Currently, around 17 percent of Americans live in apartments. Therefore, the remaining 83 percent live in houses or other properties. Because there’s such a significant difference between both, you’d think homes are better than apartments. However, we don’t believe that’s 100% accurate. So, why are apartments better than houses?
When choosing between an apartment and a house, it comes down to personal preferences. But there are some advantages that apartments present more than a house: including easy maintenance, cheaper living (rent, electric, gas, water), enhanced security, a closer community, and much better lease options.
Whether the above will benefit you will highly depend on what you’re searching for. But one way or another, everyone can benefit from the mentioned. To understand this further, we detail the above more in-depth below so you visualize the advantages better.
Six Reasons Why Apartments Are Better Than Houses
The percentage of Americans living in other residences than apartments is substantial. However, it doesn’t mean that houses are a much better living place. Because of this, we’ve dedicated this post to expressing six different reasons why apartments are better than houses.
Easy Maintenance
According to BusinessWire, people within the United States spend around six hours per week cleaning their entire homes. The number is enormous, but it doesn’t account for a few other factors.
What’s showcased by Buisnesswire’s findings is solely the cleaning aspect of a home (including laundry). But this doesn’t account for external maintenance such as grass cutting, pruning, sweeping, and much more.
In contrast, apartments are usually a lot smaller and don’t have sizeable external living spaces. Therefore, the amount of time used to maintain an apartment over a house is much less substantial.
So, if you’re someone that doesn’t like to spend hours upon hours cleaning each week and are looking for easy-to-maintain living quarters, then an apartment is the way to go.
Save Money
Including the above, it also saves you a nice amount of money. As you can imagine, the smaller property you live in, the fewer utility bills you pay.
As suggested by Move.org, people living in houses should budget around $400 each month for the standard utilities (electricity, gas, water, streaming services, internet, and recycling).
Whereas, with an apartment, this number is slashed to $240 every month. Living in an apartment could save you around $1,920 yearly to put this into a larger perspective.
Let’s all be honest here; having an extra (almost) $2,000 each year could help your financial life.
Therefore, consider an apartment instead of looking for large, hard to maintain, expensive houses because you’ll surely save a pleasant amount of money.
Increase Security
In most situations, your overall security is also increased within an apartment than in a house.
Although this isn’t the same situation for all communities, some are much more crime-infested than others. Having enhanced levels of security undoubtedly helps a bunch.
But, why is this increased? Here’s what you need to know:
- Usually, apartment blocks will need key fobs or codes to grant individuals access to the building.
- Because you’re more tightly packed with your neighbors, break-in noises can be heard from an abundance of different people.
- A whopping 23 percent of burglaries are made from first-floor window entries. If you live inside an apartment block, you eliminate this possibility.
Considering a break-in occurs every 26 seconds in the United States, having added layers of security is highly beneficial. But you must note the above information is averaged across the whole of America. In some states, cities, towns, or villages, the effectiveness of an apartment’s security will fluctuate.
Additional Facilities
If you live inside a home, everything you want, you’ll need to purchase. However, with an apartment, these additional extras might already be available at no extra cost.
These added facilities (or amenities) are what the property owner has installed within their apartment block. Depending on where you live, it will highly depend on what’s offered to you.
Of course, the budget also plays a massive factor in this, but in some apartments, you could find swimming pools, saunas, rooftop lounges, playgrounds, literally anything you could imagine.
However, this highly depends on the apartment owners and what target market they’re aiming for within their units.
If they want to intrigue youthful people, a rooftop lounge is an excellent idea because they’re social. Whereas, with seniors, a wellness center might be more beneficial.
Either way, the additional facilities you could be objected to might be much more advantageous than what a home can offer.
Lease Options
Most apartments are rented out to tenants unless they’re located in tourist-related locations. In this case, people might purchase units for getaway holidays, etc.
But, with renting an apartment compared to a house, you’ll receive much more flexible lease options from the landlord.
Houses typically have a lead time of 3+ years. The reasoning behind this is that home-renters tend to stay for much longer. By doing this, they can create the home into something they desire.
However, with apartments, this is much different. Usually, apartment renters stay for much shorter durations. Therefore, landlords typically offer leases anywhere between 3 months to 3+ years.
So, if you’re looking for somewhere to stay for a short period, an apartment is much more beneficial than you might think.
Close Community
Lastly, the community you have within an apartment is much more prominent than in large neighborhoods. Although this isn’t everyone’s ideal life, for most, it is.
With apartments, you live much closer to everybody, and it’s somewhat hard to avoid them. Because of this, it forces you to build a relationship with those who’ve never thought you would.
After reading the above, you should have a general idea of why apartments are better than houses. This is a personal opinion backed with statistical facts.
However, it doesn’t mean that it’s everyone’s go-to choice for living. But the above state some great reasons why. Therefore, maybe your opinion has changed.