To ask is a 5bed house is a waste in these circumstances

With the size of some uk “bedrooms” I don’t think it’s abnormal for people to want more space. For me The square footage is more important than the number of bedrooms. We live in a 4 bed house but one of them is a tiny box room so realistically 4 of us have 3 bedrooms and a small office for the person who works from home. Whether something is worth it is up to the person spending the money to decide.

We have a 5 bed with 2 DC's - one bedroom is DH's study as he wfh mainly, and one is our guest room when friends or family come stay.
Also, with a 5 bed generally comes more downstairs space - our girls generally socialise with their friends at our house, living in a village it's harder to get into town etc, so they have their own lounge to use when their friends are round.

In which case my comment was correct

It's entirely up to them what they do

The ex-partner has no say in it

That's the beauty of divorce

You can then move on and live how you like

Maybe the ex has got a new partner that is richer than there old one

If they can be bothered to clean it then good on them! I need a 5 bed but i also know loads of couples with just one child who live in 5 beds too!

Which bit are you struggling with?

It's the other parent of the kids, pissed that her ex has a much bigger house. Wanting to hear other people say that her ex and his shiny new wife are dickheads for such an "unnecessary" house.

Or perhaps her mum.

This literally makes no sense 😕

This thread reminds me of a scene in the beginning of the film Beetlejuice where the neighbourhood busy body insists the house the Maitlands live in should be "for a couple with a family", and was even getting offers from people to buy the house 😅
On here, I have been told that I me and my DP living apart is depriving families of homes, and that they are stuck in B&Bs because of us. Neither of us is in social housing 😝

What do you mean by “a waste”, waste of what?

Don’t be silly, people can have any size house they like if they can afford it.

I created a huge suite across almost one half of the upstairs of my house for my teenage daughter, adult son who had moved out and then unexpectedly back has a large double and large bathroom, we have a large master with en suite and we still have 2 spare doubles with a sofa bed in the large office downstairs. My house is well lived in and all areas are regularly used. Until recently we had all of that space for just 2ad1ch.

Bedroom numbers are besides the point if they are shoehorned in and there’s only 1 bathroom! 5 decent bedrooms leaves room for guests and a study or more than one guest room. If the size of the house allows for decent space on the ground floor, that’s a good thing in my view. We have 6 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. Makes life easy when we have guests.

I live in a big house as well. When my kids were little all three shared one big room.

I wouldn't like it because of bills, maintenance and cleaning. But if you're not worried by that then go for it

There’s only DH and I and our teenager living in our 5-bedroom house. It hadn’t occur to me that this needed to be justified. We have people to stay a lot, and use two of the bedrooms as studies, so it’s not as though we’re rattling around.

I’m single and childfree, and bought a 4 bed detached house. I converted one bedroom to a cloakroom, knocked two together to create a fabulous master suite with en-suite and walk in wardrobe, and I have one guest room.

there were two reception rooms, one of which is now multi-functional, it has a sofa bed if that’s needed, it’s an office, it’s where I exercise, it absorbs a lot of clutter and hobby stuff.

I’ve made my house perfect for me and my needs.

We have a 5 bed house. 2 Adults both WFH and 2dc. We have one downstairs office and have converted one of the bedrooms, so that gives us 1 spare bedroom for guests. The house doesn't seem too big in our circumstances.

I know several people who live alone or as a couple in four bedroom houses with home office, big garden etc. It’s called having money.

My friend is a single woman, no kids and she has just purchased herself a 4 bedroom home which I think is fine.

So no, I don’t think buying a 5 bedroom home for 2 with kids their half the time is a waste.

If they can afford it from their income (with no state help), then why not?
Parents' bedroom
Bedroom for each child
Study
Guest room

Elderly parents and in-laws both have 5-bedroom houses. Comes in handy for family get-togethers & Christmas 🙂

We have 1 child and a 5 bed, it’s perfect for us.

I have a 7 bedroom house and two DC who share a room 😂. 2 bedrooms used by us, a dressing room, playroom, two offices and a guest bedroom used frequently.

We've got 4 double bedrooms between 2 of us. No kids, and only the occassional overnight guest.

We've got our bedroom, a spare room and an office/hobby room each.

Our mortgage is cheap and we are hugely undercommitted financially. It's great!

It also doesn't add to the cleaning workload as, because we've got lots of space, we don't have any clutter.

A craft room and a home office, although that is more a storage room now... for my craft stuff 😂

Just DH and I now in a 4 bedroom house.

Occasionally we have guests and at least twice a year we will need two guest bedrooms at once.

Don't see how we could manage with less.
Bedroom 1: Our room
Bedroom 2: Main guest room
Bedroom 3: Secondary guest room and also the room with the model railway layout. Everyone has to have a hobby.
Bedroom 4:Where other stuff is kept. Can be pressed in to service as an additional guest room if we really need to but that has only happened a handful of times.

TBH if we had a 5th bedroom I could easily use it as a craft or sewing room.

Snap. OP sounds insanely jealous.