Normalising small homes

[lorieats99]

I feel like you just see those big 4-5 bedroom homes on Instagram, and it’s often young-ish people in their 20s or 30s in them. I think that will be a thing of the past soon with rising costs. We rent a small-ish 2 bed new build and it’s easy to begin to feel inadequate about it! When guests come over there isn’t really anywhere for them to sit, as we just have one sofa. Two rooms upstairs, two rooms downstairs, downstairs WC and upstairs bathroom. Lovely spacious garden.

It feels like our home, I’d like a 3 bed in an ideal world but I don’t think that’s happening for us for realistically quite a while. Despite both being on average incomes we will probably be in our 40s before we achieve our forever home status. We are TTC soon, we have a small bedroom for the baby but we would have no room for a playroom or anything like that & I’m wondering how much this matters. I know in some parts of Europe people raise families in flats and apartments, and it’s very normal over there!

Does anyone else have a small home?

*not small flats - I mean a small block as opposed to a tower

@PomTiddlyPom my flat is a block of 4
Two have balconies
Mine has a private garden

What puts people off is the service charges I think. My management company is fucking awful and they can basically charge what they want. They spent 4 mins doing my garden the other week
£180pm I pay them

My flat's freehold is owned by the residents so i am not sure how it is so different from flats in other countries. We should make it easier for flat owners to buy their freehold.

People say they resent paying service charges but that also goes for the roof and garden maintenance. Flats are much cheaper than houses so with the rising mortgage rates, having a house is much more expensive for the same square footage. a house with the same square footage costs £200k more . how much does that cost with 5% interest rates

There aren't that many bigger flats, thats the problem. its quite easy to find a 2 bed flat, but if you want more bedrooms most are houses esp if you want the third bedroom not to be a box room. tbh the same issue does exist for 3 bed houses as well.

We lived in a couple of large rentals after we sold our first home (Cosy apartment, loved it). I much prefer smaller homes, cheaper to run, easier to clean etc.

We live in a very expensive area so bought a 2 bed and split a room (family of 4).

Our family home is tiny, but lovely. I find creating storage, making the most of spaces an exciting challenge!

People questioned why we downsized. Bottom line is we love where we live but we don't want a ridiculously high mortgage payment.

I am from Hong Kong, and a condo of 500 square feet is considered aspirational. Measurements are misleading as the leasehold often covers areas beyond the remit of the unit itself - part of the floor hallway, the balconet, etc.

Anything above 800 would be comfortable.

Can state categorically that 130k is not a low income on any planet, including London (where I have lived all my life). I take the point that it is not mega rich, and that only the mega rich in London can afford dream homes, but it is certainly middle class. Hell, I'm middle class and my household income is well under half of that.

I'm being pedantic about this because people so often assume London is stuffed full of rich people, and the truth is that most people living here are on ordinary incomes and many are in poverty equal to anywhere.

In Singapore,1000-1200 square feet is the average home but many people have parents and domestic helpers living with them as well. While the government housing prioritises young FTB couples and there is 89% home ownership, many older people prefer to move in with their children for familial support and to help with childcare and it also allows them to rent out their own home as a kind of pension. And the grandparents usually have pretty long lifespans too

So there is easily 6-7 people living in that 1000 square feet 2 bed flat (grandparents, parents, domestic helper, 1-2 young kids) which i guess translates to 500 square feet for a couple and a young child or 666 square feet for 2 kids and 2 parents

*3 bed flat

They’ve space in front of the garage for two cars too. They’ve taken out the downstairs loo and had the washing machine plumbed in there. I can understand why as I wouldn’t want to come straight from the loo into the lounge but I think that they might end up regretting the decision.

I consider 1000-1200 square feet to be generous, especially as I live with only my DH and two small children.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/28/how-uk-house-prices-left-the-middle-class-behind

if you are middle class though surely you should be able to afford the mortgage on an average home (if you chose to). In london that is £726k. A household on £130k cannot afford that. They can afford the median home (£523k) but not an average home. And that is after stretching to the max without (5 times annual income) and that actually is not viable when you take the cost of childcare into account.

Why is it so difficult to believe that the majority are on 'low' incomes. You can be average but still be on a low income. You can also be earning a wage that is higher than other people's but still be earning a low income. A low income isn't just a low income relative to what others earn. An income can be considered low if it cannot buy you what is considered a normal aspiration in a first world country-

1. Mid priced house
2. Quality healthcare
3. Good education for your children

2 & 3 are debatable so we would leave that out for now (though I would consider the inability to get good healthcare whether through nhs or privately to be a mark of the poor).

What differentiates the middle class from the poor. It is namely 3 things

1. Comfort
2. Safety Net
3. Owning the roof over your head and which is not the cheapest home you can find i.e. mid priced.
4. Education (but this has changed)

If you can't own the roof over your head or if its quite cheap for the area (and not through choice), how can you be considered middle class? You have almost zero advantages over the poor other than that you are not starving, you probably have slightly nicer holidays and you probably have a degree (which many poor people also have).

There is therefore only two classes of people in 2023- the rich and the poor.

If you are not the top 1% of PAYE earners, inheritors or owners of assets, you are most likely poor or low income.

I live in Hong Kong. DH and I have a combined income of 200k+, and we live in a flat of purportedly 800 sq feet.

with our two children

My household income is much much less than 130 k, but I can see what rosetinted is saying.
I have thought about this a lot, especially when in London.
So, in the late 90s, I lived in any area of zone 2 I fancied, and could afford the rent on a room in a house/ flat, or even a studio. I earned about 15k.
I could have bought a studio or small 1 bed in a cheap area on my one salary.
It would be unthinkable now for someone on, say 26k, to be able to buy anything at all in London, or rent a studio in Notting Hill.
The goalposts changed, people had kids and had to move as they couldn't afford a family home (flat or no)
So, now, everyone I know in London is either in a council flat and secure ( although that's not the nirvana MN seems to think it is!), bought decades ago, or just really loaded.
I am also totally agree about the feudal direction we are heading in, or maybe have reached.
If you don't have family money, you would have to earn a LOT to get to the " middle class" standard of living that used to be accessible to teachers/ GPs etc thirty or forty years ago.

I live in a 2 bed bungalow which is small but was still bigger than my tiny terraced 3 bed cottage that I owned previously. I moved here with XH and we wanted a garden and a driveway and detached, so stretched ourselves to buy this, long mortgage, high payments etc, wouldn't have to move again (unless lottery win happens .

I managed to retain it during the divorce, as all the equity was mine from my previous house and it's just me and teenage DD here now.

The kitchen and bathroom are tiny, but there are 2 double bedrooms and a decent sized living room with room for a dining table. I have turned the garage into a utility room/office (partitioned). I have a conservatory which is used for storage.

The only downside is that there is only one toilet, but only the 3 beds were built with a second toilet (1980's build).

Thank you. And its no longer just a london thing. in the article i linked,

'However, in recent years the area of unaffordable house prices has expanded beyond the south. The north-east remains the most affordable region to buy a house in England – but the median house cost 5.3 times the median household income last year.
While unaffordability has long been a problem in England, it is a more recent trend in the rest of the UK.
A median-price home in Wales became unaffordable to the typical household in 2004: in 2022 that ratio stood at 6.4 times the median household income. The equivalent Scottish household stopped being able to afford a mid-priced home in 2006: in 2022 it was 5.3 times income. Northern Ireland became unaffordable again in 2017 after a brief stint of affordability, reaching 5.1 last year.'

Anything above 5 times household income is unaffordable. It used to be a London/SE thing, but no longer is. London actually has gone down in real terms (flats in zone 2/3 haven't increased since 2016 in many parts which has allowed wages to catch up). But the same cannot be said in the north.

Someone may obviously already mentioned this but it also depends on where the property is. Our 5 bedroom house would get you a two-bed flat in zone 2 in London!

Yes because people don't want to live in them. People here can't fathom that flats can be spacious and family homes. Most threads with flats you get references to rabbit hutches, all squished up etc etc.

Of course these are hypothetical. Maybe if the flats exist people would buy them. But from conversations between people who opt for houses with gardens over smaller flats, not because of leases service charges or anything but because 'outside space' as I have elaborated on at length... who is going to risk building large flats that go unsold?

At least you have a garden we only have a tiny balcony and small flat

I wouldn`t call yours a "small" home tbh. But that really depends on where you live...

They have them to be fair but mainly they seem to be sold at the price point that is more suitable for downsizers than young families
Example:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/england-119437523-15449593?s=b01d9435724b71e0b37abd394ff5419eef2cc2c0100b871f96a86a5f151a13e4#/

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/england-125168606-16548013?s=e0f1f25fd7ab223e99996ea05a11b1547d0311611e5511b58120cb135b741b01#/

Yes I live in a very small 2 up 2 down with my dh, dd and a cat. Fairly nice sized garden. Dh also works from home so is getting to be a squeeze as dd bedroom is also the office and our cat is a house cat. But we like the area and even if we do compromise on area I don't think we could afford to move at all nowadays. We are hoping to have a garden office when we can afford it to free up some space.

Comparison kills all joy. If they want a large home, great. If you'd prefer a smaller home, great. Neither is wrong for wanting what they want.

It's not the size of the home, it's your life inside the home that's important.

I'm a gypsy. 90% of the people I know live in caravans or static caravans, we're all happy. Most of us could easily live in big houses if we wanted to, but we don't. I'd rather have a small home and live a wonderful life, than live miserably in a huge house.