Differences between US and U.K. homes

[Youngatheart00]

Just a ponderous thread as it’s my day off and I’ve been thinking, mainly following the abundance of Netflix we’ve all watched over the past year, but also some of my travel experiences (not recently, obviously!)

Some of the differences I’ve noticed are;

• many more of the US homes seem to be fully open plan downstairs. Some don’t even seem to have doors between the rooms?

• the bathroom count / ratio to bedrooms is much higher! (Eg 3 bed / 3 bath or even 2 bed / 2.5 bath)

• heating systems, I don’t recall seeing radiators, instead vents in the floor, are these used to flip between hot and cold air depending on the time of year? How effective / efficient are they compared to our big radiator bars here?

• toilets - they seem smaller and the flushing mechanism is different

• baths - they also seem smaller, short and strangely blocky

• Space and size - all of the bathroom stuff is unusual when the overall size of homes, even cheaper ones, is so much larger. And some ‘back yards’ are absolutely huge! Obviously more land space in the US compared with the U.K. but still, notable but often not much privacy / fencing?

• waste disposal units - what ARE these?

• closets - I haven’t seen any free standing wardrobes. Are these just not used in the US?

Anyone got any others to add or any comments?

I have a holiday home in the US, near the Adirondack mountains (New York area). It's a typical house for that area and age (it's around 70 years old). It's got a small wraparound porch (not big enough for furniture really, the back is larger though like a patio/decking area). The front door leads to a small entrance room, the kitchen/diner is on the right and on the left is a living room. The stairs are in the corner of the living room. Upstairs are 2 bedrooms and a bathroom in the middle. The top floor has a small bedroom, office space and a balcony that fits a small bistro table. Under the stairs is a small laundry room accessed from the kitchen and we have a toploader washer/dryer which is so noisy and viscious! The clothes come out all tied together and jumbled up! The back 'yard' is a decent size (about the size of the house doubled) and behind the house is a lake. American houses usually have big driveways (We drive a truck over there and it fits everywhere we park), the front door more often than not opens into a seperate entrance room, the tap water is undrinkable in most places, and the new houses seem to be made of paper much like english new-builds.

@SenecaFallsRedux

HOA stands for homeowners association. And depending on the state, they can have a lot of power including the right to assess fines and file liens against your house for not paying the fines or not paying required dues.

Escrow is holding funds in a neutral account, until certain conditions are satisfied in a property transaction. The down payment is always put in escrow and then the funds for the house purchase will be deposited before the closing when the purchase and sale is fully consummated. The word closing refers to closing escrow, meaning that the funds will be dispersed to the seller.

It's mostly what you would call new-build estates where HOAs wield power. Ordinary neighborhoods in cities, towns etc don't have them; HOAs are easily avoided.

Some historic districts have rules too.

I think those of you getting your ideas of American living from tv are like Americans taking their ideas of ordinary British life from Miss Marple and Hyacinth Bucket.

Most of the stereotypes mentioned here are not how the majority of us live.

Its hard to say - you wouldn't say 'oh in Europe they all do this...' Plus I guess because the people I know there are immigrants or kids of immigrants, their homes reflect that (and also where partners have lived all over the country). Family homes in Florida are very different from Chicago, Boston and Seattle (and various in between).

If almost everybody tumble dries clothes and linens, how do they not shrink everything?

I dry garments subject to shrinking hanging on shower bars indoors. In an air conditioned house, things dry fast with no issues of dampness or mold.

@SenecaFallsRedux thanks for this. So is entering escrow the US equivalent of exchange and completion?

@17hauntedvagina

I have to admit that I remain completely confused as to how the English property purchase system works. It can vary by state, but generally speaking in the US it works as follows:
Buyer makes an offer to purchase. Buyer deposits a percentage of the purchase price in escrow as "earnest money."
Seller accepts offer. There is now an enforceable contract.
The contract is usually subject to certain conditions such as a satisfactory inspection, obtaining a mortgage, etc, but backing out of the contract for no reason at all can subject the buyer and the seller to financial penalties.
Once the conditions of the contract are met, Buyer will deposit additional funds in escrow, a closing is held, deeds are signed, and funds are dispersed to the seller.
This can all happen fairly quickly, especially if the sale is for cash. Even with a mortgage, it can sometimes be done in as little as 30 days.

Furthermore, I don't understand how the law evolved to be so different in the US as it is in England because much of property law in the US, including commonly used terms, is based on English common law. Every state in the US is a common law jurisdiction except for Louisiana.

HOA stands for homeowners association. And depending on the state, they can have a lot of power including the right to assess fines and file liens against your house for not paying the fines or not paying required dues.

So much for the Land of the Free?

Many of the rules mention remind me of parts of Germany where there are regulations about cutting grass, drying laundry, what you can and cannot do at certain times/days etc. I wonder if this is where the idea comes from?

@LostToucan

I remember a friend pulling up loads of plants in her front garden as she kept getting HOA complaint letters about "weeds" and she had no idea what was a weed and what wasn't.

I got a letter when we were repainting the pool deck and had to move everything on to the drive while I was done/dried. After about TWO days. I wrote back and said if they were going to soy they should be more thorough and would have seen we were doing work

So much for the Land of the Free?
Purchasing in a community with an HOA is a choice. As PP have pointed out, many people in the US don't live in HOA communities. Even in my state, which has a high percentage of housing in HOAs and condominium associations, there are a lot of choices that don't involve HOAs.

@alphasox

I lived briefly in the US as a student and the family I stayed with had a laundry room behind the kitchen, but THE BEST thing was the chute from upstairs. So by one of the bathrooms upstairs you opened a cupboard, chucked your dirty washing in (no laundry basket cluttering the landing), and the clothes would fall down the chute to the laundry room into a basket next to the washing machine. Also as well as a huge washer and drier there was an iron, hanging spaces, drying racks for delicates etc. All good, but I bloody loved the chute!

I grew up in a typical suburban home in Ohio in the 1970s80s and we had one of those laundry chutes. HOWEVER, my mother was a bit anxious and precious about things getting "caught" on the way down and setting the house on fire----HOW? I haven't a clue, but that was the story she went with. Really disappointing.

And yes, I often mention an issue we had with our HOA when we lived in Texas. We moved into a brand new house with very new landscaping that wasn't exactly up to "code." The HOA had weird rules about the minimum diameter of the tree trunks in your front yard. We had new trees put in that would have easily grown into a suitable size in a season or two, but my GOD the nasty letters and threats we got about them being too small. Honestly...

Our Houston HOA ruled over the front yards with an iron rod, but not the back yards.

Was interesting to see just how crap by comparison people’s back yards were on Google Earth

They are all good observations, the majority of US homes are timber framed and often have felt or aluminium roofs. They are generally much cheaper than the UK because of reduced construction costs.
Mostly hard floors and the bath tubs are often small ie you can’t recline in them.

Some HOAs can be oppressive, no question. Ours is pretty reasonable on the whole; we've never received a "nastygram" from this one, but have in the past in other places. My favorite was when we received a letter saying we had too many signs in our front yard; the limit was two (we had one for our security system and I've forgotten what the other one was). They were counting one that was in our neighbor's yard but close to our property line. I actually had to show them our survey so they could see the offending third sign was our neighbor's.

It's possible to have bigger, deeper bathtubs. They are sometimes referred to as "English tubs" in my area.

Screens on the windows and the back door to keep out insects (mosquitos, house flies, bees, wasps) in the summer.

Light switch inside the bathroom and standard sockets for hairdryer/ shaver plugs.

Two-car garages with plenty of extra space to store all the stuff that Americans tend to have. If you only have one car, you have even more storage space.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's house would have crumbled if it had been made of brick.

@PerveenMistry

That frustrates me especially when the UK is trying hard in comparison and we are constantly guilt tripped about everything e.g. car usage

@Youngatheart00

Just a ponderous thread as it’s my day off and I’ve been thinking, mainly following the abundance of Netflix we’ve all watched over the past year, but also some of my travel experiences (not recently, obviously!)

Some of the differences I’ve noticed are;

• many more of the US homes seem to be fully open plan downstairs. Some don’t even seem to have doors between the rooms?

• the bathroom count / ratio to bedrooms is much higher! (Eg 3 bed / 3 bath or even 2 bed / 2.5 bath)

• heating systems, I don’t recall seeing radiators, instead vents in the floor, are these used to flip between hot and cold air depending on the time of year? How effective / efficient are they compared to our big radiator bars here?

• toilets - they seem smaller and the flushing mechanism is different

• baths - they also seem smaller, short and strangely blocky

• Space and size - all of the bathroom stuff is unusual when the overall size of homes, even cheaper ones, is so much larger. And some ‘back yards’ are absolutely huge! Obviously more land space in the US compared with the U.K. but still, notable but often not much privacy / fencing?

• waste disposal units - what ARE these?

• closets - I haven’t seen any free standing wardrobes. Are these just not used in the US?

Anyone got any others to add or any comments?

I'm an American and can answer some of this.

• My home is not open floor but they are very common. People want to be able to see everything from one spot

• the bathroom count/bedroom ratio - some ven have more baths than bedrooms which even blows me away. I have a 3 bed 2.5 bath....or did...but my dining room is now my bedroom haha. So it's 4 bed 2.5 bath.

• heating systems, I don’t recall seeing radiators, instead vents in the floor, are these used to flip between hot and cold air depending on the time of year? How effective / efficient are they compared to our big radiator bars here? Yes...that is exactly it. They blow hot or cold depending on the thermostat setting

• toilets - they seem smaller and the flushing mechanism is different I honestly don't know what toilets are like over there haha

• baths - they also seem smaller, short and strangely blocky Same with this one haha.

• Space and size - all of the bathroom stuff is unusual when the overall size of homes, even cheaper ones, is so much larger. And some ‘back yards’ are absolutely huge! Obviously more land space in the US compared with the U.K. but still, notable but often not much privacy / fencing? My yard is massive. I'm always blow away by the parking threads...no one in my whole neighborhood has to park on the street. Very rare in rural areas to have to park on the street

• waste disposal units - what ARE these? So you turn the water on in your sink...then any old food, eggs shells, etc are out down the sinkhole where they're chopped to super tiny bits and just flow down the drain.

• closets - I haven’t seen any free standing wardrobes. Are these just not used in the US? Closets (unless the house is very old) are built in. In many cases for a room to be classified as a bedroom it has to have a closet.

HOAs can be absolutely mad. All you need is one busybody and the thing is a nightmare. They're much more common on new-build estates (which Americans call developments) and less common in small towns or older suburbs.

Can't stand them myself. I have friends who love them because it means their neighbors have to keep up their houses and make things nice, but I think it's incredibly boring.

However, I really don't understand the fuss about kitchens! There are so many different styles. Not every kitchen is dark and heavy, just like not every British kitchen is shiny and flat. Most modern kitchens are actually very heavy on the while, including white (soapstone, granite, marble) counters, white backsplashes, and often white cabinets.

A plug in kettle seems to be unusual in the US.

Also, separate slipper/soaking tubs are very popular right now. Most new build and/or McMansion-types have them, as do most of the higher-end houses. 90s/early 2000s new builds have wretched shallow things.

I feel like I'm spamming, but I'll say re: kettles:

In addition to not having the same power, tea is a lot less common than coffee in the States, and most people who drink coffee make it in a drip coffee maker (or something like a Keurig), not in a cafetière. There's less of a need for it.

I grew up in Arizona. We had a pool and the house was open plan with air conditioning/heating through vents with special pump to make sure warm water flows to all the taps. All the bedrooms had built in closets. Also toilets flush everything down with very little need for brushing...here I find it is really difficult with multiple flushes required. Also the taps are all mixer taps. None of this burn your hands at restaurants. We had screens over the windows but that was because it is so hot there that you have to keep the sun out. Awnings fall apart in the sun. No flies like in london, but lots of scorpions and cockroaches that were monsters. I miss our front porch and wanted to build one but my husband said no. It makes it social and just gives a different space to be.