What to do if the neighbors is too loud?

I lived in a commie era block of flats ( brick though, not prefab) and I only heard the neighbours when my upstairs neighbour dropped something heavy or move big furniture around. I loved the kids community on the playground, always someone to play with.

I felt safer in flat too. Both door and windows wish.

Living in UK the only reason I would prefer house is the possibility of shed in the garden. They don't do cellars here so flats don't have storage areas for bike etc.

Not the case in Poland/Germany

Well, each to their own, but I would feel claustrophobic in a flat without my own garden and being above the ground floor surrounded by other people.


The UK's older houses and some of the nicer new ones do have cellars.
But yes, in the main, the UK don't do cellars.

Living in a flat everyone knows your business.


doesn't

That's true, but basements are more common. Basements were considered the best location for the kitchen for many years. Then with the changing ideas about health, light and fresh air around the turn of the 19th/20th century, the kitchens were located at the back on the ground floor. Many of those houses, particularly in towns, had cellars.

You are right Atch.I failed to distinguish between cellars and basements.
Basements usually have separate access and they are much more common than cellars in the UK.

That's logical because flat are multi-tenant industrial complexes and are usually required to have commercial fire mitigation like sometimes sprinklers, fire escapes, etc. And they are meant for living, they are meant for existing.

Meanwhile a house is an actual home where you have space, autonomy, and freedom, and sometimes this freedom leads to people making dumb mistakes and burning their house down. After all there are not frequent fire inspections on homes like on apartment buildings.

And for good reason. Without fire inspections and stricter fire rules, unlike in a home, in a flat you would burn to death because of some other idiot's mistake, not your own.

But in a home, you also get the freedom to make mistakes, and very rarely does this lead to your home burning down unless you do really stupid stuff like grilling indoors or doing shoddy electrical work.

In a home, as long as you use common sense, your house probably is not going to burn down.

In a flat, you have to hope and pray the fire inspector does their job and your neighbors are not total idiots.

Conclusion is that if you have common sense, you probably have less of a chance to have your place burn down in a home, than an apartment (flat). More homes burn down because there are plenty of idiots, but homes do not burn themselves down. If you have common sense, a home is actually safer.

"The world don't move to the beat of just one drum", as a man wiser than you or I once said...
"What might be right for you, may not be right for some," he continued.
"It takes Diff'rent Strokes", he mused
"It takes Diff'rent Strokes to move the world."

If you rent an apartment, at the end of the year you have a handful of rent receipts.
At the end of thirty years, you have nothing.
All you have done is made your landlords mortgage payments for him.
If you own a home, at the end of the year you have built equity by paying on your mortgage.
At the end of thirty years, you own your home which has more than tripled in value.
Sell your house for cash, make down payments on three more houses, live in one and rent the other two out and let them pay for themselves.

My philosophy has always been, "Raise the rent, not noisy kids."

@johnny reb

Agreed.
Renting is idiotic.
You have to find a way to buy.

Thankfully for the economy, and demographics at large, not too many people subscribed to your opinion throughout the last century.

Unfortunately, it looks like today's millennials broadly share your views.