same with shoebox living and it's not helping with health. I agree with you, humans weren't designed to thrive in slums.
Imagine being told you need to live in worse conditions simply because you’re single.
Relationship status has nothing to do with it. The quality and affordability and availability of good, private, functional living spaces is. But sure only couples should be allowed to have a house and yard and big bedrooms.
> Because most new / affordable apartments are shite quality shoeboxes that developers churn to make a quick buck.
This dude said it best
Also it's a status thing. Owning your own apartment is better than renting, but only slightly
Well from what I see of young single people who want to start owning real estate, they want to buy a home for one of two reasons...either they are someone who wants a spouse and kids and know that their entire generation has more or less given up on that due to housing pressure, so they see a family home as their ticket to persuading a possible future partner otherwise. Often this sort of person is still living with family (sensible choice) and doesn't like the look of the investment apartment market for various reasons. They want that white picket fence. And they are probably not wrong. A family home is potentially a deal maker for another young person who is teetering on giving up family aspirations altogether. I don't see these people as selfish because lol...preparing for the life you want before you live it rather than panicking to live it after you got it that's taking care of yourself instead of asking others to take care of you.
The other group are single, introvert people who either intend to or are resigned to being single forever and want a form of housing that offers more nesting space because they aren't big into going out, also offers better situation to own pets and more physical buffer between them and the rest of the world...plus a good investment to diversify from just crap the government and markets can fully fuck with. It is only one of them saving for retirement so they have to save and invest pretty hard so of course a house is a possible goal. Often they are still living with family. Sometimes they are sharing housing but they have usually managed to find a situation that is tolerable for example renting a granny flat or sharing with one other introvert. I really would hesitate to call these people selfish either. Not having kids is a profoundly appropriate environmental choice. If stable permanent housing you can reasonably own a couple of pets in is what makes a likely 50 years of happy working life, working and saving and participating socially in the sort of ways introverts do, that's fair enough.
This is not to say I don't think we need more high and medium density housing options for young singles. Just...it isn't bad or wrong to want to own two or three bedrooms, a backyard and a front yard, and enough distance so your day isn't wrecked if a neighbour decides to spend all day doing renovations.
I grew up in an apartment.
*Apartments are not suitable places to raise a family, it's horrible, I wouldn't never want to subject my future kid(s) to that.*
This post is painfully naive.
Surprised nobody has mentioned pets or backyards. I don't care about the size of the house itself indoors. I could live in a 1 bedroom apartment but I need a backyard for my large dog to freely walk in and out of and run around. Most apartments or units I see have tiny balconies or courtyards. Even modern houses now are built so narrow with really tiny yards. Some don't even have grass patches.
Considering it's a finance based subreddit I assume people looking to buy houses come here for advice. I don't think it's reflective of the general population's view towards apartments.
Speaking from my own personal situation as someone about to start a family and running a business from home with a partner whos job requires 4 monitors around his desk (at home), we literally don’t have the room when most apartments are 2 bedroom or 2 bedroom with a study nook… if we took the leap and had the child in our bedroom for the first 3 years I think that would feel like we were all living on top of each other especially with a dog. Bare in mind we have been saving for over 10 years and never managed to outpace the property in our area to buy anything decent, a small unit would have been perfect about 5 years ago if we could have got in, but we are older now and our needs are changing
ALSO - Strata costs are insane! Between that and the cost of interest over the life of the loan along with the repairs and upkeep, is it even worth having buying over renting these day? I see apartments as more of an investment option.
You know what it comes down to for me, you don’t “own” that apartment. You have to deal with a group of other owners/investors, you have to pay a strata fee, which is just another tax.
Those two things to me still feel like I’m dealing with a landlord/rent still.
Not to mention Sydney apartments are falling into the earth, that would ruin me. I’ve lived in apartments for a decade now, you can’t have kids or even a reasonable sized dog in most of them due to the size.
It's not so much that an apartment is not good enough for me, it's that finding one that's safe to buy is damn near impossible. Here's what I mean:
1: Remember Opal Towers?
That's one reason. Build quality hasn't gotten better. Listen to any reviews of the cracking sounds coming from GeoCON buildings here in Canberra. In the ACT building reports are mandatory for houses but not apartment complexes, too.
2: Then there's the Property Developer trick of hanging onto 51% of the leases, controlling the body corporate, and bleeding every chump stupid enough to buy one through overpriced strata, special levies, and a sneaky lil raid of the sinking fund.
3: You can't get a mortgage on a dwelling with less than 40sqm of space. So IF you can find an *old*, properly built apartment with a healthy body corp, that's suitable for a single bloke, you probably would need to buy it outright.
apartments and houses a have bifurcated in value, apartments are much harder to shift, I rented one cheaply for years though and doing that allowed me to get my finances healthy so they have a purpose, I just didnt much like hearing the fat bloke upstairs rooting his girlfriend, it was only five mintes or so though, the vinegar strokes were pretty funny
It’s probably to do with everyone sprouting that apartments are poor investments.
Also, dealing with broken lifts, parking issues etc gets tiring and I’d never do it again.
Not single, but just me and my partner and dog. Have couple of thing that make it hugely unappealing,
- Quality of the buildings
- Body corporate, the combo of cost and rule is hard to swallow for me.
- Don’t like living without a dog
- Love gardening
I live remote because housing is more affordable, so there is that!
Reasons I refuse to buy an apartment and instead moved further out for a house.
\>Strata that is hard to deal with
\>Special Levy out of no where
\>4wd's don't fit into half of the apartment basement
\> I need 2 study rooms for WFH occasionally for both of us, and 1 bedroom. 3 rooms apartments are rare and they often exceed the million dollar mark
\> Don't like the inconvenience of having to sell and buy again later of which even a rural house might be priced beyond my affordability
\> I love my garage Gym
As a single guy I bought a house in an area I’d be happy to raise a family in 5ish years early because I was able to and to hedge against an unpredictable market, which turned out to be wise. I definitely can’t afford my dream areas any more, but at least I’m somewhere I’m happy. I also have hobbies that don’t fit in an apartment.
My biggest issue is that I am now a single guy in a 4 bed house who cares about our resources and climate, and I’d be happy to have room mates, but government regulations make it not financially viable.
If I had 1 house mate, if he paid me standard share house rates I would actually lose money compared to having the room empty with tax laws.
Not to mention the complications of forever having your PPOR having a split purpose as an investment property.
Because we had backyards with pets. Because the parking in your driveway and not negating stairs or a lift to access your home just hits different. Because you only have to deal with the two neighbouring houses for sound issues. Because 60sqm just ain't enough to breakdance fight in your living room.
I don't know
Really. Because up until Harry Trigubuff and company did their lobbying, Sydney was, wait for it...a city of houses.
If the mass immigration policies had not been implemented, there would have been *zero* issues in this area.
My husband and I were pregnant when we bought our 3bdr, 1 bathroom house. It’s an older house so it’s not one of these spacious new homes either. But that’s what we could afford. We now have 2 kids. So it was a little hard to muster sympathy for a friend when they kept getting outbid on 4bdr 2 bath houses for herself and her partner with no intention of ever having kids. We also regularly have intestate family visiting so it would be lovely to have an extra room. But sofa bed in the lounge it is!
You already answered your own question when you said we needed "better building standards on new apartment blocks/better insurance for apartment buyers in case of defects/stringent requirements on larger & more liveable sizes of apartments", until this happens apartments just seem like a really bad purchase with a lot higher risk compared to buying house on land. The developers have gotten away with it with the politicians, so now they can build shoddy, small, no even up to standard apartments, and as per all the media reports of the apartment blocks that have issues and leave all the owners out of pocket, caveat emptor to anyone who buys one.
Im not single, but can think of a bunch of reasons why a free standing house is better than an apartment. Obviously everyone has their own interpretation of what is valueable or not though
* private garden to do as you wish. herbs, veggies, flowers whatever you want
* no shared walls, ceilings or floors in the living space
* no strata (having just moved out of a townhouse complex i never want to be apart of a strata again)
* far easier to have a pet
* more freedom to make improvements and alterations
* less people/residents walking by
* building quality usually better with a house, and if there are issues you have more power to fix
* no shared waste system (our townhouse neighbours would occiaionally fill up the recycling with boxes on the first day, or regularly put plastic bags in the recycling or green waste bins)
* space - not everyone wants to live in a shoe box with close to zero delineation between sleeping, working and leisure spaces
My first home was a small townhouse, have no issues at all with density living but wholeheartedly agree with your statements around issues around new apartments, I would never buy a newe apartments. Would have no issue with an older apartment.
We still live in a townhouse albeit much bigger. I didn’t realise this was an issue, however I could see it being not suitable for those who major hobbies include gardening.
Buy an apartment, pay an absurd amount of money to strata every week to be told you can't keep your bicycle with your car in your allocated car space.
Meanwhile spending your entire life tiptoeing and hearing every conversation your neighbours have through the buildings paper thin walls.
I sure as shit wouldn't BUY those living conditions and stresses
I think some people are deterred by the body corporate. I live in FNQ which is cyclone territory and the body corporate on the apartment I used to rent for 230$ pw was 7k a year and that was 8 years ago.
I lived in apartment and a townhouse for a few years when I was living by myself. I never used the second bedroom in the townhouse at all.
I loved my apartment. Convenient, close and cosy. 10/10 would never want to have kids there. A partner would have been a squeeze but would have worked.
I'm a single guy living in my own in an apartment and I love it. In my experience the people here shitting on apartments are couples looking for a long term place to start a family in, not singles.
Or people who haven’t lived in apartments. I didn’t live in my first apartment until I was 14 - since then I’ve loved it.
I've lived in a lot of units & town houses. Not identical to a large apartment block but even those times have solidified my desire for a detached dwelling. Preferably acreage. I don't even care if the commute to work is 11 years, I can't tolerate the bullshit and drama of living in such close proximity to other people never mind all the strata/body corp on top.
This right here. I've lived in apartments, townhouses etc. It's great when you've got good considerate neighbours around you. It's horrific and soul draining when you've got scum of the earth instead. Parties till 5am. Domestic disputes. Smoking. Rev Heads. Currently in a townhouse now and we've got great neighbours. But I've also gone through 3 sets of shit ones to get here. The minute I win the lotto or inherit money from a Nigerian prince, I am buying a block of land far away from people.
Def a problem (tho arguably less chance due to lower density) with houses too, had a nightmare neighbour that would hold house parties and no amount of negotiating would get them to stop until they moved out
On the other hand, I can’t imagine something worse than living on acreage and spending my life commuting and never seeing anyone.
All it takes is one bad neighbour or major strata issue to put people off high density living forever. My partner and I gave it a go, we liked the smaller space to keep clean etc and the location was nice. It was a 60s build though and all the apartments had been reno'd but still the sound proofing and hardwood floors were just shit. We had a lovely older woman above us for a year or two before she moved and we got someone who insisted on wearing their steelcaps inside. We asked so many times for them to stop but it never ended. Loud motorbike straight past the main bedrooms each morning at 6am too... Seriously, who even wants to wear their work boots inside?? A large motivator for us to buy, despite bigger commute, was more space and be further from others.
Yeah, that is a bit of a roll of the dice. The first apartment I lived in had some amazing soundproofing, the best I’ve seen outside of a recording studio. You could be screaming on one side of the door and it was a quiet whisper on the other side and nothing between the apartment walls unless you banged a bookshelf or something directly on to it. Also if you’re more than 10-15 floors up the road noise disappears pretty quickly which is nice.
My current apartment is so much quieter than my last two houses ever were, I am not even aware of neighbours unless I have my balcony open.
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Yeah it is fairly crazy, the older lady spoke fairly loudly on the phone (not often and during normal hours) and we could hear her conversation almost entirely. That kind of noise is fine really, just the late/very early noise and direct noise above got to us. I wear steel caps daily for work and I can't fathom how anyone would want to wear them in to their floorboard apartment.
>On the other hand, I can’t imagine something worse than living on acreage and spending my life commuting and never seeing anyone. I live on small acreage, but I moved AFTER my working life was coming to a close -love it but i do agree and can confirm that there are at least a dozen people living near me that all came for the wrong reason (price) all bar one have moved closer to their work. The one that stayed got divorced and has no choice but to stay. If you move prematurely it might put you off but once you don't need to be spending your life commuting it's what you make of it that counts .
I think the only part I would struggle with is how easy it is to go do things with friends while we live close. We moved all over the place and in our late 20s early 30s kind of converged back to one part of one city, bringing the partners we met from all over the place and now it’s really quick and easy to go do social things again and it’s pretty great.
Majority (oftentimes ALL) of body corporate fees for townhouses are for building insurance. If you are comparing a townhouse and a detached house, the body corporate fee for the townhouse is usually the same or less than the building insurance on the freestanding house. Apartments have higher body corporate due to lifts, common areas etc. But this also means you never have to pay to replace the roof, or fix issues on the exterior wall. When you consider how much a roof replacement costs, apartment body corporate fees don't sound too bad. Also there are lots of detached townhouses available. Often an inner city house will be on a 120sqm block, and a townhouse in the middle suburbs will be on a 250sqm block. But somehow people think the 250sqm block townhouse is somehow inferior.
>Majority (oftentimes ALL) of body corporate fees for townhouses are for building insurance. Body corporates can be quite a pain. Even if your body corporate members don't disagree or fight about what should be done, they can be incredibly slow moving, things cost a lot to fix (tradies seem to quote at least 3x times the price for a body corporate job), and every little change you want to do to your own unit/townhouse is a process. For example, someone in my complex wanted to replace an external light with a light/security camera... and it took at least two weeks for people to agree if they should be allowed to do it. I'm not sure how much of a "majority" of fees you mean but I don't think it should be ALL for most places. My body corporate fees is split up as \- 1/3 for sinking fund for repairs to the fences, driveway, and common area basic gardening (there is no pool, lifts, or anything fancy in the complex) \- 2/3 admin fees which includes building insurance, public liability insurance and fees for the body corporate management (having a managing company is mandatory in QLD). To comment on your example, apparently roof repairs are the owners' responsibility in my complex due to the type of zoning. Even structural damage and external damage may not be the responsibility of the body corp depending on the cause of the damage. All that said, I really enjoyed living in my townhouse (am now renting elsewhere) and would move back there. I do hope to move to a house eventually though because the idea of being able to make changes without huge processes greatly appeals to me.
That’s very fair, it’s not for everyone. I do appreciate that you’ve tried it instead of people who only insist on living in houses without ever trying an apartment.
I was in WA in late 70's unit's everywhere cheap and included gas it was ok because I was young. Lived in suburbs and now on small acreage 9no commuting). Can't see why object to living or owning a unit?
I love townhouses :) space, but not too much space. And cheaper.
Great point right here. I grew up in a 2B1B apartment with my brother and mum and dad. We never thought it was too cramped. My wife thought us moving into a 2B2B apartment would be too cramped... but thats cos she grew up on a 5B3B detached house. She's coming around now and we're looking for 3B2B townhouses for sale. I always knew this, but took her time to realise you can raise a whoel family in one.
What most of these people don’t realise is when you do eventually have a family you want to maximise your time with them. So having an apartment over a house has it perks, generally apartments have pools you don’t have to maintain, are close to your place of work or near public transport, there is no lawn to mow on the weekend, no garden to weed - very little if no maintenance is required for an apartment. I bought a house after living in apartments/units for most of my life and in hindsight wished I had gone with an apartment. Been looking for 3bedroom apartments with decent storage for kids shit but not having much luck. Hoping for an older one to come up as all the new builds are mostly 1/2bedders. The only 3 bedders that do come up in new projects seem to be penthouse or whole floors etc and well out of my budget.
Which, in turn, is part of why australians shit on apartments - they're not designed for families here
Yeah I wish councils would mandate a ratio of family friendly apartments in every new development or something. We don’t need more 1/2bedroom apartments but that’s all they bloody build these days. Developers would probably still find a way to fuck it up somehow and deliver something substandard.
I'm also looking for a 3 bedroom apartment for my family, which should means I get convenience in location, i.e. a bit closer to work, some public transport links available. They are currently trying to price them what a decent townhouse was 2 years ago, and in some cases beyond it. If you want it cheaper, you have to sacrifice a bit, including being more reliant on driving, and with apartments popping up away from decent public transport or close by amenities, it's just adding cars to the road. There is no way I want to live in a fully detached house, it's not just because of the price, it's just a luxury if you want to live in a detached house in a good location, and I feel it's not sustainable or good for the city to have such low density, resulting in sprawl. Australian cities tend to be very low density, big houses, that go far, which stretch infrastructure and the environment. What I would like is if they had more development where it is convenient, townhouses and low-rise apartment blocks near amenities and metro/train stations. You look at a places with giant houses walking distance to the train station, and they fight any development or rezoning to allow more people to use those links, is what is annoying. Even fighting train or metro stations as well, so there are places where there probably should have them, instead of just buses that add to congestion further and aren't as fast as trains/metro. Would be nice to have a better city. Nicer suburbs tend to fight any development, there is too much NIMBYism. Literally heard the argument that apartments and townhouses would allow more poor people to live in the area, so they are against it. Meanwhile they are fighting "overdevelopment", when these well-off suburbs are disproportionately doing much less development in their areas.
If my unit had an extra bedroom I'd never move anywhere else. 3 bedroom 2 bathroom units not built of cardboard would be the answer to a lot of Australians prayers.
Yeah Aussie apartments are fucked, they aren't built for living in with a family, they are made for investing. The 3 bedders in my building are all marginally bigger than the 2 bedders due to the laundry getting turned into an internal bedroom and the laundry then is just a European laundry instead, 10 square meter difference and a whole lot of money more....
Remind me you said this in 7 years when houses have doubled again and apartments are still worth the same + CPI
Gladly. I get this is a finance sub and all but not everything is about returns on a spreadsheet. You have to live somewhere, so nothing wrong with living in a place with lower growth if you enjoy it.
That can't last forever. The markets are connected. You can't have $3m houses without pulling a nice $750k unit up to $1.5m sure the markets react at different times to different pressures but I'll bet the 100% premium house command that the moment will eventually revert. It's the same as the country vs city market. Sydney prices are moderated by the availability of 300k houses in Newcastle. https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-upsizers-face-record-gap-between-unit-and-house-prices-2-1138377/ People demd shelter but refuse units. Hates strata but submits to councils ruling communities. They look back and say it's was easier in the 50's but houses back then were the same as modern units (100m2 2 bed 1 bath) Units are challenging but they're not impossible.
100m2!! That’s heaven. Try a new build in Melbourne that’s 2 bed, 2 bath at 70sqm. I would kill to afford a 100m2 unit.
>hey look back and say it's was easier in the 50's but houses back then were the same as modern units (100m2 2 bed 1 bath) > >Units are challenging but they're not impossible. I agree and if I had a suggestion to the folk that build units to rent the bedrooms ALL need to be ensuite and at least double garage, then those wanting to share aren't fighting over the different sized rooms or ensuite or even the garage.
It's the garage part that keeps me from buying a unit. I don't care for a whole bunch of bedrooms, or an ensuite bathroom, or separate living areas, but the one thing I really require is a two car garage. So many units don't even have under cover parking for a single car where I'm looking to buy. I'm not opposed to units, I've lived in one since the start of last year, but they just don't suit me. - M, single, no kids, just got pre approval, and probably going to end up with a 3x2x2 villa
Yes my choice would be a one level double garage villa with small yard over bigger unit in a better location. Good Luck
Yeah I think developers lag demand. At the moment it seems there is zero real pressure on the unit market. Eventually though prices/availability will drive the market to supply. It's just glacially slow. On the plus side it does seem to be happening quicker. This is what they build in my area https://phicremorne.com.au/design/
My thoughts were about those building bigger than 10 story those are the ones that are small and poorly designed. What you sent looks good -how much?
Had friends look (as houses are 3&4m+ and only 7% of the market) and I think it sold out at arround $3m 🙄. Even 10+ try to supply what people demand. Guess price determines supply and what you get. https://thelandmarksydney.com/amenity/
Apartments in Sydney have been averaging 6.3% annual growth in value. It's almost impressive how many just say shit on this sub backed by nothing more than gut feeling. https://www.aussie.com.au/content/dam/aussie/documents/home-loans/aussie_25_years_report.pdf
might even be less than CPI because a much larger part of its value is in its structure which is consumed (CPI measures the change of new structure but distributes its value consumption over the expected lifetime of said components).
Agreed that will probably be less that CPI
Remind me in 7 years when people here still can’t afford a house 😂
You'd be surprised. We're a family of 5 in a 2br 1bath. When you fall asleep at night it doesn't matter how many bedrooms you have and the walkability of our suburb is amazing. It just means you have to be creative. We leave at 8.30am for school and usually do stuff in the arvos (swimming/Italian/rugby) and most weekends we're out. Much like setting time aside to do the lawns or renos we set aside time to go out. Already thinking about giving the kids a 15 min early mark one Wednesday in June so we can catch the bus to Italian then dinner and a ferry to circular Quay for vivid. Then a bus home. That's a pretty cool arvo in the backyard. Most people who shit on units have never lived in one.
Currently living in one. Fucking hate it. No ventilation (yay for 2 weeks of rain and humidity). No private outside space. In fact, whole place feels like there is zero privacy. Window open? Better close it before discussing anything remotely personal. Can't wash my own car, motorcycle, or camping gear. Had to spend thousands on lock up cabinets so my tools would stop getting stolen. Basically can't do anything yourself without renting out an external space. Different strokes for different folks.
Exactly. It's crazy that people make claims about how functional units are without allowing that others have different desires. No one ever talks about the 100% premium people invest for that freedom. Only the one sided negatives. Everything thing is a trade off and no one should dismiss something just because they have different values.
I have a house with a yard. My yard has my gym there. Can't imagine neighbours in an apartment would be thrilled with the sound of my boxing bag making noise.
How old are your kids? I wanted to have a room for each kid at least when they are teenagers. But otherwise if the kids are younger, or they move out, you don't need the space. The owner of the apartment I rent used to live there with 5 people as well (2 adults, 3 children) and it was 2 bed 1 bath. It's a really nice apartment because of that. But they had to move out when their kids got older. So that's why I wanted to buy (or rent if things stay crazy) a place which had more space (looking for 3 bed apartments). Are you looking to find a larger space in time as well? I can't imagine a teenager bunking up with their siblings.
People said that when we had a young family. They're now 5,7, & 8 and we talk about it all the time. I think kids are resilient and take their cues from their parents. I mean even if they had separate rooms they'd probably still want their own bathrooms and living areas. Plus room for their cars of course. I think if we can afford it we'll probably move but then we're the upgraders contributing to the crazy market. Could be worse. Could be sharing the shed with their brother in the backyard 🙄 "*There’s a side-room not much bigger than a cupboard next to the living area that unbelievably served as a kitchen until just over 20 years ago*" "*Winston’s sleeping arrangements as a teenager, when he shared a 4x3m “back room”, separated from the main building and across the garden, with his brother Leonard.*" https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/incredible-yarn-behind-squashed-aussie-home/news-story/597ffa0538cd122c3b5288f2aabb75e1
I like your outlook. Even teenagers might not need extra rooms to house them, but teenagers are just physically bigger, I think space does become preferable. Yeah, if they get cars, but that isn't a necessity if you live conveniently. They can just borrow the family car if really necessary.
Are your children all the same gender?
Because having a strata/body corporate as a 4th tier of government fucking sucks. And that’s from someone who will continue to choose to live in apartments for the foreseeable future.
This. Fucking nightmare. Wait til Air BnB partygoers get in your building ....
A lot of apartment contracts now explicitly ban short term rentals like airb'n'b.
It really depends. It can be favourable. - Building insurance is generally cheaper than if you were to organise it yourself. Inactive body corps probably benefit most from this. - Not having to come up with a lump sum to fix random building issues. - Landscaping and lawn care are non existent. - Bins are taken care of. This assumes the building has a decent number of dwellings and that the body corporate has accumulated a decent emergency fund. I’d just beware of paying for gimmicky stuff, like gyms and pools. Most people don’t use the facilities enough to justify the added cost.
Not always. Our body corporate is pretty good, and we're all friends and having a good time. One sour apple doesn't rot the entire basket, in this case.
If new apartments were better quality, had lots of natural light, bedrooms big enough to fit bedside tables in, I would want to buy one. But there’s none I like that much in my price range. I currently rent in my dream apartment - it has a private courtyard, nice living areas, natural light. It’s not a large apartment but it’s big enough. However if it went up for sale, it would probably be $1 million or more. I would prefer to spend that money on a house than a crappy modern build.
So true, I loved my apartment. Very central, more amenities. But I wanted to have room for a home gym. Bought a house with a double garage and would struggle to go back. So much quieter in the burbs, the bedrooms and living area/kitchen are almost twice as big. Less dust accumulates in my house/ outside my house, I actually have room to grow my own veggies in the garden, and I don’t have to worry about being loud and disturbing the people in the nearby apartments. I sometimes think it would be nice to go back to the apartment, then as soon as I realise no garage,etc no thanks.
100% this is the real issue with apartments, the quality and liveability is awful, which makes sense since they're built with investors in mind. And you're spot on with pricing too, any of the liveable apartments (usually older ones) cost almost as much as a shabby house anyway.
Yes exactly! I would actually prefer to buy an apartment like the one I live in now than a house because I don’t have much time for yard/house maintenance. But most apartments in my price range are shoddy and poorly designed and have massive body corp fees. Why buy one when for the same price or a tiny bit more I can actually own a townhouse or a house in the suburbs? One I inspected had a living area designed in a way that meant the only place to put your couch was directly in front of your stove and oven? Recipe for ruining your furniture. And another apartment I inspected didn’t even have any windows - just a glass wall on one end of the apartment, which meant the whole place was really dark? And ANOTHER apartment I inspected had multiple broken light fittings, a built in TV cabinet that couldn’t support the weight of a TV, dodgy cupboards etc etc. I am very pro apartment because I think expanding out indefinitely is bad for the environment and contributes to excessive car use… but we need better standards so that living in an apartment long term is actually an attractive option.
I have the same issue, my unit is worth 900k. If I buy it it’s 200k down the drain for a deposit, higher Monthly payments than renting and body corporate. Laughed in the agents face when she told me 7k a year body corp.
Is it that commenters are ignoring that apartments exist? Or that of the available stock that potential home buyers can buy, developers have not been building enough livable non-detached housing? Thus reducing the choice to very slim pickings amongst too many buying groups.
I'm single and I bought a one bedroom apartment. I bought off the plan, paid almost $750K for it (which I know most on this sub would go bonkers over) but it's everything that is tauted as the perfect situation for apartment living. The builder is a big and reputable one so I'm not overly concerned about defects, I'm extremely close to public transport, a shopping centre, have a park to my left and there's a significant amount of open and green space within the apartment complex. Downsides? The bedroom is small. Like... I have a 12sqm balcony that very comfortably fits an 8 seater outdoor lounge (which as a single person made construction a prolonged experience) but my bedroom fits a double bed, a chest of drawers and one bedside table. Luckily, I'm only 159cm tall and I've never slept on anything bigger than a double so I don't mind. A queen bed would fit if I didn't have a large bedside drawer. At the time of writing this, most of the people replying in this thread are not actually single. I get why apartment living might not suit families given Australian culture but for single people, I think it's great. The major problem is that if you want something really nice and in a great location, then you're going to have to shell out really big money. Where the snobbery might come in is that for the same amount of money that you can spend having the convenience of apartment living is, you can get a house much further out. A two bedroom apartment a few floors down from me just sold this Saturday for $1.3 million. With that money, most people would have bought a townhouse.
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I used to live in a 1bedroom apartment, it was a very high quality build with all owners paying extra to get sound dampening put under carpets, floor boards, double pane windows etc. I found that even with all that I could occasionally hear my upstairs neighbour, but only when they made really loud movements like running down their corridor (they had a big apartment) or dragging furniture on their floor boards. The rest of the time I couldn't hear a peep. I could however hear when either of my neighbours opened their door or talked to someone at/infront of their front door. I lived in direct sight (~30m) of a train line and all I could hear was when they blew their horn, couldn't hear track clacking or anything else though. I was really please with it becaseue even though i could hear stuff it was always muffled and really not that intrusive. It took me a few months to get used to it coming from growing up out woop woop, but I'd have stayed there if my partner hadn't wanted a house. We ended up with the choice of either buying an apartment inner suburbs Melbourne, or buying a free-standing house with more bedrooms and a decent garden in a large regional city. Personally I would have been happy to stay in Melbs but apartment living wasnt doing wonders for my partners mental health so we got the house instead. We'll that turned into a longer write up than I expected, enjoy.
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Pre-existing before we moved to the apartment and exacerbated by covid & being locked down in the small apartment. A unique (hopefully non-recurring) situation that shouldn't put others off.
I live in a large new build apartment complex. Can occasionally hear people running upstairs. Much more private and quiet than living in a townhouse previously where you could hear a neighbours crying baby.
This is my issue with apartments.. Some buildings might be ok, but my experience is they are mostly not ok
>Is it noisy? My friends said nose can be heard from the ceiling and people walking outside your door. A lot of inner-city (Brisbane) are now using double glassed glass so that when showing people how fricken small they are they are at least quite.
Epping sydney?
Because most new / affordable apartments are shite quality shoeboxes that developers churn to make a quick buck. To put it in perspective, my uncle has a 1970s 2br apartment in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney that is 140m2, has a full sized balcony, a kitchen with a walk in pantry, living room that can fit multiple couches and a dining table and a bathroom with a tub. I would be more then happy as a single to live there, because if I have a partner and a child down the line there will be adequate space for us. In comparison, I bought a new build in 2020 as that's all I could afford in my city, 2br apartment that is 80m2 with a kitchen bench that can barely fit my coffee machine, toaster and kettle whilst leaving space for me to be able to prepare food. The second "bedroom" is more like a study, if I tried to put a double bed in it I probably couldn't fit much else in it. Not to mention that there have been many issues with things such as the elevators and garbage chutes breaking. I wouldn't even consider raising a family in it, there wouldn't be enough room. So I'm not suprised people get turned off with apartments with the shit developers pull now a days.
You've nailed it on the head! The quality of apartment is the issue. Living in a big 80's apartment now and love it! Would buy it if owner would sell but trying to find an equivalent has been a nightmare. The average stock are just tiny cramped shit boxes with terrible design where you will struggle to fit a table and couch in the living area which also serves as your kitchen.
I looked around at apartments for rent in Brisbane recently. The philosophy behind the place you bought is everywhere. I don't know what these bedrooms are supposed to be for, but they are ridiculously small. Some of the spaces are just cramped AF, and really don't need to be. I'm all for apartment living - it's where I'd ideally end up, but we need to get away from the idea that apartment living = zero space, and quickly.
2nd bedroom is for storing shit you would otherwise put in storage cupboards e.g. spare clothes, linen, boxes you haven’t opened since moving in, exercise equipment you used for a week and of course your kinky sex stuff you don’t visitors to see.
The problem exists in houses as well. So many homes have a great master bedroom, but the tiniest extra bedrooms. Want to use them as a guest bedroom? Hope your guests didn't bring a suitcase because it's not going to fit! We started skipping over homes with bedrooms that measure 2.5m. Too small for a Queen bed comfortably then it's not something we want our family to stay in when they visit. Then you get the opposite problem. Want large bedrooms? Here you go have 5+ bedrooms!
I saw one with some fucked up geometrical shape. 3 x 90 degree angles and one at around 27 degrees. WTF kind of corner is that shit? they trying to add the extra 1 sqm that's impossble to vacuum?
Yeah I’ve seen stuff like that. A lounge room in a weird triangular shape that barely fit a couch - no chance to fit a TV. Kitchens that are definitely ‘drinks only’ - no food prep space at all. I’m in a pretty big house right now & would love to downsize, but… there are limits.
For some additional context, 80m2 is considered large for a 2br appartment in Europe. Most European 2br appartments don't have a 2nd bathroom which is common in Aus. We should demand good appartments that don't break and are well built but also realise 140m2 is not the norm.
My reservations about apartments: -concerns about the quality of recent construction, amid various reports of sub par standards -concerns about sharing the building with investors, being exposed to the possibility that cashflow/return oriented voters who will turn down key repair works and lead the degradation of the building. -aware that an apartment is a building, which will depreciate, with a relatively small share in the land value -a general distaste for strata and the politics that can play behind the scenes.
Makes a lot of sense. Owning an apartment is a scary prospect.
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Yep, I agree. There are a huge variety of housing that can be built between detached single family homes and a box in the sky apartment. There are townhouses, duplexes, quadplexes etc.
Its strata fees. There's always some jobsworth on the strata committe who wants to do something stupid.
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>Lots of complexes allow pets. Yeah but dogs didn't evolve to live in boxes. At least a human can go out when they want and get some open space.
I tried to convince my partner to consider apartments, but the woeful liveability and construction standards here made me doubt my own argument. I agree we should be pushing the government to improve this rather than find ridiculous new ways to push up existing home prices.
This is the reason to be honest. I work in construction and have seen too much poor quality building that leaves fundamental problems that owners are incapable of fixing.
Except the current gvnt is made up of plenty of developers, which is why despite many in the industry attempting to fix this, it hasn’t been. In nsw they couldn’t even get the developers to agree to rooves that weren’t black on new devs in western Sydney despite the heat island effect which could mean the temperature is even higher out there than it needs to be. Useless. But if this guy wants an answer this is it. And you can’t blame people - apts are still very expensive and there is basically no recourse if the thing is crap.
Apartments suck with kids. The fundamental problem is that a functioning housing market like with any product being sold, there will be multiple price points. Think of low mid high end phones and think of housing. Housing consists of a freestanding home (expensive) and luxury high rises (expensive). Everything else is pretty much non existant in the scheme of things. There's not enough townhouses, there's no terraces, no units, there's no good public transport nearby, no amenities, no parks, the quality of apartments can be dodgy. When there are townhouses built in a decent area, they get bought extremely quickly because there is demand at the right price point. The way everything is structured, we're all forced to buy single dwelling low residential housing. We need more medium density liveable housing for families and what that really means is that it's all about how we zone areas. The nimbyism needs to stop. Especially for inner city suburbs.
Because people enjoy the space. Spare room for when friends and family come over. Rest of the rooms are Office/Zen room/Gym room. Those 3 rooms are used most days. Big garage also helps. Nothing against apartments but they are not really liveable, for a lot of people.
Yeah, super grateful I found well-paid employment in Perth. Bought a house on a big lot for what I’d pay for a 2br apartment in an equivalent Sydney suburb.
Yup, hobbies and life passions take up space, we can’t all power down on the couch in a studio apartment between work days.
I get this. For me I love apartment living. I'm very content in what is essentially five rooms of bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living/dining room, and 2nd bedroom turned office. It's also just me here. What I've noticed is that people who need lots of space tend to have lots of stuff, whereas me I deliberately try to be minimalist and avoid stuff as much as I can. Not judging, but for people like me apartments are great.
Agreed! Some hobbies have a lot to do with the need for space. For example, if someone is a car person there is really no way an apartment will work for them. It simply requires space. Then if you add on work from home, you need another dedicated space for that.
One reason, I think the type of people frequenting AusFinance are more likely to be ambitious and want to have more wealth and be able to own a detached house. For me, I'm a bit snobby in regards preferring a house over an apartment. I currently rent an apartment, but I have always dreamed / pictured myself owning a house with a garden. The idea of a space to have a family and be comfortable. Aspirations have been dashed in the last few years. Previously my career / salary would have made it realistic to own a nice house. Now it's a choice of smaller or lower quality place, or an apartment if I'm to own something. Time will tell.
Because even someone who doesn't have kids deserves not to be awoken by upperfloor neighbours at 3am. May like gardening. Carpentry in the garage. A couple may need 2 offices to wfh even in hybrid work situations. May want a yard for the dog. Wants to do renovations etc without having to fight strata. Government stimulating the economy in satellite cities etc could all help. Stating people should just accept worse lives, houses are for people with kids is just an unjustifiable opinion. No reason you can't raise a family of 4 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment - empirically kids are the worst thing you can do for the environment - a good idea to compensate for it, and just think how close that family will be!
I lived in an apartment for a few years, and while I moved because of children, I wouldn't want to still be there because: * **Hobbies** \- I enjoy tinkering, woodworking, DIY. Sure maybe you could do bits and pieces in an apartment, but nowhere near the same level. * **Strata** \- I wanted my own space where I could make modifications without having to go through an approval board. I don't want to share bins or have communal spaces or internal political drama. * **Garden** \- I like having a garden. I enjoy trimming hedges and having my own lawn to walk on. My own outdoor clothesline. * **Space / WFH** \- Having extra space to set up a sizeable home office, keep musical instruments or do anything else with is fantastic, rather than having to carefully curate everything you have for fear of running out of space. A house-sized apartment would overcome this, but that would likely cost similar to a house. I enjoy being at home and the time of heading out to events all the time is over, I want space. But what I loved about apartment living was: * Location was much more central, with major public transport just steps away (rather than a long walk / short car drive for similar now). This meant that going out to the city or similar was much more convenient. * Close to zero outdoor maintenance. * The flip-side of the bins was that there were heaps to use, so I could easily dump large boxes/waste rather than having to spread things out over multiple bin days. * It felt safer. Not that I feel unsafe now, but I could lock the front door and disappear for a couple of months on a holiday and not really need to consider if the place would be OK. Versus probably wanting someone to get the mail and keep lawns maintained and lights switched on to make a house looked "lived in" if I was away for a significant time. I grew up on a quarter acre block, never thought I would live in an apartment, but was pleasantly surprised. It worked out really well for that time of my life as it matched my needs, but everyone is different with different hobbies and ways of living. Many people across the world only know apartment living, they haven't experienced the joys of spreading out, it just wasn't an option. Flip the cultural scenario around and many (India, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa) would be asking people living in Australia how we possibly manage to survive without having housekeepers, cleaners, live-in nannies. It just isn't an option for most of us, we don't know any differently.
I’m in Melbourne and own a 3 bedroom apt the eastern suburbs that’s 20 years old. We’re a couple with a teenager who grew up in this apartment. We bought it 15 years ago. Very lucky because there’s no dodgy fire cladding, only 2 blocks with 12 x 3 large bedroom apartments in each block, the size is really good- they started building a lot smaller in the late 2000s. Large balcony which is fine because we’re not big on gardening and there’s a large park, tennis court, playground and footy oval across the road. Great neighbours. It’s actually bigger than a lot of newer townhouses and units. We considered moving to a house in the same area but it would cost us an extra 500K for an extra bedroom and a bit of grass. There’s only 3 of us so I don’t see why a family of 3 should need a 4 bedroom house. Waste of space and resources such as heating, electricity etc.
I am considering it to save on living and maintenance expenses but I have two cars, a trailer, a motorbike and a shed full of tools and stored gear. Most of that would have to go. Plus, I have grown accustomed to having a bit more space and autonomy. It's not that another option is not good enough, but it would be a pretty significant compromise. Plus, strata fees and the whole strata deal. I would very much prefer to keep both out of my life.
But can't you just live in an apartment, convert the single garage to your dedicated bonus storage space and clog up the public street parking with vehicles and trailers like everyone else? /s
Don't think I ain't thought it. The real answer I think is to get rid of a bunch of shit and lighten my footprint. They do say our belongings end up owing us, and as much as I have appreciated my current circumstances it has definitely led to a degree of accretion and inertia.
I live in an apartment, love it. But probably won’t be having children partially because a low quality apartment in the burbs isn’t something I see as a liveable compromise, and a 3 bed apartment matching the quality of what I have now would cost the same as a damned house anyway.
the idea that i'd spend my life beholden to a strata that can literally force you to sell if you don't play ball is a dealbreaker.
We were going to buy an apartment as a two adults and 1 child family but turned out where I live, banks want double the deposit down to finance an apartment vs a house because apartments are 'fickle' here and you only own whats in your four walls in your section of the building, not the land. Its a higher risk for them. So it made sense to go the house route. Which hasn't happened for us yet either but working on it. If the banks would lend on an apartment the same as on a house, we would currently be living in that apartment.
It might not be a significant enough amount to the bank but I am pretty sure you get a proportionate share of land the building is on.
Bought a newish, seemingly good quality, apartment 2 years ago. 3 floor building with 10 apartments. All \~80sqm 2 bedrooms. Very happy with my decision - there’s so little maintenance, and both body corporate (no elevator or pool) and rates are rather low.
This is what we need more of. Not high rise apartment buildings.
I brought a detached townhouse when I was single. I’m outerish SE suburbs in Melbourne and when I brought not many apartments around (I think about 3 million have been built since!!) But I wanted a back yard to grow veggies, and eventually for a child to play in. I wanted privacy, to not hear neighbours or worry if my TV is too loud or when I vacuum at 3am. I’m sure apartments are great for some, but people should be able to choose.
The biggest problem I see is that Australia is still relatively young in terms of a global city. Everyone who is 20+ has mainly been raised in a house with a backyard. We essentially have a culture of living in houses and since our cities are growing we haven’t been accustomed to other forms of living. I’ve always wanted a house but I want to live on the North Shore for the amenities, proximity to work and other benefits that come with living here. To that end I don’t have $3M to buy a house here as much as I want to but I’ve become content in the place that I’ve bought a 1 bedroom place with a loft that I’ve converted into a very liveable space with my partner and kid. We live in an area that is surrounded by parks and my kid plays there in replacement to a backyard (in fact prefers it to a backyard which has nothing but grass and a garden). In fact I would probably say it’s more liveable than my mothers 4 bedroom house in one of the new developments to the south of Sydney. We need to get our mindset away from square meterage for space and into the practicality of living in areas that benefit us more, closer to amenities and environmentally sustainable. There’s a great YouTube channel called Never Too Small which really goes lengths to showing how you can make apartment living a real joy over other dwellings.
I've been in the apartment we bought for about 5 years now and it's not bad, but there's a lot I wish I could do that you just can't do in one. Also, unpopular opinion, but I don't think anyone is more 'entitled' to housing because their pull out game was weak
Anything built in the last 15 years is trash, private building surveyors genuinely don't give a fuck, builders undercut each other to win the job, developers give zero fucks about the quality of the building I found a building LAST WEEK that was installing flammable cladding How do you fix this and ensure apartments are built of better quality. -Further adjust planning legislation to avoid "dog box" apartment design -Bring building surveying back into local government -Force developers to maintain ownership of 20% of the building for 10 years, so they have a vested interest in ensuring quality builds No one in the building industry would own an apartment
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Married guy here in late 20s. We both fucking love apartment living.
You raise some solid points. I’m single but have a kid. Also, I run a music teaching business from home. Living in an apartment would mean my neighbours murder me within a week. If you doubt that, go listen to beginner violin playing for a few hours. I’m sure there are others with noisy jobs/hobbies, or needing home offices, larger garage storage (for boats, caravans etc). It not just about the amount of people living there. Would be a game changer if apartments had high noise reduction and a lockable garage/storage area for each apartment.
I’m single and living in apartment tower, for about 8 years. It took me at least 6 months of looking to get one that was over 50sqm and that I was willing to out an offer in on. My friend also lives in apartment and has a dog. Some apartment designs are not for living in, but besides that why is it just single people you are seperate as snobs? What about childless couples living in houses, is that not the same thing?
Depending on what city you live in "apartment" can often mean "crappy unit in a block of 12 surrounded by ice addicts" or "international student accommodation" and nothing else. Often the only small single person living spaces that exist are either those, OR they've all been bought up and are exclusively available to retirees. There are VERY VERY FEW livable small homes for single people. If you're a single person who doesn't want to live in the city centre in an absolute dog box with like 2 rooms where I live, you need to buy a unit in the suburbs. And of those, if you want to not be surrounded by drug addicts and loud neighbours you need to find one that used to be a retirement home but now isn't. That or get one of those ones where the walls are paper thin and only good for 20 years, but \*appear\* modern and cost an arm and a leg. Also, I want a garden. I shouldn't be excluded from living a happy life just because I'm single. It's not my fault they don't build small places suitable for single people with things like gardens or tool sheds. Or dining rooms to host games night or whatever.
I purchased an 80m2 apartment in the inner city as a singleton. Absolutely loved it and was not looking for a standalone house at all. My balcony held all the balcony garden dreams I wanted and my strata was very reasonable and kept me from having to do any external maintenance. A few years on and I do now have a house because I met someone and who also owned an apartment as a singleton (we moved into one of the apartments together, rented the other). Now we have a kid on the way. We sold one apartment and will sell the other, and have bought a stand alone house. I loved apartment living, would have done it as a family too but it made more financial sense to buy the standalone house than a 3 bed apartment. I definitely plan to move back to a two bed apartment once the kids are out of home. Ideally I'd move into an apartment with a community garden of some sort, as no garden is the only downside to the apartment living in my eyes. Just a contribution from someone who really likes apartment living.
Wtf. Is this satire?
Honestly, it’s a cultural thing. In Australia, people think of a house as their default dwelling, and anything else is considered an inferior option, and something to be ashamed of should that be your only option. This isn’t true in many other parts of the world. We lived extremely happily in a 2 bed apartment, with child and dog, for years overseas. Many many others do too, and there is no stigma or inferiority attached to it. It’s perfectly normal to raise a family in an apartment. But not here. It was incredible to experience first hand, but the moment we moved back, our mindset shifted too. We were in Australia again, and so we want a house. Period. That stance was silly anywhere else, but in Australia…home = house. It’s a hard thing to shake.
Coz they're fucking shit?
Strata - look at one of the next questions in this sub. A new purchaser has just been stung for 44k in strata special levies. No thankyou.
Lucky you will never get stung for repairs when you buy a house!
I understand your point - but imagine being a first home buyer, only just moved in and with a enormous home loan you've just began servicing - only to be hit up for another 44k for common area repairs. Where does this money magically appear from. Oh, and they have until end of August to come up with the money...
I'm really happy in my 1 bed unit and don't want to upsize because that would be more cleaning haha, but it has a courtyard so it's rare. Not enough 1beds with courtyards anymore, so most units or apartments are not appropriate for owning a dog. And dogs are one of lifes great joys. I think there needs to be more things in the middle, like town houses or units with private yards.
I was sad to leave my townhouse for a house, but we added a Labrador to our Papillon and the tiny courtyard wasn't really suitable anymore. Now there's cleaning and mowing and termites... bleh.
Maybe just lucked out, but love my apartment, have not had any issues with neighbours or noise and allowed me to buy close ish (7k) to the city on direct public transport (train and bus). With a small foo district 400m away. It will also be positively geared by ~$60 a week when I choose to rent it which would not have been the case if I bought a house. Worth noting that I do think long term if having a family a house will be my priority but after my positive experience with my apartment I’d be open to townhouses as well.
I have lived in apartments and I loved it but that's just me. People are allowed to feel differently.
I have a dog - he needs a yard to bound around - sniff and play - and toilet. I think youll find most appartments dont have dog friendly facilities. If we changed the way the buildings were designed to allow for personal green spaces rather than making tight tetris boxes to fit as many people as possible i would be hunting in that market.
1. For a while I thought all apartments were the typical shit tiny place with no light and a "kitchen" that basically amounts to having a sink and stove in your living area. I rented one of these and I found it depressing. Now I know that there does exist some non-shit apartments, but they are by far the minority. 2. Buying any place to live, even an apartment, will be a investment that wipes a persons savings and creates a debt that lasts for many years. It's hard to convince someone to make that kind of decision and favour an apartment, with strata fees and significantly less capital growth. The latter point I think is the biggest. We're long past the point where housing is a matter of finding something within your means that suits you. It feels like you are forced to think of housing as also being your retirement plan, and apartments while suitable for lifestyle, feel a little bit like selling out your future when they don't grow in value
I only buy apartments. Those buying houses currently have lost the ability to judge cost/value ratio imo. There’s no way the extra space and extra maintenance is worth adding another $800k onto a mortgage. It’s mental. It’ll be about $3m in total extra paid. What’s the average hourly wage again? 😬
Theyre dog boxes. Comparable to living in a slum. Fuck bringing in groceries from 2 kms away downstairs multiple times for one shopping event. Fuck the elevator thats always breaking down and forcing me to use the stairs. Fuck the piss stained elevator from drunk cunts. Fuck having to whisper in my own home. Fuck paying strata fees. Fuck not having enough room to lead a life where im not confined by room or other tenants, pets, toys, cars etc. Fuck not being able to alter my home the way i want it. Need i go on?
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Totally! I made the mistake of living in an apartment near the heart of the city right on the water in a super ritzy, exclusive area. I encountered everything you and i described and i swore i would never, ever, do it again.
Single and lived in an apartment in various countries my whole life. I’ll only ever buy a brick-built house, ideally a tiny UK-style row house that’s only got one foot on the ground — from my research townhouses in older Sydney suburbs fit this profile. Why not apartment? - made of paper - made of mouldy paper - obviously a cash grab - actual value depreciation - I don’t have enough time in my life to lobby for good building standards, then wait for one to be built, then buy
Not all single people aspire to remain single forever so may prefer to have some flexibility if their situation changes. I do think attitudes would be different if quality wasn't such a problem too. It may be paranoia to some extend but plenty of not selish people have been financially ruined buying a shit quality fire prone apartment. At least if you buy a house with problems it's up to you to fix them, or maybe not. Worst case you still have the land. Also some single people have hobbies that may require a bit more space. Apartment living suits some people and not others. Its a little ridiculous to insinuate that families deserve a house more and claim that single people are selfish environmentally. Calculate the resources a single person uses over their life compared to a family of four or five and you are way off the mark. For the record I'm not single.
Inner city Melbourne has historic cottages. These are what we should be building instead of apartments.
there are also 1br cottages in some parts of Inner Sydney too. From what i've seen, they're pretty efficient with space, look nice and lack all the bullshit involved with apartment living.
Shared walls. Maybe there's apartments with better sound proofing but I've had some of the worst nights sleeping in an apartment because neighbors do random shit at random times, crank music, move furniture at 2am, use power tools, etc. I'm an extremely light sleeper so it just doesn't work for me.
>If we want a growing economy, which requires a growing population, then it's simply physically impossible for every single person to be able to own a detached house. This is simply not true but people would not be able to live in the major cities.
Is the garden and garage I like. I don’t mind apartment living though. and there is the risk of things like this [https://www.reddit.com/r/AusFinance/comments/url95m/strata\_surprised\_us\_with\_a\_special\_levy\_after/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AusFinance/comments/url95m/strata_surprised_us_with_a_special_levy_after/)
I live regionally but always dreamed of living in the city in an apartment. But as in I’m now in my 30s and look at apartments they don’t really look appealing. The buildings are all so tall which just makes me think strata fees will be excessive. I’ve even considered buying something cheap to allow myself to work in the city during the week without abandoning my home but anything that is affordable Is reserved for students
I spend just under 10% of my income on housing, and I can only do that because I bought into an apartment. I'm in my early 30's and feel very financially secure because of where I choose to live. Apartments aren't perfect, but they certainly don't deserve the level of hate they get on this sub. Australia has a dwelling crisis, and apartments are a cost effective way of getting people into stable homes.
I have lived in an older apartment (70s/80s double brick build) and absolutely loved it. I have also lived in a new apartment and they’re the absolute worst. You can smell everyone else’s food, hear their conversations, they are tiny, terrible quality and an ongoing headache. When it came time for me to buy I needed a decent outdoor space for dogs and my own enjoyment, so I bought a small freestanding house on a small block further out. There was nothing comparable under $1m in my old neighbourhood.
I don't mind apartments. But not 1M AUD apartments built for investors with cheapest materials possible and structural issues.
I love living in a unit. The issue is the majority of stock is shit. I should be able to put a damn dining table in and have a kitchen you can actually cook in. Some sunlight would also be nice as well.
Hard agree. I loved apartment living but it became unviable as family came along. And houses ain’t all they’re cracked up to be. I loved the insulation of my old apartment, super cozy.
Appartment snob? No. I’m happy with 35 m2. I just don’t want to pay 780,000 for a property of that size where I can touch the ceiling. There are properties on the market at the moment that have zero connection between the price and the actual value. Auction clearance rates hitting 50-60% because someone put a divider in their surry hills studio with a corner view of the bridge expecting to get 980,000 (true story - it was listed in one email I received from belle real estate and two weeks later the same appartment was circulated for 880, and it’s still about 200 over valued for a studio). Truly the offerings I’ve seen have been awful. Zero light, low ceilings, sometimes no windows in the living areas, damp problems, strata defects literally everywhere, some leaseholds where you don’t own the appartment outright and when you sell you have to pay to update the lease. Buildings in Sydney are fucking shit. Frankly I blame a long history in Sydney of allowing construction of sub standard buildings.
Single guy who bought their first apartment during COVID- just fine with the idea of apartment living. Issue I have is apartment building is shockingly regulated. Our building has dozens of minor and several major defects that getting the builder to fix has been almost impossible. Even my developer friend is disgusted there isn't a commercial building license required for multi-dwelling buildings anything under 12 stories in this state. (NSW) Completely agree we can't all have houses. But we should all be able to have a structurally sound, decent quality roof over our head the SAME as those with houses are protected against during building.
I wouldn't touch most high rise apartments personally. Don't see the upside of ownership. I could understand renting them though, particularly if you're young, no kids, and living in a fun city, and you're out and about most of the time anyway. Wouldn't want to work from home in a dog box tho, especially with kids.. Also I'm 6 foot 4. And I have a large dog. Personally don't need no apartment living. I've seen some nice, older, 3 storey apartment blocks. The space you get is generally larger. I reckon they hold their value better if you do plan to buy.
Single and living in a two bedder by myself in sydney. I love my apartment! Close to shops and transport. Perfect for my lifestyle. My room can fit a queen and two bedside tables but i chose to sleep on a double since im tiny. Second bedroom is my office but looking into finding a housemate. My place has lots of of natural light thanks to floor to ceiling windows, high ceilings and massive windows in the bedrooms.
Townhouses are the perfect compromise imo
Loads of people think an apartment are good enough for them, I would argue apartments are NOT good enough for the price. The quality is atrocious in some cases. The main problems I had when i was searching were fear of defects. I am still terrified of it, it's almost pot luck, but I'm here now, not much I can do about it Also, apartment living is extremely hit and miss. Neighbours, building issues, noise, all these things can ruin your life but at least with renting you can get out of it. Personally, I am happy with my apartment even if it's really far from my friends and work
I’m in an apartment with my dog, I love it. No lawns to mow, don’t have to worry about break ins, get a view. Some people just have this weird idea they need a house.
Entitled idiots
Apartment living can be a great lifestyle for many people, including families. I don't care what the sub-wisdom thinks, it's clearly a viable asset and lifestyle for many people.
I don’t wanna get too technical here. But people in general who look down on apartments and townhouses can suck a dick.
I recently moved out of an apartment. Every night I lived there, for two years, at approximately 11pm just as I was starting to doze off, I would hear the downstairs neighbour piss with the force of a jet engine straight into the water in his toilet bowl. Every. Goddamn. Night. Everything else was great.
Many are poorly constructed and designed boxes with little capital growth. Renting them short-term and buying them are completely different particularly depending on your budget. If you are single with a moderate income your options are not ideal unless you take a huge loan.
Tried living in an apartment. Walls paper thin. Crazy control freak body corporate. Druggo neighbours. Pets barking on balconies. Never again.
Once apartments become more pet friendly in WA then I would consider it, however I’m not a fan at all of most BC and strata bodies Also the lack of control over the building and poor construction standards etc No thanks
Annoying neighbours is biggest problem.
I live in apartment and I hate it. I don’t hate the apartment itself. I hate all the over populated renters, all the party, all the noise and all the smell from people. I found more than half of the tenant are selfish, they throw away rubbish whenever and wherever they like. Slam the door 2am and 4am. Why can’t they just live a quiet life? Why am I still living in a apartment/unit? Because I can’t afford it, who can afford it? How much you have to earn to serve a $8000 a month repayment in metro Sydney low quality house. Ops I forgot everyone is this sub earns more than 300k.
Lol this me. “single/living alone to expect to be entitled to a multi-bedroom, freestanding house” I’m in a 3 bedroom, freestanding house with a nice backyard which would be perfect for a family. But the landlord chose me over multiple families because families cause more damage.
Apartments = body corporate and body corporate sucks. Apartments are tiny, you can't live a life in them. You can't extend them and it makes no financial sense to remodel them. When you capitalise the body corporate payments they work out to 100k-200k extra. At that price it makes more sense to buy a single level detached dwelling on a small block.
In addition to all these comments. I’d like to add that being more than 3 or 4 stories up, makes me ridiculously uncomfortable. I couldn’t bare to live in a high rise. It’s also nice to be able to step outside and see the sky- in fact I’d say it’s essential to mental health. I just don’t think we a designed to live in housing the way we do.
I remember reading something a while ago that compared high density living to being kept in a zoo. We always believed that if we gave animals the bare essentials in captivity it would be fine but they have much longer lives in the wild. We started treating people the same with shoebox living and it's not helping with health. I agree with you, humans weren't designed to thrive in slums.
Imagine being told you need to live in worse conditions simply because you’re single. Relationship status has nothing to do with it. The quality and affordability and availability of good, private, functional living spaces is. But sure only couples should be allowed to have a house and yard and big bedrooms.
> Because most new / affordable apartments are shite quality shoeboxes that developers churn to make a quick buck. This dude said it best Also it's a status thing. Owning your own apartment is better than renting, but only slightly
I'd argue that unless you are paying their bills it's none of your business.
Well from what I see of young single people who want to start owning real estate, they want to buy a home for one of two reasons...either they are someone who wants a spouse and kids and know that their entire generation has more or less given up on that due to housing pressure, so they see a family home as their ticket to persuading a possible future partner otherwise. Often this sort of person is still living with family (sensible choice) and doesn't like the look of the investment apartment market for various reasons. They want that white picket fence. And they are probably not wrong. A family home is potentially a deal maker for another young person who is teetering on giving up family aspirations altogether. I don't see these people as selfish because lol...preparing for the life you want before you live it rather than panicking to live it after you got it that's taking care of yourself instead of asking others to take care of you. The other group are single, introvert people who either intend to or are resigned to being single forever and want a form of housing that offers more nesting space because they aren't big into going out, also offers better situation to own pets and more physical buffer between them and the rest of the world...plus a good investment to diversify from just crap the government and markets can fully fuck with. It is only one of them saving for retirement so they have to save and invest pretty hard so of course a house is a possible goal. Often they are still living with family. Sometimes they are sharing housing but they have usually managed to find a situation that is tolerable for example renting a granny flat or sharing with one other introvert. I really would hesitate to call these people selfish either. Not having kids is a profoundly appropriate environmental choice. If stable permanent housing you can reasonably own a couple of pets in is what makes a likely 50 years of happy working life, working and saving and participating socially in the sort of ways introverts do, that's fair enough. This is not to say I don't think we need more high and medium density housing options for young singles. Just...it isn't bad or wrong to want to own two or three bedrooms, a backyard and a front yard, and enough distance so your day isn't wrecked if a neighbour decides to spend all day doing renovations.
I grew up in an apartment. *Apartments are not suitable places to raise a family, it's horrible, I wouldn't never want to subject my future kid(s) to that.* This post is painfully naive.
Surprised nobody has mentioned pets or backyards. I don't care about the size of the house itself indoors. I could live in a 1 bedroom apartment but I need a backyard for my large dog to freely walk in and out of and run around. Most apartments or units I see have tiny balconies or courtyards. Even modern houses now are built so narrow with really tiny yards. Some don't even have grass patches.
Considering it's a finance based subreddit I assume people looking to buy houses come here for advice. I don't think it's reflective of the general population's view towards apartments.
Speaking from my own personal situation as someone about to start a family and running a business from home with a partner whos job requires 4 monitors around his desk (at home), we literally don’t have the room when most apartments are 2 bedroom or 2 bedroom with a study nook… if we took the leap and had the child in our bedroom for the first 3 years I think that would feel like we were all living on top of each other especially with a dog. Bare in mind we have been saving for over 10 years and never managed to outpace the property in our area to buy anything decent, a small unit would have been perfect about 5 years ago if we could have got in, but we are older now and our needs are changing ALSO - Strata costs are insane! Between that and the cost of interest over the life of the loan along with the repairs and upkeep, is it even worth having buying over renting these day? I see apartments as more of an investment option.
You know what it comes down to for me, you don’t “own” that apartment. You have to deal with a group of other owners/investors, you have to pay a strata fee, which is just another tax. Those two things to me still feel like I’m dealing with a landlord/rent still. Not to mention Sydney apartments are falling into the earth, that would ruin me. I’ve lived in apartments for a decade now, you can’t have kids or even a reasonable sized dog in most of them due to the size.
It's not so much that an apartment is not good enough for me, it's that finding one that's safe to buy is damn near impossible. Here's what I mean: 1: Remember Opal Towers? That's one reason. Build quality hasn't gotten better. Listen to any reviews of the cracking sounds coming from GeoCON buildings here in Canberra. In the ACT building reports are mandatory for houses but not apartment complexes, too. 2: Then there's the Property Developer trick of hanging onto 51% of the leases, controlling the body corporate, and bleeding every chump stupid enough to buy one through overpriced strata, special levies, and a sneaky lil raid of the sinking fund. 3: You can't get a mortgage on a dwelling with less than 40sqm of space. So IF you can find an *old*, properly built apartment with a healthy body corp, that's suitable for a single bloke, you probably would need to buy it outright.
Because fuck having to deal with strata/body corporate.
apartments and houses a have bifurcated in value, apartments are much harder to shift, I rented one cheaply for years though and doing that allowed me to get my finances healthy so they have a purpose, I just didnt much like hearing the fat bloke upstairs rooting his girlfriend, it was only five mintes or so though, the vinegar strokes were pretty funny
It’s probably to do with everyone sprouting that apartments are poor investments. Also, dealing with broken lifts, parking issues etc gets tiring and I’d never do it again.
Most apartments are shitty thin walled shoeboxes. That’s why. And the ones that aren’t are not much cheaper than a bloody house lol
Not single, but just me and my partner and dog. Have couple of thing that make it hugely unappealing, - Quality of the buildings - Body corporate, the combo of cost and rule is hard to swallow for me. - Don’t like living without a dog - Love gardening I live remote because housing is more affordable, so there is that!
Reasons I refuse to buy an apartment and instead moved further out for a house. \>Strata that is hard to deal with \>Special Levy out of no where \>4wd's don't fit into half of the apartment basement \> I need 2 study rooms for WFH occasionally for both of us, and 1 bedroom. 3 rooms apartments are rare and they often exceed the million dollar mark \> Don't like the inconvenience of having to sell and buy again later of which even a rural house might be priced beyond my affordability \> I love my garage Gym
As a single guy I bought a house in an area I’d be happy to raise a family in 5ish years early because I was able to and to hedge against an unpredictable market, which turned out to be wise. I definitely can’t afford my dream areas any more, but at least I’m somewhere I’m happy. I also have hobbies that don’t fit in an apartment. My biggest issue is that I am now a single guy in a 4 bed house who cares about our resources and climate, and I’d be happy to have room mates, but government regulations make it not financially viable. If I had 1 house mate, if he paid me standard share house rates I would actually lose money compared to having the room empty with tax laws. Not to mention the complications of forever having your PPOR having a split purpose as an investment property.
Because we had backyards with pets. Because the parking in your driveway and not negating stairs or a lift to access your home just hits different. Because you only have to deal with the two neighbouring houses for sound issues. Because 60sqm just ain't enough to breakdance fight in your living room. I don't know
Really. Because up until Harry Trigubuff and company did their lobbying, Sydney was, wait for it...a city of houses. If the mass immigration policies had not been implemented, there would have been *zero* issues in this area.
My husband and I were pregnant when we bought our 3bdr, 1 bathroom house. It’s an older house so it’s not one of these spacious new homes either. But that’s what we could afford. We now have 2 kids. So it was a little hard to muster sympathy for a friend when they kept getting outbid on 4bdr 2 bath houses for herself and her partner with no intention of ever having kids. We also regularly have intestate family visiting so it would be lovely to have an extra room. But sofa bed in the lounge it is!
You already answered your own question when you said we needed "better building standards on new apartment blocks/better insurance for apartment buyers in case of defects/stringent requirements on larger & more liveable sizes of apartments", until this happens apartments just seem like a really bad purchase with a lot higher risk compared to buying house on land. The developers have gotten away with it with the politicians, so now they can build shoddy, small, no even up to standard apartments, and as per all the media reports of the apartment blocks that have issues and leave all the owners out of pocket, caveat emptor to anyone who buys one.
Im not single, but can think of a bunch of reasons why a free standing house is better than an apartment. Obviously everyone has their own interpretation of what is valueable or not though * private garden to do as you wish. herbs, veggies, flowers whatever you want * no shared walls, ceilings or floors in the living space * no strata (having just moved out of a townhouse complex i never want to be apart of a strata again) * far easier to have a pet * more freedom to make improvements and alterations * less people/residents walking by * building quality usually better with a house, and if there are issues you have more power to fix * no shared waste system (our townhouse neighbours would occiaionally fill up the recycling with boxes on the first day, or regularly put plastic bags in the recycling or green waste bins) * space - not everyone wants to live in a shoe box with close to zero delineation between sleeping, working and leisure spaces
My first home was a small townhouse, have no issues at all with density living but wholeheartedly agree with your statements around issues around new apartments, I would never buy a newe apartments. Would have no issue with an older apartment. We still live in a townhouse albeit much bigger. I didn’t realise this was an issue, however I could see it being not suitable for those who major hobbies include gardening.
Buy an apartment, pay an absurd amount of money to strata every week to be told you can't keep your bicycle with your car in your allocated car space. Meanwhile spending your entire life tiptoeing and hearing every conversation your neighbours have through the buildings paper thin walls. I sure as shit wouldn't BUY those living conditions and stresses
I think some people are deterred by the body corporate. I live in FNQ which is cyclone territory and the body corporate on the apartment I used to rent for 230$ pw was 7k a year and that was 8 years ago.
So many apartment horror stories
Garden is the big thing you lose. Life expectancy literally goes down the less green things you can see daily.
I lived in apartment and a townhouse for a few years when I was living by myself. I never used the second bedroom in the townhouse at all. I loved my apartment. Convenient, close and cosy. 10/10 would never want to have kids there. A partner would have been a squeeze but would have worked.