Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor, and you're listening to episode 222 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're doing well and that your English learning is going great.
I hope you're ready to practice your listening with another episode.
And today, I'm going to talk about houses and apartments.
The reason why I want to talk about this today is because I'm renting a house for the first time.
I should say it's the first time I'm renting a whole house just for my family and for me.
So, because this is the first time I'm doing this, I've been renting here for a maybe two and a half months now, if I'm not mistaken.
I have been able to see some differences between living in a house and living in an apartment.
When I lived in Mexico, I lived in many different apartments.
So I'm able to compare the two now and see some pros and cons of each one of houses and apartments.
So I'm going to talk about that today.
I'm sure you'll find this topic interesting.
And I want to remind you that you can practice your listening with my advanced episodes, in which I speak at normal speed, not slowly like in these normal episodes.
You can get those advanced episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member.
If you're interested in signing up for those, the link is down below.
And I also encourage you to start using my US Conversations podcast so you can start practicing with real, authentic conversations that I have with other native speakers from around the country.
You'll learn a lot about the US and the different states and cities, and you'll improve your listening, of course.
So if you want that, The link is also down below.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
All right, let's talk about some of the differences between living in a house and living in an apartment.
So first, let's talk about neighbors.
So one huge difference between living in a house and an apartment is that when you live in a house, you normally have more distance between you and your neighbors.
I know this isn't always the case.
For example, my in-laws.
They live in a house in Mexico and they still share a wall with their neighbors.
And maybe you do as well.
But even if that's the case, I think it still seems like there's more distance between you.
I think that many times the walls are thicker when houses share a wall with each other.
When it's an apartment building, it seems like you can hear your neighbors a lot more, at least in my experience.
Maybe this isn't the case for you, but for me.
When I'm at my in-law's house, even though it shares a wall on both sides with the neighbors, I can't really ever hear them.
And Here, where I live in the US, I'm in a house and I don't share a wall with my neighbors, and so there's definitely a much greater distance between me and my neighbors.
So this is great.
This is a positive.
I don't have to share a wall and hear everything my neighbors are doing, and I don't have to worry about them hearing me.
And so there's a lot less noise in that regard.
And there are fewer complaints overall when it comes to people living in houses, at least here in the US, because you don't share a wall with your neighbors and so you don't have as many things to complain about.
You can't really hear their loud video games or their dog stepping on the ground right above you, which makes a lot of noise or whatever.
There are fewer complaints.
So I think that's a pretty big difference and in my personal experience, When you live in a house in the US, neighbors seem to be friendlier than when you live in apartments.
And I know this kind of sounds counterintuitive meaning.
It sounds like the opposite of what you would expect.
But I've found that this is the case in my experience, because when you live in a house, I think it seems more permanent.
In the U.S., when people live in houses, they tend to live there longer than when they live in apartments, I think, especially because many people buy their house.
I didn't buy this house.
I'm renting.
But many people buy houses in the US.
So it seems more permanent.
And I think because of that, neighbors are more interested in in maybe getting to know the people around them who are living in the house next door or whatever.
And they might want to have a little more of a relationship because it seems more like a permanent thing.
It's not like you're just the next person living in this apartment building and then you'll be gone in a year and someone else will be here.
It seems a little more permanent, I think, and that kind of causes neighbors to be a little bit more interested in you.
And I think there's more of a team effort to keep the neighborhood alive nice and safe for everyone.
And so I think because of that in the US, neighbors can be a little bit friendlier when it comes to living in a house.
So that's another difference.
And when I think back to the apartments that I lived in in Mexico, I
I can really only think of one good experience that I had with neighbors.
All of the other experiences that I had that I can think of were negative.
So I remember one neighbor saying that I really liked, but besides him everyone else was either just not really good or bad, or they were bad neighbors.
So I think that's the case for a lot of apartments.
I think overall, people tend to have a good amount of negative experiences with their neighbors.
All right.
Another thing I wanted to mention is the responsibilities of living in a house.
So when you live in a house here in the US specifically I'm sure in other countries as well There's usually more that you have to do, even if you're renting.
So first of all, there's often more space when you live in a house, especially outside.
You might have a backyard, a front yard, side yards.
And so there's more to do, more to clean, more to take care of.
One good example of this is here where I live.
We have a front lawn and we also have grass in the back.
A lawn just refers to grass that you have in your yard.
So we have a front lawn, we have a lawn in the backyard and there's a lot of maintenance that goes into that.
Thankfully I don't have to do much, but I have to keep the sprinkler system running and adjust that accordingly, and I have to keep an eye out for any issues.
And actually, right now, we're having issues with the grass.
It's not growing well.
It's having... issues, because it's about to be summer now.
I record these episodes way in advance, so by the time you hear this episode, it'll be like the end of summer.
But right now, when I'm recording this, it's not even the start of summer yet, but it's already getting hotter And that's harder on the grass.
The sun shines really bright and it's hot.
And we're having issues with the lawn.
So we're having to deal with that.
And we're coordinating with the owner and the gardeners who come and cut the grass.
And so it's not easy to maintain it.
And so that's something that I never had to deal with when I lived in apartments.
And another thing that we are dealing with is pests.
So a pest is an animal or insect that you don't want because it's bad for your house, and currently we have a problem with gophers.
These are little rodents.
A rodent is a type of animal.
For example, a rat is a rodent.
So we have gophers that dig holes in the ground underneath your grass and they're very bad for your grass and your house.
And we've got gophers.
So pest control people, these companies that specialize in getting rid of pests, they have to come and try to trap these gophers.
And again, this is something I never had to deal with when I lived in apartments.
And so that's a big difference.
And little things like taking out the trash to the curb.
The curb is where the sidewalk meets the street.
We have to take out our trash bins every week.
That's not something you usually have to do.
In an apartment, you probably just take your trash bags to the bins in the building and then someone else removes the trash.
So there are different responsibilities, big and small, when it comes to living in a house that you might not have when you live in an apartment.
And another difference is when you live in a house, there's no common area shared with other people.
When you live in an apartment building, there's often common areas, like maybe a rooftop terrace, where you can go up and be on the top of the building.
I remember our last apartment in Mexico had this.
It was really cool, actually.
I liked that rooftop terrace.
You could have barbecues up there and hang out up there.
It was cool.
So that's actually a nice thing about some apartments.
I remember staying in an Airbnb in Mexico a couple years ago and we stayed in an apartment that It was like a newer apartment.
They had a really cool rooftop terrace with a gym and a study area and an outside area with fire pits.
It was really cool.
Those are good parts of apartment buildings.
Those are things that I like.
There might be other types of common areas, maybe a pool, if it's an apartment building that has a pool.
And those are all pretty cool things.
But it's also nice to not have to share things with your neighbors.
And that's the case when you live in a house.
I don't have a rooftop terrace, unfortunately.
I don't have a pool.
I don't have a study lounge and all those areas.
But all the space here on the property is just... mine and my family's.
So that's also nice.
So depending on how you look at it, there are pros and cons to this.
I have less things.
I have fewer amenities, meaning convenient places and stations and things like that.
I don't have those, but I don't have to share anything, so my neighbors can't just come here and use my backyard, for example.
So that's another difference.
And one more difference that I thought of is is the safety and security of living in an apartment versus living in a house.
By the way, these two words, safety and security, are often confusing for English learners.
They can both mean the same thing, but usually when we talk about a city, let's say When we want to talk about the level of crime or the absence of crime, we would usually say this is a safe city.
We wouldn't usually say this is a secure city.
Secure might be more for like a building or Like this building is very secure.
We have locks all around, no one can get in, etc.
So, I just wanted to point that out.
Usually, I hear English learners overuse the word security.
So when I lived in apartments and all the apartments I lived in were in Mexico except for one I lived in one apartment in the US when I was 18.
So most of my experience is in Mexico when it comes to this.
When I lived in apartments it seemed like it would be harder for people to actually break into my apartment because it's less exposed, I would say.
When you live in a house in the US, typically you're the only building on that property.
And in most cases, people can walk up to your front door.
They can walk up to your window unless you have a fence around your house that you lock.
But I would say that most houses don't have a locked fence around their house in the US.
And so in most cases, anyone can walk up to your door or your window.
When I lived in apartments, people couldn't do this as easily because they had to enter through the entrance of the apartment building.
And sometimes there was a security code to get in or there was a gate that you had to have a key for.
And so it wasn't as easy for just anyone to enter.
So there's already one barrier just to get into the building, and so that makes it harder for bad people to get in.
Obviously, they can get in other ways or...
Someone can let their friend in and maybe their friend causes problems.
So this isn't the strongest security in the world for a building, but it helps a lot.
But besides that, there's also the added element of the fact that there are a lot of individual apartments in the apartment building.
So if something is happening, other people can hear.
If someone is trying to break into one of the apartments... the neighbors will probably hear.
And so there's that added element of safety in numbers, as we might say.
So that makes a pretty big difference in my opinion.
And also when it comes to windows.
In many apartments the window is not just right on the street where someone can walk up to it.
That's not the case for many apartments.
Yes, some apartments have a window that people can get to easily, but usually just on the first floor.
And so many people live on the second or third floor in apartment buildings.
I should say that in the US there are a lot of apartment buildings that are just two stories, for example.
But I'm thinking more about Mexico and probably other countries as well, where apartment buildings often have multiple floors.
And so if you don't live on the first floor, it's probably pretty hard to access your window, right?
Because it's not right there on the ground.
And so that prevents people from coming in through the window.
So in that case, you only have the door that people can come through.
And if you live in an apartment building, Like I said, there's often some form of security, some gate, something that makes it harder for people to come in.
So in a way, apartment buildings kind of seem safer to me.
Obviously there are some things that aren't as safe, like there are a bunch of people in the building that you don't know.
And so they might be bad people and that can be a problem.
So that's not necessarily always a good thing.
But like I said, there's often a safety in numbers.
So that helps.
And then one other thing that's good about having a house in terms of safety because I talked about the negatives there's a positive thing, and that is you can add whatever security you want to your house.
So some people install a security system with cameras and alarms and things like that, and they might have a guard dog and they might have other things that allow them to protect their house from criminals and burglars.
So when you live in an apartment you probably can't install a whole security system for the building, because it's not just your building, right?
So when you live in a house, there's more freedom to install security systems and have more elements like that.
I know that in Mexico you'll often see houses with tall fences and there's like an electric wire on the fence.
So if someone touches it, they're going to get electrocuted.
That's a pretty good security system right there.
So as you can see, there are pros and cons to living in a house. and to living in an apartment.
And so it's not that one is better than the other, they're just different.
And these are things that I'm noticing more right now.
Hopefully you enjoyed this episode, and hopefully it was good practice for your listening.
If these normal episodes are starting to get easy for you, if you can understand them really well.
I'll see you next time that I have with other native speakers.
It's a lot of fun.
It's really educational, and it's great practice for your listening.
So check that out.
That link is down below.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
