Small families with big houses

[Anonymous]

Do you use all of your rooms? We are in a 2k sq ft house where every room has a well-used purpose, so I am curious. We have a few friends with 1-2 kids that have recently bought huge (5-6 bed, 5+ bath, 6k+ sq ft) houses with rooms upon rooms that seemingly have no purpose - multiple playrooms, multiple lounge/reading rooms, etc. Are houses this big with small families mostly for show?

[Anonymous]

Lucky them. We're a family of 4 in a 2500 square foot house and it is not enough room. My teenage daughter won't have her friends over and my college-age kids wants his girlfriend to visit but there's nowhere for her to stay. I wuold love to have 5 or more bedrooms, especially as kids age and have different needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lucky them. We're a family of 4 in a 2500 square foot house and it is not enough room. My teenage daughter won't have her friends over and my college-age kids wants his girlfriend to visit but there's nowhere for her to stay. I wuold love to have 5 or more bedrooms, especially as kids age and have different needs.

Get her a hotel room. Everyone will be happy.

[Anonymous]

In my searches in Arlington, there is often not that much of a price difference between well maintained, older 3-4 bedroom houses with 2500 sq ft (often around $1.5-$1.7 million) and relatively new McMansions with 5-6 bedrooms with 4000-5000 sq ft (often around $1.8-$2.0 million). So it can make lots of sense to just go for the bigger house, even if you don't really need the extra space.

[Anonymous]

When my oldest was about to start elementary school I bought a 6 bedroom, 6.5 bath. It had two dining rooms, two living rooms, a family room and a playroom. At the time I remember thinking we could easily live in 2/3 of the space, but it was what was available in the school district we wanted to live in. My youngest has left for college and we just sold it. We never did occupy more than 2/3 of it. As the kids grew we changed what parts we lived in but it was never the whole house at the same time.

But here's the thing: we sold it for twice what we paid. Those empty rooms appreciated handsomely over the years. Financially it was a great move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my searches in Arlington, there is often not that much of a price difference between well maintained, older 3-4 bedroom houses with 2500 sq ft (often around $1.5-$1.7 million) and relatively new McMansions with 5-6 bedrooms with 4000-5000 sq ft (often around $1.8-$2.0 million). So it can make lots of sense to just go for the bigger house, even if you don't really need the extra space.

You aren't factoring in the cost of furnishing unnecessary spaces and the cost of maintenance on that larger house.

[Anonymous]

We have 5 bedrooms with two kids 3000 sq feet and no basement. We use all five bedrooms. One is a guest room that gets used very frequently by MIL and one is an office. I’d love to have an additional 1000 or 2000 square feet that I could use to make a very large kitchen, exercise room, enlarge the kids room, add another bathroom, a walk in pantry and lots more closets.

[Anonymous]

We do. DH and I each use a bedroom as an office. We use a third bedroom to work out in. We have a guest room.

[Anonymous]

We are a family of 3 in a 6,000 sq ft house. This house doesn’t have any more rooms than our last house that had 3,500 sq ft. It’s just that each room is larger. We use all of the rooms almost daily, except for the two guest bedrooms, and those get used at least quarterly.

[Anonymous]

I’m in the exurbs and many of my neighbors are empty nesters in 5k sq ft houses because there are no affordable smaller options. You either get McMansions or high density townhouse communities.

[Anonymous]

Yes we do. We have only 1 child and 6 bedrooms. During the pandemic we were able to have separate home offices. And we frequently host family members from our home countries for extended stays so we can leave those rooms set up all the time. It’s much more peaceful than when we were in a 1500 sq ft house.

[Anonymous]

I live in a 2100 sf house, and would love something bigger, or designed differently. I have plenty of room space, but because the house was built in the 70s the bathrooms are tiny and there are not a lot of closets or other storage (no basement and a very tiny one car garage that my car just fits into). During covid so much crap built up in the house that I'm now overwhelmed -- I wish everything had a place. While I don't think we could fill out 6000 sf, I would love to have entire spaces for things that right now parts of my house do double duty or (guest room/office, etc)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: We are a family of 3 in a 6,000 sq ft house. This house doesn’t have any more rooms than our last house that had 3,500 sq ft. It’s just that each room is larger. We use all of the rooms almost daily, except for the two guest bedrooms, and those get used at least quarterly.

I wanted to add — when we looked at houses, we saw several large houses with a greater number of smaller rooms, and we avoided those, as I did think it would be wasted space.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you use all of your rooms? We are in a 2k sq ft house where every room has a well-used purpose, so I am curious. We have a few friends with 1-2 kids that have recently bought huge (5-6 bed, 5+ bath, 6k+ sq ft) houses with rooms upon rooms that seemingly have no purpose - multiple playrooms, multiple lounge/reading rooms, etc. Are houses this big with small families mostly for show?

We moved from a 5,300 square foot house to a 9,000 square foot house for more room. It depends on what your hobbies and proclivities are when considering the amount of space needed for one's pleasure.

[Anonymous]

America doesn’t build moderate sized houses.