Anonymous wrote:I will start

8005 SF Mclean/Langley area
Built in 2009
Paid 800k for the land + 900k to build
Estimated value 3.2m
Did a 140k down construction loan
2.75% mortgage which I refinanced in 2020 which a 1.3m balance

Builder here. I doubt your home is worth $3.2m. A $900k building in 2009 cost would have garnered you
builder grade finish with lower end materials. I can purchase a higher quality home for $3.2m in McLean today.

Anonymous wrote:

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?

I can answer as I use every bit of our large house.

- 2 home offices (his and hers). We both work from home at least three days a week.
- Exercise room with treadmill, bike, lifting set up, ballet bar, free weights, and room for yoga and stretching.
- Kids' playroom, where we keep all their toys separate from the main living room.
- Large dining room, great for hosting holidays.
- 5 big bedrooms, all with walk-in closets and en-suite bathrooms. One of them is set up for our parents and includes a small kitchenette and tv area.
- Kids' study area.
- Big mudroom and lockers for sports gear.
- 3-car garage with storage for everyone's bikes, golf clubs, and sports gear that stays outside.

DP but similar: offices, gym, mud room, garage that doubles as a workshop, craft room (doubles as a guest room), guest room that doubles as an office, guest room, library, music room, rec room, and then living, dining, and bed rooms.

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?

I can answer as I use every bit of our large house.

- 2 home offices (his and hers). We both work from home at least three days a week.
- Exercise room with treadmill, bike, lifting set up, ballet bar, free weights, and room for yoga and stretching.
- Kids' playroom, where we keep all their toys separate from the main living room.
- Large dining room, great for hosting holidays.
- 5 big bedrooms, all with walk-in closets and en-suite bathrooms. One of them is set up for our parents and includes a small kitchenette and tv area.
- Kids' study area.
- Big mudroom and lockers for sports gear.
- 3-car garage with storage for everyone's bikes, golf clubs, and sports gear that stays outside.

7,000 in Bethesda. Bought in 2019 for 1.8 now valued at 2.6. Big yard. 5 people. It doesn’t feel insane. We have an office/bedroom/bathroom wing we don’t use on the first floor all that often. But we have a big mud room, a big open front, nice dining room. Idk. You adjust. We have lots of open spaces. It’s pretty great TBH. I love it.

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?

Based on prior threads:

-Gift wrapping room
-Scrapbooking room
-Puzzle room

Seriously.

About ~7000.
It is located in the west.
We bought it a decade ago between $1-2m.
Currently worth ~$3m. We did do a big renovation.
We bought it with a mortgage and refinanced at 2.8%. The mortgage amount is negligible to us.
We didn't mean to buy such a big house, but we loved the location and liked the house, so we went for it. We host a lot. I do want to downsize when the kids are launched.

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?

Imagine 2 or 3 more people living there. We have 5000 as ft including the finished basement and we use all of it - exercise room, storage, guest room, workshop, home office. It’s also good for when kids have friends over.

Anonymous wrote:To each their own, except here apparently, where the choices others make are fodder for jealousy and judgment. Sad.

To each their own judgment.

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.

What does this even mean? We bought a lot, spent half the value of the lot when we built our house, and built the smallest house in Arlington anyone built that year according to the planning dept (~2000 sq ft). The bank didn't say anything about what we spent on the build vs the value of the lot because we were going to have equity the day we moved in.

To each their own, except here apparently, where the choices others make are fodder for jealousy and judgment. Sad.

I moved from a 1,600 sf house with five people (including basement) to a 6,100 sf house (including basement) and to be honest if I had to do it again would have went a bit bigger at least on plot.

I would of like a big more land, three car garage, maybe a little pool house.

Inside I would have liked something cool if more sf, like a Sunroom, hobby room, movie theater.

And no did not buy for any other reason than houses in my W school district are big,

My kids friend has a 9,000 sf house with a 3,000 sf all redone day light basement they can do sweet 16s and graduation parties. that is really cool to have 3,000 sf available for parties. Being it is on two acres the house does not look that big. As dead set in middle of two acre plot so house is not on top of any other house.

Tacky.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Do you have like 10 people come over regularly?

I'm not that poster but I do have large groups almost weekly to an <3k and could use an extra thousand or two in sqft

Yeah I can see if I was super social wanting to have a beautiful big dining room. What I can’t wrap my head around is having 8 bedrooms or however many a 7000 sq ft house must have. In my fantasy lottery-winning life, I’d have a lovely maybe 2500 sq ft house, a pool house, and a carriage house for guests. So more like a little compound than a giant house.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Do you have like 10 people come over regularly?

I'm not that poster but I do have large groups almost weekly to an <3k and could use an extra thousand or two in sqft

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.

Do you have like 10 people come over regularly?