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?

It's not really true that America and Australia have limitless space. Both have vast areas where nobody could realistically live - deserts, tropical / swamp areas, mountain regions that are bigger than western Europe, areas where there's very limited water supply and no infrastructure.

Developers are not that thick - they would price them exactly at the point where they would be affordable to a small segment of the market. Only if building in a very desirable postcode would they think of a number above ten and then add half a dozen zeros to it, and they would still sell, to investors/ money launderers.

I agree British housing is low quality. Developers have the people where they want them.

But American housing outside of cities isn't all enormous. The vast majority of people in rural America live in very ordinary, small homes, mainly prefabricated on a concrete slab. Housing within big city limits tends to be older stock, and small (though usually with a basement).

Think of your typical big city east of the Mississippi as a circle with concentric rings around it. In the middle of the city you generally have a central retail/ business and expensive housing district, always high rise. Surrounding that, there's typically areas of redevelopment, with converted warehouses and newer residential and retail, mainly medium rise. Then you have your residential and mixed small manufacturing areas, with retail areas mixed in. These areas can have housing of various kinds, mostly single family homes with a lot of older, three or four storey brick-built apartment buildings of the Victorian and Edwardian periods and on to the interwar period (1879s to 1930s). Some of this housing was soecifically envisioned as housing for workers. This belt often encompasses the close-in suburbs of the big city. After that, there's usually a belt of post war small houses, built for the returning GIs. These belts are recognizable for their similarity to the typical British housing development of completely uniform houses. They're solidly built and even back in the late 40s and early 50s they were affordable, with a basement and their own plot (in my metro area this is 25' frontage and 50' deep) and detached garage at the rear of the plot, accessible via the rear alley running parallel to the street. Then you get a belt of 60s to 80s housing, with ranch styles predominating closer in and gradually morphing into McMansion territory. Affordable homes in the outer belts tend not to have basements.

You can find pockets of mansions in all the residential belts. There cam also be pockets of slums or public housing, but this was usually built away from the mansion pockets.

I live in the US now and bar a few of the big cities, mainly on the east coast (NYC, Boston, etc), properties are much MUCH bigger here. DP’s parents have very normal jobs - primary school teacher and builder - and they live in a big house with a huge garden and swimming pool. They have 3 cars and a boat. Very outdoorsy lifestyle.

The quality of life for low-middle earners is on a whole other level from the UK.

What are property taxes & utility costs like in the US vs here?

I think building quality is actually better, at least on terms of sturdiness. It being a trope of US TV shows that people punch through walls when they're angry etc. whereas if you tried that in the UK/Europe you would break your fist.
But UK houses are often older and therefore harder to insulate/built with different standards in mind. And a lot of new build houses are crap for sure. But I think the US has that issue too- just the hastily put together houses are larger.

House sizes in US do vary but they can be equivalent in size to uk in especially in city suburbs or where they are brick built ( due to cost). Size and cost is based on land cost and build type (due to weather or earthquake risk), so a hot weather state on more stable land (Texas) will have bigger wood built houses, but the closer they get to a city the smaller they become for the same price. Also cost of houses in certain states is kept lower due to lower property state taxes, so the houses are bigger.

I owned a 'big' house in Australia (big by British standards, average by Aussie). I hated it, way too big & vast and not cosy. The standards of building were cheap, I called it the tissue box house (brick veneer with plaster board )& it was cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer.

Interesting that you mention the Netherlands because houses are bigger over there!

But no matter how big their house, in the US when someone stays over, they always have to make up a bed on the couch, so seemingly no spare bedrooms. In movies at least.

I'm Danish and I miss that about home! So convenient for storage and utility.

New Zealand houses are bigger and were traditionally set on 1/4 acre sections. Not all though. On the flip side mist of our older stock are poorly insulated and only newer houses have double glazing. I also believe we cant double brick as you do in the UK as we have an earthquake risk.

Our houses are getting smaller with our growing population and apartment living is even being promoted in the cities.

1. the UK is a small place with a dense population so space is at a premium. Australia and the US are roughly the same size and are absolutely huge.
2. The majority of towns and villages in the UK have housing that is older than the countries of the US and Australia. A large proportion of UK housing stock was built before 1946, meaning that needs, lifestyles and budgets were very different then.
3. The Industrial Revolution took off in the UK far more than the US and Australia, meaning a lot of housing that we still use today was purpose built for low income workers in urban areas.
4. infrastructure. With the exception of big cities - NYC and Chicago, the vast majority of US cities rely on driving as the primary mode of transport. If everybody is using a car, housing can be far more spread out and still commutable. In the UK where public transport use is much more common, people sacrifice space for being closer to transport hubs.

That's the problem though, if land availability is the issue, then it shouldn't be 4x the price because most of the cost should be the land... haha, so which is it?

@helplessbananaYou make very little dent in the housing need in this country if you build larger houses with bigger gardens only.

It’s usually the case that smaller developers build larger homes in very desirable areas where people have money. Building huge £1 million houses where there’s mostly terraced Edwardian houses with a price of £200,000 would be ludicrous. Who would buy them?

Also planning permission! The need for social housing determines density of properties to some extent. As we need housebuilders to build - no local authority has the skills, so it’s ridiculous to keep attacking them. They are not a public service. They are having to work with planners and councils to deliver homes and it’s very slow!

We have decent enough housing quality. Some isn’t great but ideas like concrete houses have been ditched. Local authorities plan where homes should go and if houses sell well, the developers and local authorities haven’t got the house building strategy wrong.

Big houses with big gardens will take a lot more green fields to build! Never forget that! We don’t have millions of acres of poor agricultural land waiting for development.

The four times the price was in response to someone saying that they could just build flats the size of US flats, by building up instead of out. Flats in the US are on average four times the size of UK flats. If they built flats four times bigger than average in the UK, they would then charge four times as much for them.

If they couldn’t do that (and they couldn’t - most people here could never get a mortgage for a £1M flat), then it would be more profitable for them to split that space into 4 smaller units and sell those 4 smaller flats (as they’re currently doing)

It's just what they are used to. Plus in a lot of places the land etc is way cheaper. A friend in Florida bought a 3 bed for less than £130,000 for example with massive garden and drive etc

Same for my family there in Florida. BIL is a firefighter, wife is a teacher, they own a one story house, living room kitchen 4 bedrooms 4 bathrooms, pantry/messy room , laundry room, double garage, huge yard and a pool. Very typical away from the coast (obvs on the coast or inter coastal this would be $$$$) but anywhere 30-40 mins drive from the coast is huge and super affordable. My kids want to move there as with two high paying professional jobs we can afford a cramped Victorian house in London and super small back garden and they share a room!

@Btwmum23 Yes but look at what London offers! Hardly a comparison. I’d look to a town within commuting distance of London because the life you lead isn’t just your home! It’s much more than that.

And WFH is distorting this further. We would now ideally like a large four bed plus a study upstairs and downstairs, but such things are not yet being built.

A house near us went on for 1.25m and went for under, and I always thought that the layout was quite outdated for a newbuild - six ensuite bedrooms, but one massive open plan room downstairs. Massive square footage, but not very practical for a family.

Totally agree! That’s why I would never move to the US!

Our house is a 2 bed and 750sq ft. 1500 is larger than most homes in the uk

@Wowdy 1500 Sq ft is a fairly large semi or smaller detached or townhouse. I’ve sold 2 two bed terraced houses and they were 550 sq ft! So 1500 is bigger but hardly large, just a family house for 4 people. Many suburban houses are this size from around 1925. Earlier houses were often smaller and we’ve reverted to that for newer 2 bed houses. Mine were 1990s.

It can't be that hard to understand that people's life experiences influence how they view things?

I grew up in a vast Victorian mansion. Pretty much all houses seem tiny to me in comparison. We have a nice five bedroom detached house but to me it feels quite small. It's even more interesting watching my mum, who has lived in large mansions her whole life, as she looks positively uncomfortable in what most people would view as a decent normal sized house.

Price wise our houses aren't that different either it's just that my parents house is in the rural North whereas ours is in the expensive southeast