To think new builds are too small

What we need are big flats not small houses imo.

My DA has an ex local authority house from the 1950s and all the rooms are a really good size on a huge plot but it would have been quite rural when it was built. My housing association house was originally built in the 1800s and it was tiny but we live in a city.

I don't think there's enough land to have more space and councils are pushed for 3 beds so you end up with one that isn't really a bedroom.

I'm currently looking for a house and struggling. While we do like some period features, finding a period home with said features that has also been modernised, and done well that would suit our anxious rescue pup (detached, good sized garden) has become harder and harder.

What do you and others think of this? I can't decide. I can say that i have been to view and what isn't apparent in the pics is that the ceilings upstairs are over 4 meters high. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/154472198#/?channel=RES_BUY

This!! Why don't built in cupboards come as standard??!

YANBU. People are all for a glossy new build but many of them are really poorly designed - small, poky rooms with low ceilings, often the rooms are corridors because the sitting room has to be a through route to the kitchen, virtually non existent storage, prioritising multiple en suite bathrooms so that bedrooms are tiny and often awkward shapes, tiny halls with nowhere to put shoes or coats, etc.

They're also often riddled with defects and poor workmanship - walls out of plumb, fake weep vents, wonky door frames, bad finishes and shoddy installations.

I’d take an ex council house any day to have quality workmanship, decent sized rooms and a sensible layout, even if it meant I didn’t get my choice of bathroom tiles (from three options pre-determined by the builder…).

They're getting smaller and smaller. My mate had a 'bedsit' in a council block, large room, then separate small kitchen and bathroom. If you look a newly built one or two bed flats, the floor space is similar to the 70s bedsit.
My other mate left her social housing flat in a 60s block to the new built lower style block next door. In the hope of a bigger, nicer home for her two kids. It's much smaller, and way more expensive. She wishes she'd never left the allegedly 'grim' block.

Having spent some time in Scotland, I concluded that it was because stacking houses one on top of the other made it warmer...

But yes, there are some very elegant flats in Scotland, good sizes and well laid out.

This is criminal the floor plan looks decent, until you look at the dimensions and realised they have made the furniture a third of the actual size.

Those bedrooms couldn't fit single beds, even my babies cot bed would be too big

Scotland has indeed had a really different history to England where this is concerned. Scottish cities retained their defense functions much longer than English ones, so needed to pack their development into the area within the city boundaries. By the time this defensive function became unnecessary, Scotland had developed a very graceful culture of "aspirational" flat-living which has included the middle classes and families. In fact, apparently one reason why bungalows are quite common in the Scottish suburbs of many cities is because many Scottish city dwellers were used to the convenience of one-storey living and wanted to continue this when Scottish cities started to develop suburbs!

Flats in Scotland are another ball game - shared leasehold, very often decent sized rooms. I know someone who lives in a conversion and the rooms are huge with some enormous storage cupboards. Good sized all with space for coats and shoes, table in the kitchen, big living room.

I've also stayed in enormous, well-planned flats in Europe, which had basement storage allocated to each household for bikes and camping gear and so on - like having a garage. But we go on building tiny flats in the UK - like one I saw recently which had 2 small double bedrooms, limited storage and bugger all kitchen but still had to have a bloody en-suite.

I have also experience of living in ex MOD housing and again, massive bedrooms, living room, huge gardens etc, ample storage space throughout the property.

Threads like this make me really appreciate my ex council property that I have lived in for years...large rooms, loads of cupboards around the whole house, just incredibly well thought out years ago by local authorities when these homes were designed for families moving in.

Nothing could encourage me to move to a new build. Our tiniest bedroom is massive compared to newbuild standards.

That's the thing. Large numbers of families aren't going to willingly have neighbours above and below and either side, rather than just either side, and pay another few hundred a month for the privilege. It's not as if these charges replace anything else other than buildings insurance. There's still the bills/council tax etc to pay.

Together with this the only 3 bed flats here have been put in mill conversations or in old churches and they expect you to pay more than a 3 bed detached because it's got an original stained-glass window or is a "penthouse".

I think when it comes to flats the biggest issue i leashold for me. >12 years and conditions. It's basically super long term rent. As pp said share of freehold or commonholds might make them more popular?
Mum owns her flat,. She can amend as she wants to as long as structurally sound. Everyone pays into common fund for repairs etc. Proposed and organised by a comitee But for example window changes, which affect individual flats can still go ahead without everyone. Hence why you can see apartment building with couple of flats with windows from 60s still.
They also have rotas for cleaning their floor's hallway 😁

I'd love that. But here they build flats with no lifts or shared laundry rooms and then gouge you on the ground rent and maintenance. Even if you own the place you spend hundreds a month to live there on top of utilities, and insurance.

If the UK adopted a culture of living in flats this wouldn’t be an issue surely? If developers could build large spacious 2, 3 and 4 bedroom flats we would have much better accommodation that better suits our needs. The issue is twofold: nimbyism stops a lot of flats from getting developed in the first place, and government are reluctant to put proper planning regs in place for the developers. So this is what we’re left with.

Bloody genius!

Shared laundry rooms are probably OK for childless people, or in cultures where it's considered fine to leave small children alone. No way would I want the hassle of dragging children and laundry baskets around as a parent esp when kids create a lot of laundry.

I don't really understand the idea of having shared laundry rooms; surely a washing machine does not take up that much space. I think that in places where this was common, it was more about buildings where it was difficult to pipe large amounts of water to higher-up floors, but modern hydraulics should take care of this.

Shared communal spaces are better used for other things IMO. Bike parking, daycare, mingling spaces, party rooms that can be booked for when you want to host big gatherings, children's soft play area. Not laundry!

Yeah common ones used to be in mine too decades ago, but nowadays it is storage for bikes etc, flats have own washing machines. Rubbish shutes were never a think in any flats I lived in or visited.
I believe common laundry is still common in Switzerland. Friend has one andone of the flats is absolute refusing to adhere to schedule. Every weekend drama

Shared laundry rooms are very common in apartment blocks in Sweden and Denmark, and I think in Norway and Finland too though I'm not sure if to the samr extent

Where abroad. I come from abroad where this is certainly not a standard.

When people keel saying "abroad" and "in Europe" they should be more specific...

I'm house hunting at the moment and looking at new builds - more because I can't deal with the drama and stress of chains etc than anything else

Anything 3 bed IS small - usually only one store cupboard - lounge is tiny. Sacrificing 3rd bed size for sake of an ensuite which I don't see why people so desperately want - who wants to go for a 💩 near where they sleep.

You mean laundry rooms in each flat, or communal laundry rooms? I'm sure it varies worldwide, but where I live, flat usually have a washing machine in the flat but no separate laundry room.

We use yokushitsu kansoki in most modern flats these days where I live: Laundry Lessons From Japanese Bathroom Technology - Bloomberg

The bathroom is basically a walk-in wetroom (which itself is brilliant, as they are quick to clean, space saving and accessible for those with mobility issues); they have bars hanging over the bath, and the door shuts tight with a kind of extra-tight seal. You hang laundry racks on the bars, shut the door and switch on the drying function, which then heats and dries the clothes and sucks the moisture out of the bathroom via the ventilation fan.

The UK is now quite a densely populated country and the population will not start dropping until the late 2030s, and has similar floorspace-per-person to Japan (in fact, Japan's is now slightly higher than the UK's, believe it or not), so learning from other densely populated countries like Japan and the Netherlands (including all the "little" things, like drying clothes in ways that does not cause mould issues) is the way to go.

In terms of ownership formats, England needs to learn from Scotland, where certain cities have long had "family flats" as an option for middle class families and where some excellent commonhold/freehold ownership options for flats have developed.

Balconies are a great option for families as long as they can be made safe with cages or netting if desired; you can put out laundry, paddling pools, chalk, furniture, and they are actually more private than a tiny overlooked garden. My neighbors would have lean right out and crane their necks sideways to steal a glance into my balcony. My balcony has a frosted-perspex front and laundry bars just underneath the top, so laundry can be hung invisibly, yet the balcony and flat are full of light.

I just think that it's really worth sorting out and cracking these issues, so that spacious "family flats" can become more of an option for those who would like to consider them. Because the UK's population is going to keep going up for another 15 years. If that is the case, and if everyone insists that they must have a house with a garden, the only options are "smaller and smaller rabbit hutches/subdivided houses" or "concreting over a lot more greenspace in a country that is already highly nature-depleted."

I was surprised when I went to view a house with my much younger sister when she was buying her first house recently. She was looking at a 2 bed new build.

When DH and I bought our first house twenty years ago we could only afford a 1 bed between us.

It was absolutely enormous compared to the 2 bed new build my sister bought! We had a really quite large living/dining room (as big at least as the living room we now have in our four bedroom family home) and little - bit big enough - kitchen, a tiny hallway and then the top floor matched the bottom. Small bathroom above the kitchen, and large bedroom. We could easily have converted into a 2 bed if we'd have wanted to, lots of the neighbours had. That house was built in the 1980s.

The rooms in new builds definitely seem much smaller to me!

£800 for a new fire door to your flat if you are a lease holder, Most flats abroad have laundry rooms, rubbish chutes. Live in an SH flat in the UK and they think you dont need to wash and dry clothes if you dont have children.