AIBU to refuse a bungalow when downsizing for our forever home?

Oh what rubbish. Where I live, where "bungalows" are simply called houses (a bungalow is a specific type of house here) we are, I would suspect, more active than the average Brit, and we certainly have calf muscles which work well. Anyone relying on walking up and down a silly narrow flight of stairs for their daily exercise is ridiculous. If MN is to be believed people in the UK seem to age quite early, stairs or not.

As someone whose husband was suddenly and unexpectedly forced to give up driving at age 68 due to a medical condition causing seizures, I echo the comments about living rurally. Once you reach 60, you never know what's around the corner. Also, he is really struggling with the stairs now, so a bungalow seems an increasingly tempting option.

Nobody uses the word bungalow in Australia, it is “single story living” and very popular. I would never live in a house with stairs again, having everything on one level is just so convenient. It makes layouts more flexible too, our fifth bedroom has been a bedroom, playroom, library and office over the years.

Hey, we're not all decrepit here. I'm part of several groups of older folk and in my sixties I'm far from the eldest in any of them. I am in a walking/litter picking group (we cover miles every week) a beach yoga group, a sea swimming group and a community gardening group. Lots of us older folk here are digging, swimming, stretching, up hill down dale and entering our later decades fit as fleas.

My mother is 78 and has lived in a ground-floor flat for forty years. The idea that she would have bungalow legs because of this is laughable. She has friends who lived in conventional houses who are far less mobile than she is.

It helps that she has always gone to exercise classes and walks quite far uphill briskly with the dog a couple of times a day (the town where she lives is built on hills) and the shortest way to the bus stop is up sixty steps. If you rely on stairs in your house for fitness you're not doing it right.

There are some very smart bungalows. They're not all the same. and if it's to be the forever home it would be worth consideration. You can change the inside to make it stylish.

It's not rubbish. It's a thing. I'm guessing you live in Australia. I posted on page 7 to say why it isn't the same there.

It may well depend on how much exercise you get generally. ‘Bungalow knees’ are well known to GPs!

I can't disagree with that.

We have a bungalow which will likely be our forever home. It had everything we wanted/needed for our lifestyle when we first moved years ago and should be manageable if we become incapacitated. We’re well connected by bus to local towns and an hour to the city. It does have 3 steps to get out, but there’s room to build a ramp if we need it in future. We never gave much thought to stairs when house hunting, but as the years have passed we’re grateful we ended up here. I don’t really care if it’s dated. As long as it feels like home, which it did when we viewed it and still does now. Cycling & working helps with the bungalow legs x

She wasn’t disabled (then) she just didn’t walk anywhere and never ever used stairs. There are escalators in M&S and John Lewis’s!

Once a year visit to us was the only time she would have to walk up some stairs, apart from that her world was flat.
I can remember her refusing to go and see neighbours upstairs and would ring them or catch them going past if she needed them.
If you are fit these things aren’t going to bother you.

My neighbour has recently gone downhill and gone into a home. It started with her front steps basically trapping her in the house. She’s on the opposite side of the road on an incline and has 3 steps

I love bungalows - and apartment living if it means living on one same floor. It’s easy and relaxing. And bungalows can look very modern if done up nicely. You shouldn’t be forced into buying one of course but I’d keep an open mind.

All that billions of non mobile people all across the world because they lived their wholr lives in one level houses. 🥺 If only they were wise as people on MN

I agree it's not a common term for any single storey house but Californian Bungalows (or Calbungs where I'm from!) are a thing.

Friends of ours had a bungalow for years. It was more like a penthouse apartment in terms of how they styled it.

I would have thought this was nonsense but we had to live in a bungalow for 9 months in between house purchases and it really affected our fitness levels. It was bizarre!

And the bungalow was really hot in the summer, unbearably so. I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that the sun is directly beating down on all the rooms all day long.

I disagree, my grandma lived in the country all her life and it was fine. She needed some carers in her 90s but that was it. I don't understand why people think town or city life is always better as you age.

I think if you are rural bred and have a network there it's fine. It worked for my grandma until she needed full time residential care and she preferred horses to people and was a crack shot. However, I don't think it's the idyll townies dream of.

I need access to people and want to be as independent as possibke for as lomg as possible.

We lived in bungalows overseas for years, but were only max late 30s. Absolutely no problem, but a few decades on, I wouldn’t even consider it.

In my 30s, we thought we'd love a bungalow.

I hated it. I hated being all on one level. I hated not going upstairs to bed.

Neither opinion is wrong. And you won't know until you try ime.

I don't see why living rurally nowadays would make you any less independent.

It's fine as long the public transport is good, but that's often not the case. Many people have to give up driving eventually.

I know you are not all decrepit, but one would think so given the numerous posts about people declining once they hit 60, people who are almost at death's door once they hit 70, and on it goes.

I'm just off to wish my 82 year old, fit as a flea, neighbour a happy birthday!

Oh, fair enough, I wouldn't bother with buses etc anyway. Cars are really expensive to own and run so I'd put the savings towards taxes as and when needed if I had to. Most things can be organised online nowadays though so that wouldn't be a huge factor for me personally. Even living in towns often the doctors etc aren't within easy walking distances so I suspect it wouldn't make much difference in the end.

I don't live in Australia, and as I've already said if Brits are using their narrow little staircases as their only form of exercise it's no wonder so many of them seem so unhealthy and age early.

Even if it was a thing I would far rather have "bungalow legs" than be injured or die falling on the stairs, which seems quite common.

Talk about missing the point.

Stairs, when used habitually, affect the body, and their sudden removal is the instant cessation of a particular form of exercise they did every day for their whole lives.
Bound to make a difference.

Also, no need to be rude about the British and their homes.

How is "narrow little staircases" being rude about the British and their homes? Most of you have small houses, no? I live in a small flat and it's larger than many standard British homes.

As for going from stairs to no stairs, surely people are able to undertake other forms of exercise? I used to work in offices with stairs which I was up and down all day, and I did that for decades. There was no difference in my fitness levels once I left work.

You are just being ridiculous.