Corrupt concierges, sublime Chinese courtyards, noisy neighbours in Rome and perfect family living in Croatia - four writers chart high life worldwide
I NEVER thought twice about apartment living in Paris, because unless you're as rich as the Rothschilds or willing to commute from the banlieue, there really isn't much choice.
Paris Lara Marlowe
Old buildings are often poorly sound-proofed, and upstairs neighbours wear lead shoes, play loud music and have dinner parties until the wee hours. Their plumbing invariably leaks into your ceiling.
If ever I move again in Paris, it will be the top floor or nothing.
The concierge is a very French institution. I've had bad ones in the past, including one who I and my neighbours suspected of stealing.
But life wouldn't be the same without Madame Castro's radiant smile every morning. She looks after my cat when I travel, and I know Spike loves her because he rolls on the floor when she arrives.
I've always had a purple thumb, so I don't miss not having a garden. I've never succeeded in cultivating anything long term in a window box but, despite dozens of trips lugging clay pots, potting soil, fertiliser, and so on, I keep trying.
No Paris apartment ever seems to have enough storage space, though the wine cellar or maid's room that often comes with the flat in an old building compensates somewhat.
Apartments feel more secure to me than houses. The ground and first floors, and the top floor are most accessible to burglars, who enjoy open season on Paris apartments in August. In my early days as a journalist, my studio was robbed over the long August 15th weekend. I learned the lesson and have installed armoured doors and good locks in every home since.
The co-propriété is a real slice of French life. Once a year, neighbours meet to argue over the price of the cleaning products used by the concierge, the colour of the new carpet in the stairs and other "questions concerning the life of the building".
Even if you own your apartment, the management fees can be almost as dear as rent. In my building, we decided to get rid of the mobile phone antenna for fear it would give us brain cancer. The phone company tripled its offer, and suddenly my neighbours decided they wanted to live dangerously.
Rome Paddy Agnew
Apartment living has long been a way of life in Italy's overcrowded and densely populated urban centres. Traditional Italian caution leads to a reluctance to sell which in turn means that many modern Italians have inherited and held onto a number of properties - by the sea, in the country or in the mountains, indeed, often all three.
All of this, in turn, facilitates apartment living since many people put up with all the downsides of condominium living - noise levels, reduced space, parking problems, lack of green - because they know they can get away from it all to their house in the country at the weekend.
Every major Italian city has a huge weekend esodo (exodus) and rientro (return back to town) which leads to serious traffic problems. Yet, the city apartment remains the principal habitation for the vast majority of Italian families.
According to statistics agency, ISTAT, four out of five Italians own their home, while their average living space is a very cramped 2.8 people per sq m.
This high level of private ownership means that only 19 per cent of the apartment market, under 800,000, is available for rent, well short of the three million plus required.
Italian life is full of references to the joys, or lack of, of condominium living. The usually annual (but often more frequent) condominial meetings have passed into Italian folklore as long drawn-out, tedious occasions when neighbours fight about everything from noise to maintenance costs. The point about condominium living, however, is that legally such meetings often have to be held to authorise even the most banal maintenance.
If you are thinking of buying an apartment in Italy, get in touch with a specialised agency. That will help you deal with the mesmerising number of taxes linked to buying - purchase tax (2 per cent of purchase price, 4 per cent if non-resident in Italy), notary fees (3-5 per cent), agency fees (4-5 per cent) and stamp duty (0.6 per cent).
Having bought the apartment, do not forget to pay your ICI (local rates), IIC (Government Survey Office Tax), INVIM (property increment tax), Imposto di Registro (Registration Tax), TCR (rubbish collection tax) bills. And be prepared to queue to pay for some of these!
Still interested? Well, then, try these for prices, all in prime areas of Rome (1) A two-bed attic flat with parking: €360,000; (2) a large one-bed with terrace: €272,000; (3) a third floor three-bed, three baths with large balconies: €3.1 million
Happy househunting.
Beijing Clifford Coonan
LIVING in a 16th century courtyard house down at atmospheric hutong (laneway) in China's ancient Northern Capital sounds like a dream, but when the temperature drops to minus 15 in the winter in Beijing, no one really wants an external toilet. Plus there is the rent of €8,000 a month to consider.
These days you are spoilt for choice in the housing market in Beijing - you can have a house in the suburbs, a tiny apartment for a pittance in the west of the city, or a medium-sized apartment aimed at the expatriates in one of the diplomatic compounds. You can rent a new apartment in the Central Business District (CBD), nicely appointed, a lot cheaper than the courtyard house but you always have to live with the fear that the absentee landlord living in Dandong on the North Korean border will put up the prices before the Olympic Games in August next year.
A landlord class is emerging which is not necessarily a good thing - I'm about to move for the fourth time in four years, again because of problems with a greedy landlord. In two cases I've not received the deposit back.
With the Olympics coming up in Beijing, there are more and more reports of people being forced to leave their flats because landlords want to hike the rents ahead of the games. And everyone expects the market to collapse after the games. It reminds one of Ireland before the Land League took aim at the sinister landlord system in the early 19th century.
Short-term thinking is a real problem - we are moving into a diplomatic compound run by the Foreign Ministry because they are well-run and offer security of tenure.
Apartment buying, and even renting, is a relatively new game in town. After the 1949 revolution that brought the Communists to power, all housing became publicly owned and people lived where they were told. This meant that many of the traditional, ancient courtyard houses were divided up and today will have many families squashed into them.
China has changed fundamentally in the last quarter century, with hundreds of millions of people moving to the cities of the eastern and southern coasts, as well as Beijing, which has put pressure on the housing market.
The rise of private enterprise and greater security from the gradual introduction of property ownership laws has led to a property market developing, with more and more people buying their own apartments.
This has led to a very varied array of apartments on offer - plush modern tower blocks with gyms and swimming pools, underground parking and top-notch building management services on the one hand, to relatively small, simple and cheap apartments on the other.
The recent spate of construction because of the Olympics has seen many people from these old areas resettled to the outskirts of the city, which has seen damaging social upheaval in some cases but many people are happy to move into modern apartments with interior toilets, lots more space and other amenities not available in the old-style housing.
Those resettled to the outskirts use their compensation money to buy the properties, and middle-income families are also buying apartments in the cities. The top end of the market is dominated by wealthy Chinese, from overseas and within China itself, and foreigners. These include Rupert Murdoch, who is buying the courtyard houses that are a sign of real wealth in Beijing these days. Most of them put a glass roof over the courtyard atrium in the middle. Makes those sub-zero toilet trips all the easier.
Zagreb Gary Quinn
My family and I lived in an apartment in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, for just over a year. I've lived in a lot of different places over the years but can say with some confidence that the Zagreb apartment block with its 14 floors, grey exterior and dark corridors was easily the most family friendly and comfortable place I've been in. Nonetheless, it was always a challenge picking up Irish friends and family from the airport and driving back to our ugly city centre home. I had come to love the building but knew that anyone from Ireland would look at it and only judge its exterior. "Beauty isn't only skin deep," I would warn as we turned the corner into our street, with its seven ugly tower blocks.
It was only when I got them inside that they began to relax and appreciate the space: the three big bedrooms, massive sitting/diningroom, the separate kitchen and a long hallway that had more storage space than we could ever need. In total we had 100sq m (1,076sq ft) of space, two balconies (not counted in the floor space) and a storage room in the basement, plus access to a communal storage space. Between each block was a children's playground and the ground floor of each block had grocery, hardware or clothes shops. Everyone had parking.
Within a five minute walk were libraries, schools, crèches and restaurants. The tram and the train station were nearby.
What makes Zagreb's apartments work, are great community spaces, family amenities and practical solutions to child care and education. Unlike in Dublin, these aren't considered a luxury and every child deserved the same high standard. It doesn't matter how luxurious a developer thinks an apartment is - if there are no schools, child care or safe play areas, then the apartments can't work and families know that.
What I realised about myself and other Irish people during my time in Zagreb was that apartment living here is really all about class. We like to dress it up and talk about the loss of our gardens and our innate link to the land but, really, we just don't want to be seen as common. Ireland's dalliance with tower blocks gave us Ballymun and the subsequent social problems of the 1980s. We all know in our hearts that people are more than the walls that surround them - but it took a few months in Zagreb to relearn how I judged a person's social status. I met supposedly successful people living in reportedly desirable areas that most Irish people would run a mile from at first viewing. I couldn't see the advantages because I couldn't imagine "making it" and then moving into an apartment. I was wrong and the process changed me.
Ireland has quite a stretch to make to meet the normal living standards of a city like Zagreb. They don't cut corners on family needs. Ireland does. If we could get our Zagreb apartment and its facilities to Dublin my family and I would move into it in a heartbeat. Until then we'll have to wait until the penny drops that apartments and families are a perfect combination - if they only they were done right.
