Sharing is caring - but if you care about sharing personal space, don't live in a block

Is your idea of hell other people? Does the thought of sharing make you come over all territorial? Do other people's irritating habits sometimes incite murderous feelings?

If you answer yes to any or all of these questions and you are thinking of moving into an apartment block, then the advice is: reconsider.

Apartment living - where you may well have people all around you, not to mention above and below, where you are often forced to share corridors, lifts, communal gardens and an entrance lobby - is not for you.

Living harmoniously with your neighbours can require no little tolerance, and fastidious consideration for others - not to mention first-rate people and problem-solving skills if a dispute arises.

"Some people forget they are effectively living in a commune, they don't understand the concept of apartment living," says Michael Noonan of North's block management division.

He believes that Irish people are "virgins" when it comes to apartment life and has found that within every development is an aspiring despot waiting to take control.

"You get the odd fruitcake who moves into a complex and treats it as their own. Apartment living can bring the little sergeant majors out of the woodwork who are grossly intolerant of others and make outrageous demands like wanting to ban all children from the complex."

There are also those who live by the ethos "Do as I say, not as I do".

"You get people ringing up or writing letters complaining that that water is flowing down to their balcony when the person above waters their flower baskets. But often it will emerge that they are doing the exact same thing themselves."

A certain amount of noise and nuisance is par for the course.

"Sometimes, depending on the design of the building, like if it's square or concave, noise can be magnified, particularly in the dead of night. While there will be some sound proofing in the building, often you have party walls so you can hear some of your neighbours' movements.

"You have to allow for a certain amount and it's give and take but sometimes that can be stretched to the limit, where tenants are breaking lifts or where there is rowdiness or drunkenness."

Noonan says given the number of developments his company manages, incidents of neighbour war have been relatively rare, "but when they do crop up they can get nasty. We've had incidents where cars got damaged.

"Then there's the selfish element where you have people who don't see themselves as part of the community, who just come and go to work and don't see why they should have to pay the service change."

Psychologist and psychoanalyst Domhnall Casey agrees that Irish people, unlike many of their European counterparts, can lack the etiquette required to live in close proximity to other people.

"As a nation we are at the adolescent stage and are only beginning to live in apartments. We are still attached to the notion of living in a house with a back garden.

"I have a sister living in Turin where during the day there's a lot of noise with people roaring and shouting in the street. That's just the way it is and it is accepted but they also know when to stop all that at a reasonable hour at night."

Having run-ins with the neighbours and the resultant ill-feeling can be a source of stress. "If you have a row with someone in your own family or household, it can be difficult to live in the strained atmosphere over a prolonged period. If you row with a neighbour in an apartment block, you may have to face constant bad feeling when you pass them by on the corridor or on the grounds."

A reader, who asked to remain anonymous, e-mailed Apartment Living because disputes with two of his neighbours have made life difficult in his apartment block.

He came home recently to find water dripping down the walls of his one-bedroom apartment, coming from the apartment above.

When he approached the owner and asked him to investigate the source of the leak, he was astonished at the response.

"We had been friendly before so I thought there would be no problem and that the leak would be fixed straight away but he said he wouldn't be ordered around or dictated to by me. This went on for some time and the paint was peeling off the walls in my apartment. Eventually he got a plumber in and it emerged his dishwasher was discharging water. The plumber's bill has still not been paid. You find yourself caught between wanting to maintain harmony and having to stand up for yourself . You want to keep in with the neighbours but you have to be able to discuss things in a frank way.

"If it was a detached house, you could avoid others to some extent but it's not possible when you are all living in complex together."

In a separate incident, another neighbour knocked on his door one day complaining that she had been awoken by a dog scratching at her door.

"I explained that our dog was in the flat and that it couldn't have been him and she replied: "Well, it was somebody's". There has been a lot of tension about dogs and cats wandering about in the grounds as some people hate animals."

Compromising and embracing the eccentricities of others is helpful to an extent but, says Enda McDonnell of RF Property Management. "that doesn't mean you have to allow people take advantage."

"It doesn't mean it's okay for people to blare their music, have their TV turned up to an unacceptable level or to vomit in the lifts. While it's good to be tolerant, it's also important to have certain standards."

While the number of complaints he receives is comparatively few, he says, most are noise-related.

"It mostly happens where there are up to 10 people sharing a two-bed apartment and there's lots of noise, to-ing and fro-ing, and bicycles in the hallway and locked to the bannister rails."

A certain amount of realism about the potential decibel levels in a development is needed, especially if moving into a tax-driven development of 70 apartments in the city centre where less than 10 per cent are owner-occupiers. "A large proportion of the tenants are under 35, they think the party atmosphere is great. They not only tolerate it, they participate in it."

So should all prospective apartment dwellers be given a detailed warning of what exactly apartment life entails before taking the plunge? Would it be prudent to offer them a psychological test to see if they've got what it takes?

"It wouldn't work," says Michael Noonan. "People don't want to know the negatives. They see a lovely new apartment and they want to move in. Irish people move on average three times in their life, and it's only by the third time they get what they want. It's a learning process and something they have to go through."

emorgan@irish-times.ie