I don't like apt noise and the inconsideration of others. I don't like having "roommates" I cannot chose (or eject) living around, above and below me. I don't like the idea that things might happen with rent, changes in ownership, sale of the property, etc that might force me to move with only 90 days notice. That being said, I do often wonder what it might be like to be free of all maintenance, and I think about what I might do with all that free time. And there is less you can do to get rid of the noisy homeowner next to you than get rid of the noisy tenant above you. The other factor is the finances and the equity you build through home ownership. But there are so many pieces to that (your ability to effect your own repairs or afford to have them done, the market you're in, the timing of buying/selling, etc.)
We do have acres and had no neighbors when we moved here. It allowed our kids to pursue their interests in dog mushing and my wife to have her goats. Chickens, geese, ducks and such were a family resource, and #3 son raised rabbits. None of that would have been possible in an apartment. Unlike @Ken Anderson I don't hate apartments, but I would not choose to live in one now that I have gotten used to the freedom of having land. There is also financial security in owning a house with land for large gardens, woodlots, and such. Real estate seldom goes down in value if it was valued properly to begin with, so it is a sort of bank account/investment as well.
During the years that I lived in California, I lived in apartments. There are advantages in that the renter is not responsible for the upkeep, but, on the downside of that, whenever there's upkeep to be done, there is often a sense that you're accountable for something having gone wrong. In other words, if something goes wrong, the landlord or property management company is responsible for fixing it, but if too many things go wrong, it's your fault. I like doing whatever I want to do on my own house and property, and I don't particularly appreciate even having to deal with building inspectors or code enforcement people. Fortunately, in the town I live in, I don't really have to do that, either. In the only couple of interactions I've had, I challenged it and they backed down. The town does not have a blueprint of my house on file because the house was built before the town was incorporated, or at least before it became organized in that way. Our building inspector and code enforcement people told me they were going to inspect the house several years ago so that they had a record of the interior on file. I told them they'd need a warrant, and then I called the town manager and he had them back down. Our code enforcement guy came by one day, a couple of summers ago, to complain about my fire pit. Actually, he wanted to complain about my fire pit but he was afraid to actually do that, so he beat around the issue for a while until I told him he could consider it a barbecue if that would make things easier for him. I don't know if there was a complaint, and I don't think there was. He likes to think that he can control everything that anyone does around town. At the same time, from experience, he knows that I am not going to simply accept his authority so he couldn't bring himself to actually get to a point. So anyhow, if I were to add another story to the house or an addition to the house, I'd have to get a building permit, given that these are things that can be seen from the outside, but I can do anything I want inside the house because they don't know what's already here, and I like it that way. I can accept authority when I respect the authority, but that's rarely the case. I was an assistant manager of a large apartment complex in Buena Park, California for a while, and I was a code enforcement officer/building inspector/health inspector/EMS director (all at the same time), for a city in Texas for six years, where I was also a Lieutenant in the VFD. I didn't harass people, though, and the city didn't want me to harass people.
I have never once complained to an apartment manager about another resident in any of the apartments I've lived in, and I was an assistant apartment manager for a while. I also don't complain about neighbors, and if I ever felt that I needed to, I'd complain directly to the neighbor.
I don't recall complaining to management when I lived in an apartment either, and I don't remember anyone complaining about me either, but the threat was always there nonetheless. The wife sometimes wants to hang stuff or move walls or closets; couldn't do that in an apartment. Compliance enforceme3nt here is also almost non-existent. They passed an ordinance a while back that stated that any building whose area was increased by 400 square feet or more, or whose area was increased by 50% or more would require a permit. One person I know who worked for the borough (county) government at the time when to the planning department and said he wanted to make one of his dog house tice as big as it currently was, so did he need a permit. He was told that technically he would need a building permit to enlarge his doghouse. Such is the ludicrousness of the laws, so no one pays any attention to them unless they are living inside a city.
In Maine, things are usually easier if you're living in a city. The state agency that governs things outside of incorporated towns or cities is horrific to deal with. The time alone that is involved in getting a permit to do anything outside of a city or town is ridiculous, and decisions are often contradictory. That's why I was pleased to learn that the 100 acres of woodland that we bought were actually within the town's limits, although it's a couple of miles outside of the town proper. I know one person who was fined several thousand dollars for moving a rock at his camp without a permit. He had a camp on a lake and moved one of several rocks so that he could more easily dock his boat. The movement of that rock was caught on satellite imagery, and he had to 1) pay a large fine; 2) move the rock back; and then, if he wanted to move the rock, he could 3) apply for a permit to move the rock. But he had to first move the rock back before applying for the permit. Back to apartments, though, living in an apartment is like living in someone else's house, where they can tell you where to park, what you can do, and so on. When someone comes to visit, there are problems with where they are going to park, and maybe someone is going to complain if someone stays overnight, and so on. I won't repeat it here because I know I've written about it in another thread, but when I was renting an apartment in a condominium building in Brownsville, Texas, I got repeated complaints from the management that had nothing to do with me. She had the wrong apartment and refused to listen or believe me when I tried to tell her that I wasn't even home at night because I worked nights, and there was no one in my apartment to be making noise at night, and that my apartment was not the one that had towels hanging from the balcony. I never once used the pool there and rarely even stepped onto my balcony.
The problem I had when renting was that I ended up doing repairs on stuff that annoyed me because I could not get the landlord to respond. I also had a situation in one place where I came home to my apartment from work and my bath towel was soaking wet, it was filthy, and it was covered with pieces of drywall. After I looked around, I saw that there must have been a leak behind the drywall under my sink, and it was coming through the ceiling of the apartment below me (this was later confirmed by management.) So the maintenance guy cut out the drywall, fixed the leak, and had nothing to mop the mess under the sink up with. So he went into my bathroom, took my towel off of the rack, mopped up the mess, then put the towel back on the rack as though no one would notice it being wet and covered in funk. So this whole "someone else does the maintenance" thing has an ugly downside to it. And many have stories of not being able to get landlords to spend money or do the labor to effect repairs. As Ken said, you also run the risk of getting blamed by some of these shysters, so every thing that goes wrong gets communicated in writing...and you often just live with it.
In short, I have lived in a couple of apartments and have no use for them. There’s always a Karen who has nothing better to do than snoop into everyone’s affairs and then go running to management every time someone passes gas. In one building I lived in, that snoop was the maintenance guy and used his position to walk into the apartments and “look around” whilst the tenants were away. I have trust issues to begin with and the only thing I can trust about living in an apartment is that somebody is always going to be looking over my shoulder to make sure the way I live is according to their standards. If ever I would fantasize about living in another apartment, there’s an Econolodge just 15 minutes from here that I can check into for a day or two and get all that foolishness out of my system.
It’s not that I have any disrespect for those onlookers for indeed, everyone has to have something they’re good at. Cody is excellent at what he does but I do not need to be in a controlled environment whereby that expertise is obviously needed.
I had another instance where I applied to rent a guest cottage behind the owner's house. Unbeknownst to me, the owner sent her live-in nephew to my place of employment (it was on the rental application) to apply for a job. He got the job, then I was offered the place. As soon as I inked the agreement and put down a deposit, she started putting the screws to me to chauffeur the guy to & from work. I tried to soft-peddle out of it ("I don't always come straight home from work") and she got more aggressive ("Where do you go? How long are you there?") I told her it was not going to work out, and since I had yet to move in, she agreed to give me my deposit back. Later she claimed she never agreed to refund my deposit (I think she was afraid to tell her husband what she had done.) I ended up taking her to Small Claims Court, where she denied ever saying I could get my deposit back: "I don't lie. My husband is a German diplomat!" I got half of my deposit back, and they kept the rest as compensation for lost rentals because I backed out. It was a Solomon-esque ruling, with my money being the baby.
I was perfectly content living under a bridge in Seattle , and likely will be content living in the woods, in a cave, under a bridge, or wherever , again. As written in the Creator's Unchangeable Word: "With food and clothing be content". And the company we share in the wilderness/ outside/ goes back thousands of years , right up to and through today, more and more as 'working poor' are forced out of housing options ......