Not a dealbreaker. We're aren't wealthy enough to be picky about 2nd tier features. Location, major water/termite damage, legally entangled title. Those could be dealbreakers for us.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely a deal breaker. Your house will be dirty and cluttered if you don't have one.

Unless you train your children how to organize their items and remove shoes before entering the home. Mud rooms are an excuse for the slovenly to be more so.

We have very neat mudroom and a pristine entryway

Anonymous wrote:Most people in DC live in rowhouses without mudrooms and are fine. You can have hooks on the wall and move the coats to a closet elsewhere in the house.

Looks like a big mess.


If you are in the burbs, need closet at a min. and a mudroom is awesome.

My house has a combo mudroom/ laundry room immediately off the garage but we basically never use it. My kids are in and out the front door multiple times a day, between bus stop treks and playing with neighborhood kids; that is where they take off shoes and drop back backs. Our front entry is too narrow but I put a small bench, shoe tray, and hooks immediately around the corner of the shared wall with our living room. Takes up very little space, but the kids can organize their things neatly. It's a shame the other goes to waste, but will probably come in handy once they're older.

So some of you might see if you can carve out a small (eg 3 foot) nook for this purpose.

I mean, it would be nice but I'd never consider it a deal breaker. Our house has no entryway whatsoever (literally the front door opens straight into the living room without even a spot for wall hooks), which definitely stresses me out, but it wasn't worth passing up on the house entirely.

Anonymous wrote:Deal breaker, having the same entrance as the guest wears out the formal entry way

Wears out? what do you mean? Like, your floors crack?

I would love a mudroom, but my bigger dealbreakers were wanting a short commute and not having millions of dollars with which to purchase a house. Very few (maybe one?) of the houses that were close in and less than $1.5 million that we looked at had a mud room I'm surprised that so many people around here feel strongly about this given the variety of constraints in this market.

So do I understand it correctly that houses with no garages and only one entrance can't really have a mudroom? That a mudroom requires another, "service" entrance? So that your main entryway looks pristine?

We come in from the garage right into the kitchen. I didn’t think not having a mud room would be an issue but it is. We have shoes/backpacks etc cluttering up the area where we eat. There’s just nowhere for it to go. We really need a mudroom.

Anonymous wrote:Most people in DC live in rowhouses without mudrooms and are fine. You can have hooks on the wall and move the coats to a closet elsewhere in the house.

+1 I didn’t even know what a mud room was until recently. Not everyone lives in new housing stock. Some people even live in apartments.

Anonymous wrote:Those of you with mudrooms, can you enlighten me how the entry works? Do you have to have a separate entrance into the house through the mudroom? Or is it a room next to the entrance that you go to once you enter the house? Is adjacent to the garage? What about the houses with no garage and a single entrance?

It’s off the garage entrance. Signed the slob who knows herself well enough to appreciate a midtown lol

Deal breaker, having the same entrance as the guest wears out the formal entry way

We went from a house with mudroom to a house with no mudroom but with a coat closet. I definitely preferred the mudroom, much more organized and cleaner. Still it wasn’t a deal breaker. We added a shoe closet and bins to entry, so it serves as sort of mudroom. It takes a bit more effort to keep organized, but not to a level where I wouldn’t consider a house for lack of it.

Not at all a deal breaker. No coat closet would be harder to get around but still is not even in the top 20 for home wants.

Anonymous wrote:Definitely a deal breaker. Your house will be dirty and cluttered if you don't have one.

Unless you train your children how to organize their items and remove shoes before entering the home. Mud rooms are an excuse for the slovenly to be more so.