Anonymous wrote:Honestly, people should fixate less on square feet. I don't support sellers or realtors lying about it, but people over-emphasize it and online house browsing makes the problem worse.
Layout is much more important than exact (or inexact) square footage estimates.
Go tour the house. See what it feels like inside. Actually walk around in the spaces and think about how you would use them. If the house is unfurnished, bring a measuring tape and masking or painters tape so you can mark out a couch or bed or desk.
Most larger houses (3000+ sq ft) have too much unused or unusable space. This is often due to poor architectural design or, often, alterations to standard plans in order to add certain amenities (walk in closets, breakfast nooks, mud rooms, etc.). The result is weird dead spaces and bad flow. You get some detail that seems really important (a huge master bath with a tub and walk in shower) but the consequence is that the house 800 sq ft bigger but *feels* cramped or uncomfortable. It is much, much more important from a livability perspective to have a home with good flow, good natural light, a smart layout with appropriate zones for activities like watching TV, socializing, sleeping, and relaxing.
And thus ends my treatise on square footage versus layouts. Unlike OP, I don't have visual aids, but I hope you will consider my arguments nonetheless.
We’re just number oriented people I guess. Need x amount of bathrooms, bedrooms, square feet, etc. It’s just the kind of stuff you can mention in conversation without getting too deep into specifics.
What I find interesting is how so many older homes have much less square footage and people raised larger families decades ago, but now it’s like we need more square feet and are having fewer kids.
I will say though having a newborn and living in a 2k sq ft house (which includes the mostly finished basement) that any more than 2 kids would be a bit much for us. Not planning on it though.
Caveat that I lived in a literal shoebox of a rented room in college and lived in 685-750 sq ft apartments the past decade so even this space feels like a lot, at first.