Does anyone live in a small or average size home?

[scootlandyard]

With their family?

Just wondered as I was looking through past threads regarding home size as we are moving soon and slightly downsizing. I was shocked at the general consensus around house size! Eg posters saying anything less 2000sq ft would be a ‘struggle’ for a family of 4 (I’ve viewed a show home of this size and it was bloody massive), posters saying they are in a detached four-bed with large kitchen/diner,separate lounge, study, playroom but will ‘have to move and upsize’ because it will be ‘too cramped’ when their second child arrives.

I also recall a thread not too along where OP attached a floor-plan of her house and pondered whether it was would be large enough should she have a third child. It was a four bedroom inc en-suite, large living room and decent size kitchen-diner. There were posters insisting it was far too small even for her current family size and she would need to move by the time her kids were teens.

I feel like 90% of mnetters must live in huge houses.

Anyone else in a standard 3/4 bed semi with children/teens and somehow managing to survive? 😅

I remember that one
I said it was small as my 2 bed apartment is about the same size but a bedroom less and the bedrooms aren't big, neither is the living room
I do have a big kitchen

Most our village lives in either a 3 bed victorian semi, a 3 bed 1930s semi or a 3 bed ex-LA post war house.

They average around 1000sq ft

I live in one with 4 of us. I find our 3rd bedroom small for my late teen and the lack of hallway annoying, but the kitchen and living space are great.

I have friend's outside the south east and their houses feel massive when I visit, but there are still plenty of normal sized houses about.

Because when you can only buy somewhere very small then that sort of detail is important.

I had a spreadsheet of the 6 flats in our area of interest that we could afford to buy. Details were basically price, service charge, number of bedrooms, size.

There can be a lot of difference in size between two properties with the same number of bedrooms, and the one we really wanted (because it was almost half as big again) only had 2 beds rather than 3.

No not that thread (although I know the one you mean!) This home was a four-bedroom and bigger, the OP only had 2 children and contemplating a third. Replies were saying it was too small for 2 kids let alone 3 😵‍💫

It said in my agent particulars when we bought and I like facts. But you have to be careful as they sometimes include the garden shed in it.

I had a valuation done for a mortgage
Guy with a clipboard told me and muttered how small it was. Also told me a garden didn't add value to a flat as it wasn't private
He was.. charming

I lived in a city when DS was born so it was always flats until we moved to the suburbs and I felt like our 3 bedroom semi (rented!) was luxuriously massive. Downsized when I bought my first property due to budget and we are now in a 3 bedroom one bathroom flat, 2 adults one teen, with 3 step kids at weekends. Yes it's small and it wouldn't work if the steps lived here all the time but it's totally manageable. Most people don't have the budget for huge detached houses.

It's always on the threads about kids sharing rooms that you get people wringing their hands over the teens having their own room and their own 'study area' like most of them aren't doing it sitting on their beds while their desks are stacked with junk!

This is so true 😂 My DS12 has a lovely desk area in his room and does not use it even when it’s clear (which isn’t often! It just becomes a dumping ground!) I was the same when younger, did revision and studying anywhere but a desk.

But yes I have seen ridiculous responses that a house isn’t suitable for teens because, despite everybody getting their own room, the bedrooms aren’t big enough for a study area in each one 🙄

Me - 1950s 3 bed semi. 2 reception rooms & loft room (used as office and storage), 2 adults, 2 DC.
Big enough for us although DD2 would like a bigger bedroom.
We have parking for 2 cars and a garden which is a plus in our area because there are lots of older houses with no parking.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat My tiny cottage is similar but three bedrooms and a converted loft room, built 1829. Downstairs bathroom.

I'm here on my own. The previous owners were a family of four, a doberman and a German shepherd, ducks and chickens.

Wherever you live, you make it work and there's never enough room, even in a mansion!

Pretty much all my friends live in very normal, small to average semis or terraces. I only have one friend with a larger house, I think, and she earns a lot more money than average. I live in Manchester, but I'm from London originally and all my friends who have stayed in the south-east live in small houses or flats, mostly two-bed with two kids sharing a room.

DP and I live in a three-bed semi-detached. Three bedrooms (one very small, and used as my office), one bathroom, a living room and L-shaped kitchen-diner.

This always makes me laugh. It is totally unnecessary. I grew up in a classic 3 bed, 1 bath. I had the larger bedroom when younger then my brother and I swapped so I was in the tiny box room as a teenager. I always preferred to do my homework downstairs on the sofa than in my bedroom as it was more sociable (and in front of the TV!) - it didn't affect me detrimentally in any way, straight A*s and As.

We are moving from a 2 bed aprox 500sqf to 3 bed 1000sqf with garage but we're moving to a slightly better area and its all we can afford without a crippling mortgage which a refuse to do. My kitchen is 1 1/2 m x 2 1/2m and really difficult to cook for a family in so Im looking forward to having more space and honestly we are struggling with lack of space in general now.

Most of our friends have much bigger and one friend has moved into a huge 3000+sqf 5 bed house (she claimed her 4 bed 2000sqf house was far to small for her, DH and DS...) but I console myself that their council tax is nearly 400 a month ;)

Interestingly we just noticed that the EA advertised the house we are buying as a "nice little starter house" goodness knows what they deem our current house!😅

So to answer your question yes Im sure I'll manage and try not to compare too much

Three bed terrace house, ex council house.

Six of living in it.

One through lounge/diner
Pokey kitchen
One bathroom and toilet
One small utility room
Three (admittedly good sized bedrooms)

It's always on the threads about kids sharing rooms that you get people wringing their hands over the teens having their own room and their own 'study area' like most of them aren't doing it sitting on their beds while their desks are stacked with junk!

Haha, yes @CutthroatDruTheViolent - when I was a teenager I had a really small room with one of those cabin beds that has a top bunk and a little desk underneath. The desk always had tons of my random weird shit piled on it and I did my homework either sitting on the bed with my knees up and resting my work on a ring-binder, or lying on my stomach on the floor!

Small (just under 900 sq ft) 3 bed semi. It's fine, people don't actually need a bathroom each, they just got spoiled

We’re in a 70m2 two bedroom flat, just moved to a 110m2 three bedroom house (think that’s about 750 sqft and 1200 sqft). Me, DH, and DS7. DH works from home so third bedroom is his office. It’s plenty of space.

In our 60s now, just DH and me. We had 2 kids when we moved into this 1930s semi. 2 double bedrooms, 1 box room, 1 bathroom, 1 toilet: lounge/diner, kitchen. The kids grew up ok and left in their 20s.

I should add that my parents had 4 of us in a 2-up, 2-down terraced with NO bathroom, NO indoor toilet, NO kitchen (just a sink and cooker, nothing else). No garden. I had to share a room with my parents until I was 11!! (3 older brothers were in the other room)Then we moved.

We’re in an 861sqft 3 bed (2.5 bed, box room is tiny!) terrace with ‘3’ reception rooms - one is a conservatory so used half the year, and the other is a decent cupboard size, family of 4 plus pooch.

I dream of a 4/5 bed detached so I can swing an imaginary cat around without knocking a child on the head or some furniture.

My house would probably be fine if I decluttered, but I have no time to do it or any motivation as I’m pretty sure I have adhd and don’t know where to start!

I don’t think a 4 bed semi is ‘standard’ OP. Round here ‘standard’ is a semi or terrace 2 bed or 2.5 bed (2 bedrooms plus absolutely tiny box room). A roomy 3 bed is less common, and 4/5 beds quite rare.

We are in a decently sized 2.5 bed. The third bedroom is tiny but the rest of the house is okay and fairly spacious. It’s terraced.

I grew up in a house of 1,300 sq ft. Family of 5.

It was fine, we weren’t traumatised by the experience or anything (!) but there were things that weren’t great, like when I was an older child / teen there was nowhere private to go with my friends except my very very small bedroom so I tended to go to friends houses rather than invite friends round. We also had a lot less “stuff” in the 1980s/90s than people have today. Now my parents are in that house still but just the two of them & when I go back to visit it feels very small. But growing up I knew no different.

Now we live in a significantly bigger house with one child. It definitely has its advantages - but it’s more heating & cleaning!

We live in a small end of terrace with 2 bedrooms. We have 3 young children (4, 2 1/2 and 8 months).

At the moment I sleep in one room with the kids, while my husband sleeps in the other bedroom.

We intend to do a loft extension when the kids are older.

Us! I don't know the sq. feet but our house is a 3 bed semi, a post-war pre-fab house with a decent sized back garden but no drive. I think it is bigger than some of the 3 bed new-build houses - at least it looks and feels like it when I've been inside some of them. There are 2 double rooms and a box room but the box room here is bigger than that in my mum's old house of the same type and age and in a similar area.

Yep! 3 bed end terraced cottage!! Moved here when our DD's were 12 and 7. We have 3 double sized bedrooms so the girls each got an okay sized room. We have a kitchen, dining room and lounge on the ground floor and 1 bathroom between us all. We have a decent sized garden, parking, outbuildings and plenty of storage space. Never once felt like the house was too small for us and never wanted to live in anything any bigger than we have. We could have bought a much bigger house but we honestly never wanted one or felt like we needed one.

For us we wanted to live well within our means. Have savings in the bank, pay a decent amount into a pension, be prepared for mortgage rate hikes and bills rising, and know we would still be more than okay. We have had decent holidays each year and been able to live reasonably comfortably. That was more important to us than a large house with more space and a bigger car.

Not that there is anything wrong with any of those things, I am just saying that for us, as a family, it has never been of importance to us to have a big house and masses of space, and we have loved living where we do.

Plus we don't spend all weekend cleaning and gardening which is a bonus! 😂

Yes, we live in a small semi-detached cottage, no idea of square footage. Front door straight into living room, kitchen, 3 small bedrooms, bathroom. Our room has a miniscule en suite which I do love (had 2 teen dds when we moved in, plus long term stomach condition!), but the previous owners put it in. I wouldn't have done it as it's left us with zero option for hanging space in main bedroom. Very little storage though I'm working on that gradually.

Moved here with 2 dds post divorce (after many renovations/builds, had been living in a large 4 bed v old thatched house which I adored). I do miss having a spare bedroom, although we saved up for a sofabed which is fine for 1 adult or two teens, but not ideal for two big adults! Now we have me, new dh, dd2 and dd1 is here in uni holidays. Despite endless attempts at decluttering and improving (the place was horrible when we moved in), it still feels pretty cramped tbh, but I'm well aware we're lucky to have this post divorce.

I grew up in a small 4 bed detached which my parents self built in the 70s and still live in. All my friends except a couple were in 1970s semis on newish estates. The kids' mates these days live mainly in tiny cottages or 4 bed new builds but I envy all the ones with a garage! Although small, ours is cute and characterful, and has a big garden compared to many. We're not overlooked and I liked the fact that the third bedroom, while still v small for a double, isn't massively different to the others. The newer houses in our budget were all 2 beds plus a cupboard.

If I had the money I would 100% want to have a bigger bedroom and a spare bedroom. I also miss having a hallway and upstairs landing (our landing is so tiny there's no room to put anything on it).