You know their car. You know what time their bins go out, what their dog sounds like at 6am, and roughly when they go on holiday. You’ve waved at them across the driveway a hundred times. You have no idea what their name is.
If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company. Most Australians now live a few metres from people they barely know, and most of us think that’s a bit of a shame. The good news is that the people next door are some of the easiest new friends there are to make, because you’re going to keep running into them anyway.
What the numbers say
In early 2025, Real Insurance commissioned an online survey of 5,023 Australian adults for its Real Neighbours Report. It’s an insurer’s survey rather than an academic study, but it’s a big one, and the picture is fairly clear.
72% said Australians are less interested in knowing their neighbours than they were 20 years ago. 62% admitted to living next to someone for more than six months without ever meeting them, rising to 71% of Gen Z. Only 26% know the names of all their neighbours, and only half always say hello when they pass one.
And yet 80% said it’s at least somewhat important to know the people around them, mostly to feel safer, to keep an eye on each other’s place, and to have someone to lean on in an emergency. Nearly half, 48%, have made friends with a neighbour simply by chatting casually over time. So people want it, and when it happens it tends to work. It just isn’t happening as often.
Why nobody goes first
The report also asked what people did when they moved in. Only a third introduced themselves to the neighbours. Most let it happen casually over time, and one in ten waited for the neighbours to come to them. When someone new moves in next door, only 27% go over and say hello.
Which leaves a lot of people on the same street, all waiting for somebody else to start. The longer it goes, the harder it feels. After a week, asking someone’s name is easy. After two years of waving, it feels like you’ve missed your chance.
You haven’t. We tend to think other people are less interested in us than they really are. Psychologists call it the liking gap, and we’ve written about it in how to ask someone for a coffee. The neighbour you’ve been nodding at for two years is probably just as embarrassed about the name thing as you are.
Why it’s worth the effort
Neighbours are where friendships start. One of the oldest findings in friendship research is that we become friends with the people we see most often, and that usually means the people who live closest. There’s more on that in how to make friends as an adult. A neighbour gives you those repeat sightings for free.
Small hellos count. Not every neighbour has to become a close friend. In a 2014 paper in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn found that people felt happier and more like they belonged on days when they had more interactions with acquaintances, not just with close friends. The chat at the letterbox is doing more than it looks.
It may even be good for your heart. In a 2014 study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Eric Kim and colleagues followed 5,276 American adults over 50 for four years. People who felt their neighbourhood was more close-knit, the kind of place where neighbours trust and help each other, were less likely to have a heart attack, even after accounting for things like age, income and health habits. It’s an association rather than proof, but it fits a lot of other research on connection and health.
And it’s useful. Someone to take in a parcel, feed the cat, lend a ladder, or check in when there’s a storm, a bushfire warning or a power outage. That’s exactly what most people in the survey said they wanted from neighbours.
How to actually get to know them
Say hello every time. It sounds too simple to matter, but only half of us always do it. A hello and a name is the foundation for everything else. If you don’t know what to say next, the street itself gives you plenty: the weather, the roadworks, the new café, the possum in the roof.
Introduce yourself, even if it’s late. The trick is to own it.
“This is embarrassing, but we’ve been waving at each other for ages and I’ve never actually asked your name. I’m Sam.”
Almost everyone laughs and says the same thing back. If someone new moves in, beat the awkwardness altogether and go over in the first week.
Use the small reasons. A parcel left at the wrong door. Bins left out after collection. Too many lemons on your tree. A ladder you could borrow, or lend. Small favours, offered or asked for, give you a reason to knock that isn’t “I’d like to be friends”, and they tend to come back around.
Spend more time out the front. Most of us come home, open the garage and disappear. Water the front garden, sit on the front step with a cuppa, wash the car on the street, walk the dog at the same time each evening. You can’t bump into people if you’re never outside.
In an apartment, use the shared spaces. The lift, the mailroom, the bike store and the bin room are your front fence. A hello in the lift is easy because it has a built-in end. If your building has a group chat, use it for something friendly, like introducing yourself or offering spare moving boxes, not just complaints. The survey found that 40% of us are in a neighbourhood chat or group, and 42% have called someone out in one or been called out themselves, so a bit of warmth stands out.
Turn a chat into a coffee. Once you’re on first-name terms, the next step is small.
“We keep having these chats over the fence. Do you want to walk down to the café on Saturday morning?”
A café you both already walk past means nobody has to plan anything, and an hour is long enough to find out whether you get on.
Host something small. You don’t need a street party. Afternoon tea in the front yard, a few chairs on the verge and a note in the letterboxes is plenty. Neighbour Day, part of Relationships Australia’s Neighbours Every Day campaign, falls on the last Sunday in March each year, which is Sunday 28 March in 2027. It gives you a ready-made excuse. But there’s no need to wait until March.
Be friendly, not nosy. The same survey found that more than a third of Australians feel a neighbour has invaded their privacy, usually by watching them without asking, and noise was the most common complaint of all. Being a good neighbour includes keeping the music down and minding your own business. Not everyone wants a close friend next door, and a wave and a name is a perfectly good relationship too.
Where Flat White fits
Your street is one good place to find your people. Flat White is another. We match you with one person for one hour over a coffee, at a café we’ve already picked, for friendship, networking, a mentor or a date. No swiping, no endless chat before you meet, and nobody has to work up the nerve to knock on a door. We’re opening across Australia city by city, and joining the waitlist moves your city closer to the front.
An hour, a coffee, someone new.
Start with a hello. Join the waitlist at joinflatwhite.com →