One part of them problem I think in USA "housing" market is that people want houses. In cities. Where as in rest of the world people are much more willing to accept apartments. Which are absolute necessity for cities. Ending being trade off living in countryside farther from services or in cities near them, but not in house.

One driver of that is the model of owner occupied housing as the primary mechanism of middle class wealth accumulation.

Traditionally SFHs tend to perform much better as investments than condos. When you’re in an environment of secularly rising prices, you’re heavily pressured to get on the property ladder.

People want to buy and own an SFH as soon as they can. Otherwise if they get a condo the risk is the SFH market moves away from them and they’ll be priced out when they need it.

> are much more willing to accept apartments.

That's the problem. Apartment is inhumane by default. No privacy, no private space. They shouldn't accept them.

Can you expand? What kind of privacy, for instance?

I don't want to hear my neighbors music, kids, party, someone having sex. I don't want to participate in group meetings. I don't want to deal with flooded ceiling or looking at another apartments when I look out of the window. I don't want to hear that me and my wife are walking to loud when we've just arrived from work.

That's just off the top of my head.

Adequate sound insulation can deal with most of those issues (I assume group meetings is a euphemism for hearing your neighbors? Otherwise unless you’re on a condo board or something there are no such meetings in U.S. apartments in my experience, it’s not a college dorm.)

I lived in concrete floored apartments for 7 years and almost never heard my neighbors. Never got any sound complaints. That said a lot of low-rise U.S. apartments are built with wood and may not be adequately insulated.

Apartments and condos in the United States are built as cheaply as possible. Developers love the 4 over 1 style which is the most they can get away with. Combined with hideous "developer modernity" styling.

Neighbor noise is the top issue with this style of housing, but it goes completely unaddressed during building. I've always wondered why nobody has tried to differentiate on that.

I would be happy to live in a condo instead of a house if I felt really comfortable that I wouldn't have to deal with noise. But as it is now even if your neighbors are quiet at first, they could sell to someone with a new baby and you're screwed.

I live in a townhome built in the 80s with crazy good noise isolaton, i assume it's easier with a townhome because they just run a thick firewall between units.

Still, I would think good noise isolation must exist at some condos. I imagine you could interview current residents to see how good the noise isolation is before purchasing.

It's entirely possible. My friend told that his almost newly built apartment had very good insulation. My parents is good as well, only noise really is the elevator if on other side of wall. My current rental isn't bad either. Though some noise get through. Last place was horrible though, specially with dog that made noises through the night...

So it is possible to have good noise insulation. In general the noise from outside is bigger problem than from neighbours. Only real case with issue is renovation as any drilling or hammering through travel in structures.

I think good sound isolation mostly comes as a side effect of concrete housing, or things like firewalls in the american housing market. I think it's a side effect of how house price = sqft so all the other important things go by the wayside.

When I looked up soundproofing, there are techniques that involve a few layers of drywall and sacrificing like a few inches of air space to have an airgap, so it is possible to do it relatively cheaply in new construction, but then you sacrifice sqft :/

Do you like open windows? Most of my neighbors like open windows. I like open windows.

I lived in apartments for a while (although not in cities).

Another thing is that they would need to inspect the apartment once in a while (with notice) to make sure you aren’t damaging it. Even with notice it is intrusive.

I am sooo much happier owning a house. I got so sick of white walls I couldn’t paint and the inability to have certain hobbies (woodworking? musical instruments? Not in any apartment I’ve been in)

You’re describing the difference between renting and buying, not apartments and houses.

You can buy apartments and rent houses, so they shouldn’t be conflated.

I suppose that's true. I usually live in college towns, where buying apartments is rare or impossible, so for me apartments were always rented.

I never hear my neighbors, unless someone is renovating, but that's rare.

It doesn't matter, honestly. You still own it. Owning apartments is normal in more crowded areas - like tokyo. I'm pretty sure apartments greatly outnumber houses in most of Tokyo.

And sure, there is a difference, but it is only minor as we are still speaking of living spaces that you own instead of rent.

In the most of the US you pay rent to the owner of the apartment you live in. A partitioned building where you own the unit you live in is usually referred to as a "condominium" or "condo".

Yeah that sounds pretty different from other countries like France or Japan where there is no such distinction.

When a developer builds a housing building, they sell the apartments to people who will either live there or rent it to someone else. Then when the owners sell their apartment later, it can go from a resident owner to an investor, or the other way around.

As a result there is a mix of owners and renters in any condominium.

I understand this completely - English is my mother tongue and I'm American. People do own apartments, especially in larger cities. A lot of folks don't call them condos: It depends on where you live and what the developer decided to call them. In fact, my idea of a "condo" isn't an apartment in a high rise or even half of a house you own, but rather row houses, mostly with a front and back yard (basing this off of condos in places like Kokomo, Indiana and Nashville, Tennessee). Owner keeps up inside, they keep up outside.

Renting is not owning an apartment: You can renovate an apartment you own, but not a rental. This is much the same as renting a house instead of owning it.

Own as in own a garage, I wouldn't want to live there though.

I'm looking at houses in Tokyo right now. Yesterday I saw a 2SLDK in the Nippori area (2 bedroom with living room, dining room, kitchen, and storage room), and it was $600k. This is in the city, near central subway lines. If you want to live out in Chiba or Saitama, you can get a 3 or 4 bedroom for around $400k, but that's more similar to living in the suburbs.

Buying apartments here is actually more expensive than buying a standalone house, because they tend to keep their property value more than the houses (which usually are sold for the land - people tear the houses down and rebuild). If you're trying to verify what I'm saying, the apartments you'd buy here would be called a "Mansion", which is mostly a term for upscale apartment.

Edit: oh, I should mention that the interest rate here is insanely low (around 1% or as low as 0.5%), and you can get 35 year mortgages.