I would never buy a townhome or condo at this stage of the game; perhaps when I'm retired and need to scale back...

But I live in an area of the US where you can still buy a lot of house for relatively little money, so it's an easy decision.

I've lived in one townhouse (new) and now three single family homes (two new and and the PO rental was actually a "garden home" in TX, so no attached walls but no yard to speak of) and I would NEVER buy another townhouse, especially if I had kids. (We lived in the townhouse before kids but I still wasn't crazy about it. Didn't like sharing walls, even though we had an end unit and only joined another th on one side, and the neighbors, altho not "bad", were just too close for comfort.) I believe that single family homes generally do better as far as resale but who knows in this crazy market. (I'm in NoVA.)

Good Luck with your decision!

We rented a town home as an interim home while we were waiting for our current home to be built, and I was miserable. I could hear the alarm clock every morning in the townhome next to us, could tell when he took a shower or flushed the toilet. Small yard, felt very confined, parking was minimal. I know there are some nice town homes out there, and if it's your only option for home ownership, go for it, but you probably won't stay too many years before you move up to a real house. Just my opinion.

It depends somewhat on the area, but in MA outside of Boston, the condo market is really glutted- tons are just sitting on the market for months. You can get great deals and amenities, but if you're looking for an investment, a condo isn't the way to go- at least up here.

I just moved from a condo townhouse to a detached zero lot line house. I moved because people next to me were chain smokers and their smoke came through my walls in my condo - no hallway smoke - this is straight into the condo! The noise can be bad. We also had kids playing basketball in the parking lot and in their patios and it was very noisy and they had no regard for the cars in the parking lot. Also, you are at the mercy of the condo association who may or may not take care of the outside of the units.

My vote: Detached if you can swing it!

It really depends on your style of living. We lived in an end-unit townhouse before moving into a single family house. When the next door neighbor was decent, it was great but we found out the hard way that when the neighbor (a renter, thank goodness - never thought I would say that) was bad, it was horrendous.

That said, the community was wonderful. One of the reasons we bought the townhouse was we noticed a very nice, well-kept playground for young children. Sure enough, many parents and other neighbors met there many summer evenings instead of hanging out in the (tiny) backyard. The neighborhood hosted cookouts, wine-tastings, camp-outs and other events there.

Not all townhouse communities are like that - just saying that we enjoyed and now miss many aspects of townhouse living but it really depends on the neighbors. With single family houses, although neighbors also can be really good or really bad, you can ignore them to a greater extent than in townhouses.

detached, as in my area, the plethora of townhomes/condos for sale is significant, as investors piled into these, and are trying to unload...Plenty of single homes also available, but not as many investors involved

I'm an only child, I do not like to share.
You're right though the high end fixtures and appliances do have you thinking twice. If I didn't need the space: yard, view, 2 stories plus full basement, 2 car garage w/ 12' ceilings + disney movie attic then yeah I'd do it but only if it was a great and I do mean GREAT location and only if it was cheaper than a big hoarder home in the burbs.

And in our townhouse, we knew every...and I mean every...time that our friendly and sociable neighbor had a lady over. Squeaks, springs, headboard banging into wall. You can have townhouses!

That townhouse, though, was a great investment - we bought it in 96 and sold in 02. The profit wasn't worth the nighttime noise, though.

I had a townhouse once. Never again. No problems with noise really. I had units on both sides (not above) and never heard a thing. I didn't even know my neighbors. That part was fine. But...

The townhouse ended up having a terrible roof problem so that resulted in a speciall assessment to fix the roof - $2500 but this was almost 20 years ago so that was a *lot* of money then.

And, then the problem wasn't really fixed. I had still had continual leakage in my unit. I was responsible for the interior repairs, the association for the roof itself. But, they didn't fix it (they tried unsuccessfully). It was very frustrated. It got to a point where the ceiling continually dripped around the light fixture in the bathroom. And, nothing would fix it.

I hated the helpless feeling that I had with that house. Never again...

Oh, and did I mention that at one point I actually owed $40k more than it was worth due to it declining in value?

In addition to the already posted complaints about "group living", I've never bought into the "zero maintenance" pitch, which is what sells many people on condos and townhomes. It's like "free lunch" -- there isn't any.

If you own a home YOU decide what gets done and by whom and how much to pay for it. I'd rather do that than pay a fee to have others make those decisions for me.

Buy the single family home.

An interesting thing is happening in the Atlanta market. It looks like the builders have started townhomes and clusters all over in the burbs, not in town or any location expcially intriguing. Seems as if they're trying to create a new entry level so they can up the price of the rest of the detached homes which they have effectively done. They come out cheaper than the used homes this way and the land which is now hard to come by in large enough parcels can now be much more profitable because you can build a lot of units on 3 acres. As a result people with ±3 acres and frontage all have their homes up for sale to developers to tear down and build townhomes. I wonder if this is signalling the beginning of the end.

My first home purchase was a townhome. When we moved in, we had great neighbors on both sides. That all changed when one side sold to a new neighbor from &%ll. She was horribly rude and loud, left her garage door open with her stuff spilling out all over the common drive so I would have to move it to park, used the guest parking for her own vehicle constantly, etc. Talking to her about it resulted in even worse behavior and the HOA was no help.

If this had been a single family home, it would have been a lot easier to ignore because there would have been a little space. We moved because of it.

If you can, I would go with the less updated single-family home, and then just update in the future. Go with your gut.

I might consider a condo for a vacation home, but I want a detached home as a primary residence for the many reasons note by others.

I understand that the upgrades are tempting. But, remember, you can upgrade flooring and fixtures later when your budget allows. Your townhome will always be a townhome.

I would only consider a townhouse if there was no possible way to afford a detached home in the area (or nearby!). dealing with neighbors that tightly is not fun.

I would never buy a townhome/condo. If you could handpick your neighbors, maybe. But I've had too many awful experiences in apartments to want to have shared walls again...

Buy a house, and upgrade it over time with the things that you want. Then you get both the space from your neighbors, and the upgrades.