To think new builds are too small

I’m more bothered about how close they are to each other!

I think part of the problem is the massive preference in the UK for houses rather than flats. In much of Europe and around the world, cities are full of large apartments designed for families, and people are used to living in apartments. Here, even in cities people insist on houses, which are a much less efficient use of land and space. Perhaps it is also to do with our antiquated leasehold system for flats which makes them less appealing.

I lived in a ha new build build back in 2019 and the house was small come through front door and you have the tiniest square area for a hallway you can imagine then a toilet opposite of downstairs again small small toilet
Lounge was medium size certainly not huge
Kitchen was an ok size no dining room
Upstairs main bedroom was small and en-suite off of it
Main family bathroom was pokey and you could barely move in it that had a bath in and the other bedrooms was small less then single sized

Older houses are much better

I bet the bedrooms didn't have doors on to make it all look more spacious too.

My Ds and his new wife are looking and won't look at anything under 30 years old as the rooms have got progressively smaller with time. They are hoping for an Ex local authority house built in the 40's

Majority of new builds are shared ownership so many don't have a choice, if they want to get on the property ladder.

That is tiny!

We have a box room which is 2.08 x 2.74.

I'd love to use it as a guest room (with a single bed) but have assumed it would be too small.

What do you think? Do you think that would be do-able?

Not all okd houses are big Our house is a 1920s cottage and was small. Luckily it has huge garden so we extend the size of the house agsin. And still have a very large garden

Yes - or even just coats and shoes! Some have very small hallways and they don’t have porches. I’m in a 30s semi and our coats that we wear a lot are in the porch, as well as wellies and liking boots and umbrellas. I love a good new build as the best ones are well designed - but many others have practically no storage.

They wouldn't build them if there weren't a demand for them. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about? You could also get a period home, or an ex council house, and then swallow the additional maintenance and energy costs.

The thing is in my area 4 bed new builds would cost a minimum of £800,000+, 6 bed (massive?) nearly news are going for £1.3 million. That means that the houses that people who earn average incomes are priced out of anything other than a shoe box. Yes, I am in the south; no, I’m not in London

I agree.

I used to live in an ex council house. Bog standard style, not sure when it was built - between the 40s and 60s sometime.

Lounge with dining room off. Decent sized kitchen with enough room for a table and serving hatch to dining table. Small porch with back door.

Nice big staircase with half landing. Big bathroom and 3 good sized bedrooms. Bedroom 3 was still a really decent size and all had good built in storage.

New builds now seem so small and flimsy in comparison.

I quite like it. Less to clean. Mine's a flat though.

I bought a 3 bed 1970s terrace. It's tiny at 69sqm. But it had the biggest master bedroom of houses we viewed and all bedrooms including the box room (where we had to buy a smaller than normal single bed) have built in wardrobes which makes a huge difference as does the airing cupboard.

Before this we lived in a 1950s council house of the same size but no storage apart from under the stairs and the water tank was in the box room so no space for a wardrobe. linen was kept under my bed.

We viewed a second hand new build of more square footage and would have preferred that house as it had parking and more than one loo but the bedrooms were a lot smaller. Had we'd been able to buy that house we'd have taken out the en suite to use for our desk. 3 loos is a bit much for a 4 person household.

There's a large new build development that's going to be built in the next village to mine. Hilariously, the developer seems to think there will only be 0.5 cars per household (it's an affluent area, my household is weird in only having 1 car).

I have a turn of the century fisherman's cottage - 2 bedrooms so big enough for us. I did have a brief fancy to look at new builds but for £60K more, I'd have had less room.

My daughter lives in a 3 bedroom semi and when you actually break down the amount of space and size of rooms, apart from the garden, we have more.

I agree. My brother has one. No room to extend either.

In my new job, I sometimes get to go inside council houses built in the 50s and 60s. They are so big! Really decent room sizes and massive gardens, front and back.

I agree, most new builds are utterly pokey.

Most people dont have the money for the ones that are a decent size, thats why there is a lot of discussion about it. New builds are hugely overpriced in the first place let alone paying more for 'executive' size houses, most of us cant afford that

I am luckily to be old and therefore have housing equity. I am used to period houses with big rooms. Anything less than 10x10 in old money should not be a room. It’s too small.

Older properties are not energy efficient and cost more to heat.

No one really uses dining rooms anymore just another room to clean and heat.

I live in a terrace but its warm in winter. One day i might decide to sell and move to a swanky new apartment.

Yes they’re too small and the gardens are absolutely terrible for wildlife. Areas with older housing tend to have huge areas of garden so are better for wildlife than the countryside (which is all taken up with heavily sprayed crops). Sorry - that wasn’t what you asked but it’s something that bothers me!

Not all are tiny.
Mine has 3 double bedrooms with built in wardrobes.
The small downstairs toilet could easily have fitted a shower in.
The kitchen/diner is so big i was able to set up my sofas and tv etc and make a temporary living room when getting my living room floor done.

There definitely ought to be stricter laws. There should be a minimum size for houses and flats, and also for the rooms inside those houses and flats. There should also be laws on sound-proofing and wall thickness. I have known two people driven to suicide attempts by noisy neighbours, and a work colleague ended up on anti-depressants because of the noisy idiots who moved in next door. In fact, there ought to be laws on how many houses you can build within a certain area, and how much distance there must be between them. None of that will happen of course. This country is so crowded, and the demand is so high, that developers get away with murder. They jam us into these horrible rabbit hutches, with no light or space or silence, and then disappear abroad with the profits.😡

Exactly.
Seems to be a weekly thing.☹️

Not saying that some social & FTB homes aren't small but as someone who has also owned 30's, 50's & 70's houses I can confirm that our NB is the biggest of the lot.
Of course you can't go comparing apples & pears and TBH all our previous houses were a 3-bed semi whereas our NB is a generous 4-bed det which has actually been designed very well with good bedrooms, family space, ample storage, high ceilings etc.
Just putting it out there that not all NB are small.

How are they showing 2 x single beds lengthways , they must be toddler beds!

That is so misleading with the furniture pics compared to the measurements. Even the table in the kitchen is dubious

Yes, new builds are awful. The 3rd bedroom is always too small, never enough storage space and they seem to overstuff the plan with toilets (downstairs loo, family bathroom and en suite bathroom to main bedroom) - how much time do the developers think people spend in a bathroom? 1970s/80s houses all had 1 bathroom but 3 good sized bedrooms and lots of storage space. New builds rarely have storage cupboards, let alone a garage or usable loft space (half of the new builds around where I live are built with bedrooms in the eaves), and a shed would take up half the garden space!