House size - family of 5

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Bigger" houses are just better value. If you start looking at $/sqft, it keeps dropping as you go bigger.

Why? Because the majority of the cost is in the initial land/permits/project approval/acquisition etc etc. Whether you build 3000 sqft or 5000 sqft, the costs do not scale linearly.

So, yeah, there may be dead space in a bigger house, or rooms that "you never go into" (although, I refuse to believe that), but that's what getting built, whether you like it or not. This is one of, if not THE reason, housing has become so expensive. They keep building bigger...because well, we keep buying them. Stop buying bigger houses and the builders will downsize in a heartbeat.

p.s. All these people talking about the 70s and 80s...a typical TV then was 27"...today it's 65". The typical dining table size was four chairs then...today it's six and growing. You couldn't fit your kids xboxes, PS3/4/5, BD player etc etc in a 70s house.

Not everyone wants or needs to live like that though. We only have two tvs in our house--the largest is 42 inches and the other is slightly smaller.
We do have 6 chairs at our dining table--because we have 6 family members.
My kids don't have X boxes and other gaming systems.

Massive tvs and gaming systems are not compulsory.

[Anonymous]

This thread is a joke and represents many things that are wrong with America. A 4000 square foot house with 5 baths is not big enough for a family of 5?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is a joke and represents many things that are wrong with America. A 4000 square foot house with 5 baths is not big enough for a family of 5?

exactly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Family of 5. About 1,100 square feet. Its definitely adequate. The three bedrooms are small but we only sleep in there so I don't really see the need for bigger bed rooms. We don't really have room for guests, but it is more cost effective to pay for our guests to stay in a hotel or airbnb than to buy a bigger house to house them.

an 1,100 sq ft home that has 3 bedrooms... how is that even possible? The one bedroom plus den I rented after college was 1,100 sq ft. That's crazy!

You sound very out of touch. My 900 sq ft home has 2 bedrooms plus a den, which we plan on converting to a small bedroom when our son and daughter want their own rooms. I would love more square footage, but I think my sweet spot would be like 1800sq ft. I'd love every room of ours to be twice the size! I have zero interest in more rooms, especially if they're going to sit empty most of the time.

[Anonymous]

We are a family of 5 in a 2000sqft home and it’s starting to feel a bit cramped. We have all the space we need but I’d prefer a bit more. We are looking for houses in the 3,000-3,500 range now. I wouldn’t want anything huge with a ton of wasted space but a five bed + office would be great. Right now we have a three bed/three bath and an office/guestroom attached to the playroom in the basement which isn’t ideal for visitors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

an 1,100 sq ft home that has 3 bedrooms... how is that even possible? The one bedroom plus den I rented after college was 1,100 sq ft. That's crazy!

We bought a small house last spring that is just over 1,000 sqf. including the finished basement. I'm not exactly sure what the sq footage would be without the basement, but i'd guess about 700 sqf. It's 2 bedrooms and one bath, so considering the finished basement room would be a decent size bedroom, a 3 bedroom 1,100 sqf house doesn't seem "crazy" to me at all.

The bedrooms are small (13 x 9 and 11 x 8) but can easily fit a full size bed, 2 night stands, and a dresser. There's a small living room (but big enough to fit a full size sectional) and an eat in kitchen.
We have two kids that go to the same university, so we bought this house for them to live in, instead of them renting an apartment or living in the dorms beyond their freshman year (required for freshmen to live in the dorms at their school.) The house is actually bigger than the 2 bedroom apartment that the older son rented with a friend last year, but since it's a single family house it has the benefit of a decent size backyard, a little front porch, an attached garage, and most importantly no neighbors sharing walls!

[Anonymous]

Ideally, we’d have a bedroom for each child and a master, a guest room/hobby room for me, a playroom for the kids, an office, and maybe even a home gym space. This in addition to a living room/kitchen/bathrooms. Depending on how large rooms are I’ve found houses in the 3,000-4,000 square foot range to have all of this.

Size matters but how the house and rooms are laid out matters a lot. I’ve looked up 12,000 square foot homes with only four bedrooms! No way would I want something huge but with so few private rooms.

[Anonymous]

Most folks “small houses” are a lot bigger than they claim.

My parents house was 1,300 finished square feet. Very small two story colonial with 750 square feet per floor.

But it had an unfinished 750 square foot basement and detached one car garage. My neighbor had a 1,300 square foot house no basement or garage and was terrible. Yes we had same living space but with zero storage a nightmare in a smaller home.

[Anonymous]

Agree that it’s about how the space is laid out. We are a family of three (with grown children who visit frequently), and we use all of our 6,000 sq ft house on a daily basis, with the exception of the extra bed rooms that are available for guests. However, this house has about the same number of rooms as our last house, which was around 3,500 sq ft. Every room is just larger. The space is still all useful, but the house has a much more spacious feel. We looked at houses that were this size that had a lot more rooms, and they seemed like rabbit warrens with rooms and hallways that would never really be used.