Why is this the case with house size in U.K.?

[febgate16]

On social media, why are there some Americans and Australians who went talking about the size of properties refer to houses that are like 1500 ft.² as “small” or “average”, when in U.K. that would be considered large and nobody would say such a thing?

Is this entitlement or just because they are accustomed to large houses?

I wonder are British people just accustomed to living in small houses.

Like if you have a British person who raised children in America or Australia, would those children in America or Australia compared to their cousins who grew up in the UK consider an average semi-detached house in the UK to be so small whereas their cousins in the UK would not?

Houses on average are bigger there. Related to population density (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density) (how much space you have to build in) and probably also to an extent GDP per capita (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita) (what you can afford to build).

What I find odd about some of those big American houses is how much space the houses designate to a hall/entrance.

Also the houses where the gardens etc aren’t enclosed and people can walk around the house

Geez not entitled at all. I grew up in Canada and as others have said houses are just bigger over there. I was (and I don’t use this word lightly) shocked at the size of a lot of flats and homes in the UK. Like when there is a ‘four’ bed house and the fourth bedroom is the size of a closet?

Terraced houses were known as town houses (where I’m from) and where people without a lot of money lived. Apartments and condos tend to be for young people or older people.

Oh and I grew up with a swimming pool which is VERY normal in Canada but clearly not here.

We say it because it’s true and it is quite shocking not because we are entitled. Again geez.

It's the amount of land, they just have way more, so 'ordinary' houses are simply bigger. It's not showing off.

Yes, average UK houses are extremely tiny by e.g. European standards, but people here don't seem to care. I grew up in Eastern Europe in a standard 3-bed semi, but our living room and all the bedrooms were really big by UK standards + a large garden around the house. I now live in the UK in a 100-year old 3-bedroom semi with very small bedrooms. My mom was mortified when she visited, not only by the size and age of the building, but by the tiny, creaky, wooden stairs and the moving floor. All my relatives in my home country have really large houses which they've built from scratch by buying land and the plan from the architect, etc. And none of them are big earners, just average people. It takes 3-4 years sometimes, but it's for life.
Back home every private individual can just buy a plot of land and start building, but here it's near to impossible, with all the green belts and regulations, so it's all sold to big companies, who make a lot of profit building tiny homes and selling them to ordinary people.

Well they’re not really. They’re paying go the value of the property. There’s usually a reason the price is high. And some people will pay to have it.

No, I don’t just mean Manhattan. It’s comparable in many areas, but if you wanted to compare with areas in Manhattan then probably Mayfair and the Upper East Side. If you look outside of Manhattan, then Williamsburg is on a par with Shoreditch, and you have the more suburban areas of Westchester being similar to Richmond.

yeah, that is bonkers, giving sqm or sqft is much better

Well, yes. But you can't say that Idaho is the same size as Nottinghamshire.

My brothers partner is a nurse in Georgia USA - her house is a mansion, on a huge plot.

If you have an EPC cert it'll be on there.

Haha this reminded me when my mom visited and literally climbed up the stairs as she found them so steep!

Its not about cheaper vs most expensive costs, its cheaper to build a stick framed (wood) house in USA/Canada than it is to build a block framed house, but likewise in UK go and try and build a wood house and see how much that costs you compared to block built home. Both are cheap building materials. Its more about availability of materials and not necessarily whats available today but what has been historically available as skills & standards build up around that and you end up with a lock in cost and its hard to switch entire industries later on.

If you ignore remote land Canada has more expensive land and more expensive building costs than UK does (outside London) and the homes are still bigger. USA is obviously cheaper land and cheaper to build than UK, but again homes are similar sized in Canada & USA. I don't cost is the major driver there.

Or seen a map

My garden is like that. I’m not entirely sure where the boundary is between me and my neighbours. It’s never been an issue in nearly 20 years of living here.

Also, and this will horrify most Mumsnetters, school kids walk along my driveway and through my woods to get to school.

So many reasons why probably, but one thing I will say that is quite different from Canada where I lived most of my life is that in Canada/USA/Australia prices are generally per square foot (or meter), with little consideration for number of rooms for example. In Canada we have rules about minimum room sizes. In UK you have 65 square meter homes sold as 3 bedroom places with a single room in it that is 7 by 8 feet, even modern standards are like 70 square feet. In Canada you couldn't sell this as a bedroom, looking at 10 x 10 or 100 square feet minimum typically. In UK the price difference between a similar 80 sq meter 3 bed and 100 sq meter 3 bed wont be that different for a builder, but their costs will be 20% higher, in Canada/USA their costs would be 20% higher but so would their selling price, so there is no incentive for them to build smaller than the potential buyer wants.

Also zoning, in Canada (and USA too and i think australia probably as well but unsure) we have zoning done by an entire area, we don't do planning permissions individually like you do in the UK. They wouldn't let you build a house that small for most residentials zoning.

New builds are also very different in the markets as well. Canada/USA has a lot more self builds which are rare in UK, as UK likes to offload land to large developers only and doesn't usually approve for them to carve it up and sell individual plots whereas in Canada/USA when a developer buys land, they quite often just subdivide it into smaller plots and sell them.

So much more than that, but just one aspect.

I think land availability is a cop out as if the demand and will was there for british people, they would just build up rather than out and could still have larger homes.

I realise that the footprint of most "ordinary" homes in UK is relatively small on its own. But as pp said, it's what we are used to.

I've often thought that (where the subsoil allows) that all new builds should have a full size basement and a full attic conversion at build stage. That doubles the size. I do realise that basements are not feasible in some areas due to the water table etc. but where they are they should be incorporated.

I am green with envy about basements in the US. Green I tell ya!

I think land availability is a cop out as if the demand and will was there for british people, they would just build up rather than out and could still have larger homes.

That wouldn’t be allowed. Land is so expensive and developers are greedy. They want to squeeze as many properties as possible onto the land they buy. Houses will literally be a foot from their next door neighbours. Houses sold as ‘detached’ will have a gap between them that it is too narrow for a human to get through.

If they built them high, there would be no light. And if they built them bigger, they would never sell them. They would cost twice as much as an average UK home. Our shortage is of affordable housing. There are big houses available but the vast majority of people can’t afford to buy them.

UK house builders don't want us to think about houses in terms of square feet or meters because then they would find it difficult to put high prices on houses with small rooms, but call it 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and people will pay more than they might for 4 more sensibly sized bedrooms on the same plot, even if the 5 bedroom has 2 or even 3 bedrooms that quite small.

Uk has small houses.

I love how that's your contribution to the thread 🤣

I mean flats. There are entire countries where its the norm to live in flats and people regularly live in 2000 square foot flats. There is no reason why they have to be small, you can build mid rises everywhere, and a lot of high rises too, Im just saying land availablity is a weak excuse.

I was raised in the UK in a small semi-detached 1930s property. Three bedrooms, one of which was a guest room, for a family with two parents and two children, boy and girl.
I now live in the US in a 1850s Brown Stone terrace in a major city, within a historic district. Our house has five floors, including the basement, and six bedrooms, each large enough to hold a king bed plus a seating area.
My son, on visiting my parents' home, age five, ran up the stairs and asked, loudly, "But's where's the rest of the house?" He was absolutely astonished.
Of course, there are major issues with living in the US the moment, which would be a whole other thread, although living in a Democratic state on the east coast, isn't like living in the Deep South. But, when I compare my home with my parents' house, it makes my parents' house seem not fit for purpose.

My UK bedroom was the box room. It was miniature. No space for a desk - I did all my homework on my bed - no storage, the bed crammed against the damp outside wall, directly underneath the drafty window.
The bedrooms were right next to each other, so I would hear every creak from my parents' bedroom activities (grim to listen to as a child) and every conversation throughout the house. Now, our bedroom is on a completely separate floor from my child's room and all rooms have ample, separate storage in the form of walk in wardrobes. In our room, we have a walk-thru fitted wardrobe, a cedar-cabinet lined room for clothes, that then leads to our separate upstairs sitting room.
In the UK, there was one rather damp bathroom, with an inadequate shower that barely trickled. The walls ran with condensation. There is a bathroom or half bath on every floor in my home, all with spa-like facilities and heated underfloors. Sometimes, I read posts on Mumsnet with people saying, "I would hate to have an en suite! Imagine having bathroom smells and noises in the bedroom." That might be the case if you have a tiny en-suite stuffed into the corner of an already too small bedroom, but our en-suite is a whole separate room, far far away from the bed.
When I visit my parent as I guest, I sleep on a roll-out yoga mat underneath the dining room table. Here, we have a whole guest suite with bathroom, mini-kitchette, and sitting room.

Our house is one of the smaller ones in our neighborhood. We are wealthier than my parents were, but I don't know anyone who lives in a house anywhere near as small as theirs.

They do build flats. The average flat size in the UK is 460 sq feet. They’re not going to start building 2000 sq feet flats and sell them for the same price as a 460ft flat. They’d charge four times as much and nobody would be able to afford to buy them.

Land availability is the actual reason for that, not an excuse.

@Ruthietuthie If you live in an entire brownstone in US you are well above the average earner bordering on rich . Average price at least $4 million ?

I have been in Manhattan apartments where the kids had bunk beds slotted into an alcove in a hallway .