Why are some people sniffy about living in a semi detached house?

I felt sorry for a friend when she had to down size after her husband died and she moved into a home on a caravan site. A few years later I went to visit her. Her static caravan was literally a couple of hundred yards from a beach, with a beautiful view from the living room. She had decorated it beautifully and I could happily have stayed there for ever.

For the last 24 years I've lived in a mid terrace 60s ex council house. I rarely hear any noise from my neighbours except for things like lawn mowing. I've had no complaints so I presume that I haven't disturbed them either. Apart from anything else the houses either side help to insulate mine.

No.

I live in a tiny detached house for the first time in my life, (terrace house size) and I do like being free from the concern about being noisy to neighbours or them being noisy. However I'm about to downsize to a flat so am aware of being very careful how/where I choose.

But the answer to the O/P is NO, how strange. I assume the reason people might want to get a detached house is the privacy not the H bucket POV.

I couldn’t care less what people think and am quite surprised that some people do care.

It’s not the people my friend is attached to that have made her life hell for years it’s the ones on the other side. I feel fortunate to be in a detached house but my garden it still attached however you look at it. I dread my lovely quiet neighbours moving …

We live in a detached and love it, much prefer it to a semi, which we have lived in several over the years
Nothing snobby about it.

AreWeThereYet

mokryna

I think British people in general tend to look down on flat dwellers.

That may have been true in the past because there simply weren't many flats outside council estates - which some people did look down on - or above shops. Unlike places like Germany and inner cities in the US where many people live in flats. Now flats are being built all over the place in the UK, and many people recognise that for certain lifestyles they are ideal - no children, don't want or can't cope with a garden, don't want maintenance that comes with a house... Near us a few ex-department stores are being turned into flats. Sadly they keep turning them into 'luxury, prestige' flats that cost a fortune instead of ordinary, nice flats that the less well-off can buy.

Yes that is a UK problem AreWeThereYet. In other countries company maintenance fees have laws to keep the prices down and leasehold doesn’t exist.

When I was a newly arrived immigrant aged 10, to SW London in the 1950s I was accused of living in a semi detached house!
I can still remember the feeling of helplessness. I didn't know what it meant as I had never heard the term. Was our house being insulted? I was already mocked for my accent.
In NZ we had lived in our single story wooden house like all the others.
Yes I did come across a strange culture.

Later I learned that I was being accused of being a snob because a semi was aspirational for the families who lived in poorer areas in small terraced houses or more often, multiple occupied large old houses. the kind which now sell for millions

The house we brought our kids up in was a ramshackle weatherboard which is now worth close to 2 million dollars. The one we live in now is a 2 storey brick house with an in ground pool but worth about half that. Unless you are selling , which we’re not, it doesn’t matter.

mantaray

I know it might seem an odd post to some people, but I've twice in the last month been asked if we ever wanted to be detached. I'm glad that no-one else has experienced this kind of snobbery. I think it's as my friend said, a curse of the South East.

Your not alone thinking this, we are in an old terrace and I’ve heard several comments over the years from friends and people I work with about how awful it must be to live sandwiched between other houses.It’s crass to say this, yeah ideally I would like a lovely detached house somewhere tho not a small box type one on an estate.

It's not just noise that can be an issue with attached properties- sometimes is can be lack of noise.

It can be having to take bins to-and-fro through someone's garden (or have them through yours.
It can be having to liaise regarding access for workmen (even though it's in the Victorian deeds as a right at any time ) so as not to create problems and nastiness...
It's about dogs and rights of way...
It's about shared internal/external walls and planning.
It's about climbing plants.

Generally it's about proximity - it worked fine for us for maybe 10 years. It doesn't work now.
Next move will be to a detached even if tiny - but with more than a metre between us!

Not snobby, just that we enjoy not being attached to any other property, I think that the noise of our TV (MrOops isn’t going deaf of course, just needs it turned up a bit 🫤)

Our first houses were attached, now we can enjoy being detached with space around us for privacy.

Grammaretto

When I was a newly arrived immigrant aged 10, to SW London in the 1950s I was accused of living in a semi detached house!
I can still remember the feeling of helplessness. I didn't know what it meant as I had never heard the term. Was our house being insulted? I was already mocked for my accent.
In NZ we had lived in our single story wooden house like all the others.
Yes I did come across a strange culture.

Later I learned that I was being accused of being a snob because a semi was aspirational for the families who lived in poorer areas in small terraced houses or more often, multiple occupied large old houses. --the kind which now sell for millions--

As long as it was in the right road in SW London, not too far from the station for commuting, you were ok, Grammaretto!
I do think it existed in some areas, thankfully not so much now.

😁

In NZ we had lived in our single story wooden house like all the others
And I made the mistake of calling a friend's single storey house in New Zealand a bungalow. She was most put out, even though I said I loved it!

I never came across this sort of snobbery back in the days when I lived in a variety of houses, semi-detached sometimes.
But when I needed to downsize to this Park home, one of the advantages is that it's detached and I realised for the first time how great that is.

Germanshepherdsmum

Lauren59

Just because many if you haven’t had the same experience as the OP doesn’t make this a “strange post”. We have snifiness right here on this thread.

Do we? It’s not sniffy to say you prefer a detached home, and why. I haven’t noticed anyone being sniffy. We’re all different in our preferences. That doesn’t mean looking down on people who make other choices.

You’re missing my point entirely, GSM. The OP asked why people are sniffy about living in a semi-detached house. Some of the replies stated that they’d never experienced that and called it a “strange post”. That dismissiveness (and yes, sniffiness) about OP’s experience in calling it a “strange post” is my point of reference.

Haven’t experienced any sniffiness, but never lived in a semi. Grew up in an inner city two up two down, outside loo, no bathroom, now all raized to the ground. John Lennon’s semi in the same city was posh
(working class hero😁)

Now live In detached split level bungalow and just as well as I have spent my life as a professional singer and teacher. A lot of noise going on…
I sometimes wish my detached neighbours were friendlier, but couldn’t live attached to anyone now as I still sing.

The point isn’t about a detached house being preferable ( it is!) but about snobby remarks being aimed at those of us ( who live in a semi or a terrace) by certain people you come across in life, and oh yeah! They are def around.

I have spent 40 years of my married life living in a semi and only 10 in a detached property and no one has ever made any snotty remark to me, although some one once did take exception to my living in a detached property.

Mind you when your semi is nearly 600 years old, that is generally the last thing people are likely to remark on.

I’ve lived in a large detached house, a first floor maisonette, a flat in a block, a semi detached bungalow, a semi detached house and now an end of terrace house. Yes, I’ve moved a lot in my life and I’ve found that in all places it was the convenience of the area and the neighbours who made it what it was/is. And yes, I do think there is some snobbery about it in the South East, where I have always lived.

I have just moved from the South (Hampshire) to the Midlands (Lincolnshire) and we have a beautiful 1900 Victorian Terrace - we havent experienced snobbery, but some people are very quick to say.. 'why on earth do you want to live here' - but we love where we live and we love the house. Surely its personal preference and choice and who cares what other people think or say.

I live in a "link-detached" house but my neighbour, who seems to care about such things, denies that it's a semi, which it sort of is. Actually, I feel snobby about her, I find her attitude really small-minded.

I do remember when I was working years ago, a colleague in her late teens was telling me where she lived. She made a point of saying it was a detached house and that her mother thought you got a "nicer class of person in a detached house". It took me all my time to keep a straight face!

When we bought our second house the primary concern was size of rooms (for general purposes!) size of garden (for me) and size of garage (for my husband). We looked at several properties, including a lovely four bed detached fairly new one. But they all lost out in all three respects to a large Victorian terrace which ticked all the boxes, and then some, being in a leafy pedestrianised road in a heritage area. We extended into the large loft space eventually for the fourth en-suite bedroom. It was a lovely family home and I have such happy memories of it and the lovely neighbours we had. So no, I don’t care for snobbiness about detached houses which, especially the new builds, are often smaller inside and out!

because they can afford it!