For Owners of Homes Over 7,000 SF – Share Your Experience!

[Anonymous]

I have a sex dungeon but my fat wife isn’t into it.

[Anonymous]

I’d love a bigger basement where my teens could host more friends. I’d also love a workout room and larger family room, larger mudroom, and larger laundry room. I imagine if we added all that on, we’d be at about 7000. And we’d use every inch of that every day.

We have a big family though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Homes in my neighborood range in size between 6K and 10K sq. ft. They have generously sized rooms and high ceilings, and many are configured for multigenerational living, allowing parents to comfortably visit for extended periods of time, or to live with the primary homeowners. In practice, that means a large guest area with separate living room and bedroom, a large walk-in closet, and a large bathroom. Secondary washer/dryers are often present, as well.

The other spaces provide for more than a single office; many homeowner couples both work from home at least some of the time. Several of the homes have rooms devoted exclusively to golf simulators, most have spaces for separate home theaters and gyms. Families with smaller children usually dedicate one or more places for playrooms.

Zero people on my block of big homes, meaning 6k to 15K sf have multi generation. We are not in the hood. As crazy as it should I say 60 percent of my very long block has zero kids. Most are older couples whose kids moved out or kids come back and forth. The craziness of housing run up means people who bought as recently as 2019 paid peanuts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you fill such a house without being a hoarder?

With furniture I inherited and spouse inherited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only strivers get houses that big. It’s grotesque and shows poor taste. 2k-3k is the ideal house size

Well the bank encourage us to build the largest possible to maximize equity based on our down payment. not sure who 2k is ideal for? Market forces basically forced us to build the largest home possible and our equity does show it paid off.

You are stupid.

I live in a $12 mil home.

There is no way I would let a banker give me advice about equity. That’s ridiculous.

We paid cash.


And yes a 2500 to 3000 square foot house is perfect in my opinion. It’s big enough for most families to find their space and be together.

[Anonymous]

6000sq ft. North Arlington. Bought for $2M in 2019 with $1M down. All money from buying and selling properties since we got married. Had some great real estate luck to make that money. 2% mortgage we could pay it off but financial planner doesn’t advise. Probably worth $3m now but we’re not selling so doesn’t matter.
I thought it was ridiculous when we bought it but we wanted this neighborhood and schools. Still love the location. Was perfect for 3 teens in the pandemic. I like my large laundry room, large gym, amazing hangout in the basement, large bedrooms (especially guest room where grandparents spend a lot of time). We entertain 100+ people twice a year and we can do indoor or outdoor with ease. Not sure how I’ll feel as a soon to be empty nester but maybe that season will be short and there will be significant others and babies in 10 years and I’ll be glad to have this space.

[Anonymous]

8k sq ft, also in N Arlington. We bought it for the location, not the size. If I designed my dream house it would be a bit smaller (some of the rooms are unnecessarily big, like the primary bedroom), but still probably 6.5-7k sq ft.
We regularly have overnight guests so we have multiple guest rooms, 2 offices, workout room… the space gets used pretty fast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only strivers get houses that big. It’s grotesque and shows poor taste. 2k-3k is the ideal house size

Well the bank encourage us to build the largest possible to maximize equity based on our down payment. not sure who 2k is ideal for? Market forces basically forced us to build the largest home possible and our equity does show it paid off.

You are stupid.

I live in a $12 mil home.

There is no way I would let a banker give me advice about equity. That’s ridiculous.

We paid cash.


And yes a 2500 to 3000 square foot house is perfect in my opinion. It’s big enough for most families to find their space and be together.

You spent 12M on a 3K square foot home?

[Anonymous]

Heck no. But I will say, it is a money pit that requires a full time person to manage the issues. Then again, it is gorgeous and in a great location and people visit a lot. So I love it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ours is about 7,500. We owe about $1.25m on it, and it is worth about $2.5m. As far as it being a "striver" house, it is the right size house for our current needs as far as spaces for everyone to spread out, and ability to host guests. We had a much smaller house before we built this one and it wasn't comfortable. It's intentionally not showy (no great room, relatively closed floor plan, mid-market appliances, etc.). When we were first drawing up plans, we told the architect we wanted it to be "bigger on the inside than the outside." Obviously, we can't hide a large house but the goal was never to have a show-off house, just a place where we could live comfortably and welcome friends and family.

So you need 7500 sq to live comfortably 🤣

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do y’all do with all that space?? I can’t picture it. I live with my son in 1500sq ft and feel like we have a huge house. The only thing I feel I’m missing is more space for exercise equipment and a laundry room - but that could be an extra 500 ft?

There's only two of you. That's why it feels like enough.

Our house is close to 10,000 sqft probably. Four kids, live-in nanny/housekeeper, one set of inlaws lives with us, the other set visits regularly. Offices for DH and I, workout room, basement for the kid hangout area. Nice laundry space. Mudroom for all that crowd. It adds up.

[Anonymous]

We just bought a house that is 7,900 SF but it has a massive basement that counts towards the SF.

Overall, I do feel the house is a little too large. I wish we had probably stayed closer to 5,000 SF but we wanted a new build and the newer builds are trending really big. I feel a bit awkward about the size when people come over and it is a lot to maintain, but alas -- my husband fell in love with the house so here we are for a long time. We did take out a mortgage but we put about 50% down. This is NW DC.

[Anonymous]

Our house is 7200 square feet in Bethesda. Bought in 2017 for $1.6 million and now worth somewhere between 2.5-3 million. No mortgage.

It has 6 bedrooms but one is used as an office and one as a guest room (which is used every month). We have 5 people in our house.

We have a large gym, a tool room, a movie / game room in the attic, and another office. The hallways are wide, the rooms are very large and spacious. We originally thought it was too big but we use every bit of the space. It was amazing during Covid with remote school and work.

Did we need that much space? Of course not. But we couldn’t get anything close to that for the price we paid in 2017. We lowballed the asking price and it was accepted because the house sat on the market for so long due to being overpriced in the beginning. It has been the best investment we made given its increase in value.

[Anonymous]

Jeez these houses are much cheaper than I would’ve thought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Homes in my neighborood range in size between 6K and 10K sq. ft. They have generously sized rooms and high ceilings, and many are configured for multigenerational living, allowing parents to comfortably visit for extended periods of time, or to live with the primary homeowners. In practice, that means a large guest area with separate living room and bedroom, a large walk-in closet, and a large bathroom. Secondary washer/dryers are often present, as well.

The other spaces provide for more than a single office; many homeowner couples both work from home at least some of the time. Several of the homes have rooms devoted exclusively to golf simulators, most have spaces for separate home theaters and gyms. Families with smaller children usually dedicate one or more places for playrooms.

Where is this?