Depending on your price range, location and preference, there are a large number of options available when buying an apartment. You will have usually far more choice than when buying a house.

You can buy new, old, trendy and contemporary or grand and traditional apartments. A small or large apartment, perhaps on the ground floor or a penthouse.

Obviously, you want to buy a flat that will, with any luck, increase in value over time, but apart from the considerations of the length of the lease, management structure and leasehold/freehold issues, there is still a lot to think about.

EXPLORING THE TYPES OF FLAT AVAILABLE

There are very many types of apartments on offer, such as:

• conversion
• mansion block
• purpose-built block
• maisonette
• newbuild
• warehouse or other conversion from former non-residential premises
• ex-local authority block
• small block
• large block

• flats over shops
• shell apartments
• shared ownership
• live/work units
• retirement or ‘age exclusive’ apartments.

We will take a look at each of these in turn.

CONVERSION

These are most often Victorian or Georgian conversions, cut-downs from a bigger house, although they can also be Edwardian or 1930s semis, if large enough.

Advantages

There are not usually many apartments in each house, possibly five or six maximum. Conversions also usually have low service charges and are frequently sold with a share of the freehold. Because of the small number of units in each house, you are unlikely to get the level of administrative problems which can occur in larger blocks. Most conversions are in urban locations, and enable you to live in an area you might not otherwise be able to afford.

Newspaper stories of former broom cupboards being sold as studio apartments in very expensive areas such as Knightsbridge and Chelsea, for instance, remind us that these tiny conversions enable buyers with very small budgets to live in self-contained apartments in trendy and central locations.

If location is more important than size, then you are most likely to find what you are looking for in a conversion.

Disadvantages

In older conversions, some of the rooms may be tiny, such as kitchens and bathrooms. Also the conversion may have been done amateurishly before present day building regulations were in force. Because walls can be thin, conversions are often very noisy places to live in.

Very often, common parts are dilapidated and rundown and there are likely to be areas nobody bothers about, especially if all the residents jointly own the freehold. When I lived in a conversion, there was a cupboard at the top of one landing that seemed to belong to nobody; consequently it was full of rubbish, and none of the residents would take the responsibility of clearing it out.

In most conversions, the apartments are far from being equal in size or grandeur. There will usually be one grand flat, which constituted the family’s living quarters in Victorian days, and then as you go upstairs, the flats get smaller and less well appointed, as they were usually the original servants’ quarters.

This inequality can lead to disputes over apportionment of the service charges, especially as such conversions are usually too small to make it worth bothering with managing agents. It is most usual for one of the residents to take responsibility for management; or, as happened in my case, we took it in turns.

Conversions work well when everybody gets on, as we did, but they can be a nightmare if you have a problem or non-paying neighbour.

Common parts tend to be small and narrow landings and halls from the former house. So there is often nowhere to put bikes, for instance, which means they are found in the hall and this can look messy and depressing. There may also be problems with parking, especially where there are now four or five homes in what was formerly a single dwelling.

MANSION BLOCK

These, the first ‘purpose built’ blocks date back to late Victorian and early Edwardian days and are often extremely grand and imposing.

Advantages

As the flats are not cut-downs from a whole house, they are not subject to the inequalities of size that happens in conversions. Also, as they were originally built to be flats, there is less danger of the gimcrack kind of adaptation you can find in conversions.

Although the individual flats in mansion blocks may be of varying sizes, they were all at least intended to be flats, right from the start. Common parts tend to be well kept, there is often a resident porter or caretaker, and a contractor employed to clean windows and maintain the exterior. Communal gardens are usually also very well kept. Mansion blocks tend to be found in central locations in big cities.

Other advantages are that they have high ceilings and the rooms are a good size.

Disadvantages

There may be an antiquated communal heating and hot water system in place, and this hikes up service charges. These tend to be high anyway with mansion blocks, as there are often luxurious carpets and expensive wallpaper in common parts. The decor is often extremely traditional. There may not be a car park or any parking facilities as these blocks were often built before cars were invented.

Many residents will have been living there for decades, and if a large number are pensioners, it can be difficult to collect money for the major repairs which mansion blocks will certainly need from time to time.

Another disadvantage is that drainage and plumbing systems were put in before the days of power showers, en suite bathrooms, dishwashers and washing machines, so often the existing system cannot cope and has to be redone at huge expense. Leaks are common in mansion blocks and it may be difficult to discover their origin.

Also, many mansion blocks are huge, dark and forbidding, especially in London, and you may never get to know your neighbours.

PURPOSE-BUILT BLOCKS

These were built from the 1930s, as the demand for apartments increased, and many, such as the art deco Embassy Court in Brighton, have now become listed buildings. They have a very different look from the Edwardian mansion blocks, which are usually redbrick and very ornate.

Purpose-built (PB) blocks are more modest in appearance, although they again often have resident porters and well maintained, if more modest, common parts than mansion blocks.

Advantages

As with the mansion blocks, they are not cut-downs from bigger houses, so each flat is usually a decent size. Again, they tend to be in very central locations, and enable you to live in a location where you might not be able to afford a whole house.

Security is usually excellent, and the block will almost always be managed by professional managing agents. PB blocks may or may not come with a share of the freehold but these days there will almost always be a residents’ association which keeps a close eye on expenditure and the upkeep of the fabric.

Disadvantages

As with mansion blocks, the older PB blocks often have communal central heating and hot water. This not only hikes up the service charges, but means you cannot control their operations. Consequently you can be boiling in October when the central heating is turned on, and freezing in May, when it is turned off. Also, as everybody in the block is likely to be having a bath or shower at more or less the same time, the ‘hot’ water can at times be tepid or even cold.

It is usually too expensive and difficult to untangle the pipework so that everybody can put in an individual system. These communal systems usually date back to the 1960s, after which individual systems were put in using Combi boilers.

Flats in PB blocks can seem suspiciously cheap and there are good reasons for this; high service charges and, often, high prices to be paid for lease extensions. In some older PB blocks, leases can be very short, as well.

NEWBUILDS

These are springing up all over the place and often incorporate trendy new features enabling luxury living at a fraction of the cost of buying a house in a similar location.

Advantages

Even quite modestly-priced apartments in new blocks are often sold with fitted kitchens, bathrooms, carpets and curtains included in the price. If you get in early, you can usually choose your carpets, worktop finish and tiling from a range. Security is tight and there may well be an underground car park, gym, spa, swimming pool, laundry and dry cleaning facilities and possibly even an art gallery or shops. Locations are usually excellent, as newbuilds tend to be constructed where there are good transport links. From the higher flats, views may be stunning.

There will also be a 10-year building certificate in place. Soundproofing is usually excellent, and many new design features will be incorporated.

Disadvantages

Newbuilds are very heavily marketed, with beautifully-designed showhomes to gawp at, plus ‘incentives’ such as your stamp duty paid or a ‘guaranteed six per cent rental’ if you intend to rent out the apartment. And sometimes there may be a cash incentive on top of all this. If you buy offplan at an early stage, you can also often secure what seems like a massive discount.

But beware! Developers are not primarily in the business of giving you money, but making money for themselves. There may be hidden disincentives if you look hard, such as the flat not being sold with a share of the freehold, and service charges being hiked up after a couple of years of being kept artificially low.

In addition, there are often a lot of investor buyers with newbuilds, often from consortia in Hong Kong or somewhere who buy up many apartments in the block at a huge discount. So there may be many absentee landlords renting out properties, which means a large transient population. In one newbuild block in London, a single investor bought up 26 units at a stroke, all to rent out.

Also, there are many property clubs in existence which purport to sell newbuild flats for a discounted price, at an early stage of the construction. Many people nowadays are ‘buying to flip’ which means they never intend to live there themselves or even rent the place out, but to sell straight on at a profit. This can mean a lot of empty flats when you move in; some buy-to-flip flats can take two or three years to sell. In the meantime, they stay empty with permanent ‘For Sale’ notices which look dreary and depressing, and as if everybody has cynically bought as an investment rather than a home.

With a newbuild, it may take a long time to recoup the investment and you may also be living surrounded by rubble and building works, as apartments are ‘released’ usually in phases, long before the development is fully completed. There is also likely to be a long snagging list, even with the building certificate in place. The first people into a new block often find many things go wrong as the place has not been tried and tested.

You may also discover that you buy into a trendy, contemporary apartment which starts to look distinctly old-fashioned after a few years. Many newbuilds are sold with kitchens and bathrooms already in place, and with kitchens this usually means black granite or other feature which will inevitably, like the latest fashion in clothes, have a fixed life, after which it will look horribly dated.

Ceilings tend to be low in newbuilds, and windows are usually plastic (UPVC) which start to look distinctly dingy after a few years.

Developers often sell on the freehold upon completion, which can mean insecurity about who will eventually own the place. Also, it takes time for residents’ associations to be formed; this can be difficult if there are many investors buying, either to flip or to rent out. Only owner-occupiers will be interested in forming such associations.

WAREHOUSE CONVERSIONS

These are rapidly turning into trendy homes and are extremely popular for ‘loft living’. Most often, these are new conversions from buildings not originally intended to be for residential use, such as old police stations, factories, industrial units, fire stations, post offices, schools, colleges and barns and outbuildings.

Advantages

Large spaces and central locations, plus a definite style cachet, make these apartments very popular.

Disadvantages

They can look barn-like and forbidding, and are often sold in an unfinished state, so you will have to do a lot of the work yourself, which can be costly and time-consuming. Loft and barn conversions can be difficult to make cosy.