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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to wonder why new houses are so badly designed?

192 replies

StarlingMurmuration · 03/07/2015 14:59

We're planning to move house soon and I've just spent an enjoyable though frustrating half hour on Rightmove, wondering why on earth modern houses are so poorly designed. We have been renting a small three bed new build terrace, with a WC on the ground floor, and a family bathroom and ensuite on the first floor... I liked my ensuite but at the same time thought it was ridiculous as two of the three bedrooms were significantly smaller than they needed to be to allow the ensuite to fit. But I've just seen a house that takes the biscuit. A four bed, three floor semi with five (FIVE!) toilets/bathrooms. A WC on the ground floor and one on the first floor, a family bathroom and two ensuites. Meanwhile the master bedroom and the second bedroom with ensuites are both tiny (9'5" x 8'11"), and the other bedrooms are even smaller. Why in earth do developers think people want so many bathrooms at the expense of actual room space? AIBU to find this infuriating, or does everyone else actually ant five toilets in a four bedroom house?

OP posts:
StarlingMurmuration · 03/07/2015 17:19

YY to the five bedroom houses with two bedrooms in the attic! And then the living space is really out of proportion. And no understairs cupboard because the fiftieth toilet is in there.

I must confess, I do like having an ensuite, and I suppose if we had a massive luxury five bed place, another ensuite for guests wouldn't go amiss, but only if the bedrooms were decent. This is just about acceptable: cdn-redrow-cms-co-uk-theraft.netdna-ssl.com/-/media/redrow-co-uk/files/properties/s/sudeley-v4/cerney-on-the-water-south-cerney/17759-the-sudeley-layout-1.pdf

Though in saying that, we looked round a redrow development and the utility rooms were mostly too small to have a separate washer and dryer! The horror.

OP posts:
TheseSoles · 03/07/2015 17:19

the nice thing about a downstairs loo is that if it's a big one, large enough to have a wetroom/shower, get a wheelchair in there etc. You could live in that house forever and never move. Very environmentally friendly.

If you're trying to save space and be practical in ways that appeal to a lot of different people I think a shower room downstairs and a big family bathroom upstairs is a nice layout. Leaves space for storage but still flexible.

I don't like ensuite anyway though!

ExitPursuedByABear · 03/07/2015 17:34

That's what we have. So when I broke my foot I could sleep downstairs and use the loo and sink.

EllieFAntspoo · 03/07/2015 17:34

Housebuilders build what sells. You may not like it, but they (the successful ones at least) have built million pound businesses on knowing exactly what they can sell, for what price, to whom.

It is akin to asking, 'Why do shops sell such cheap crap clothing?' The answer is, that's what the vast majority of people want to buy.

Personally, I would not consider buying a property from a housebuilder built within the last two decades. look at it like buying a car. You're better to let someone else buy the 'new homes' and then buy it after they more out, and all settlement, quality, and maintenance issues have made themselves known.

Quality has dropped right across the board in house building. There isn't the money in the market to justify a decent return to an Architect, so most are design and build (read builder does what the F he likes), and the industry no longer employs professional QA procedures/personnel to inspect the build.

A far wiser investment would be either, buying a piece of land and managing your own build (you could save yourself about 30% of the retail value of a property by doing it this way, but you need to be looking at build costs of £150K+ to realise a decent saving. The economics just don't work on lower priced properties), or buy an old characterful building somewhere, Victorian, Georgian, Edwardian, whatever, somewhere where the community changes little, the amenities and transport are well established, and your property price isn't going to be affected in any meaningful way by volatility in the market.

I love Rightmove. It's a great site for window shopping homes.

lljkk · 03/07/2015 17:50

AT least loos are useful rooms. I really hate cathedral ceilings, waste space, in California houses.

MIL's comment on a house we looked at with 4 toilet/bath rooms:

"All that cleaning!!"

she's right you know. & YANBU to OP.

Glitteryfrog · 03/07/2015 17:52

What happened to cellars?
I live in a Victorian terrace which has a fairly dry cellar its so useful.
Ours is essentially our shed/storage.

TheseSoles · 03/07/2015 17:56

The cleaning is not appealing!

TBH, we're keeping an eye out because we want a 4bed, and they are building masses of new build in our area but they are all terrible designs! I have given up and don't even look at them anymore. I had a look just now in case I had missed anything, but no. Thought I saw a good one with reasonable downstairs layout and then realised that both Bed3 and Bed4 were tiny boxrooms. Hmm

I know most people have 2 kids not 3 and therefore I am prepared to accept the 4th bedroom being a bit smaller, but how would that even work with 2 kids? Does one just share both box rooms? Leaving the parents with no office/storage space?

tobysmum77 · 03/07/2015 18:00

We actually got rid of an ensuite Grin . I don't know anyone else who has done that..... we never, ever, ever used it. And the master bedroom now has space for a wardrobe!

Pipbin · 03/07/2015 18:03

YANBU.
I had a friend who lived in a two bed flat. The living space was so small that it could only be really lived in by a couple; a kitchen just big enough for a very small table and the living room was only big enough for two very small sofas. Yet it had two full sized bathrooms!

I swear in the future historians will look back at this time and conclude that everyone was incontinent.

DawnOfTheDoggers · 03/07/2015 18:12

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Mygardenistoobig · 03/07/2015 18:22

Yanbu

I viewed a four bed town house 3 toilets good sizes bedrooms the downstairs was disproportionately small and very impractical .

MrsHathaway · 03/07/2015 18:37

When I'm in charge there will be rules about how dense new build can be. Specifically, the square footage of the building must not exceed the square footage of the plot (so a two-storey building can't have a footprint greater than half the total plot, and three stories no greater than a third).

The new builds I see are all town houses (three storey terrace without the taint of poverty) or detached. Why isn't anyone building semis any more? All the longed-for 30s-70s houses are semi-detached and they're very practical.

I must say though that new build flats are much better designed than new build houses. Clever use of space and lots of fitted wardrobes as standard.

EllieFAntspoo · 03/07/2015 18:40

I can understand wanting his/hers ensuites once you have his/hers bathrooms, and if you still need a family bathroom at that stage, and a WC downstairs, that's 4 toilet/bathrooms. But then at that stage We'd be employing a cleaner anyways.

Pipbin · 03/07/2015 18:49

When we were looking for houses I would entertain anywhere that didn't have storage for an ironing board and vacuum cleaner. I suspect many new builds would fail.

SeraOfeliaFalfurrias · 03/07/2015 18:57

YANBU. We're house-hunting and have seen such gems as:

  1. The lovely townhouse with the top-floor master suite so well-designed that between the box over the stairs and the dorma windows there wasn't actually space for a double bed.

  2. The 4-bed house with a huge ensuite off the master, but with such small rooms otherwise that there was no space for storage of any kind in any of them so the owners had turned the 4th bedroom into a walk-wardrobe for everyone.

WTAF!?!?!

EllieFAntspoo · 03/07/2015 18:57

MrsHathaway - When you say 'in charge' I take it you mean countrywide? Imposing that sort of restriction (de-cluttering/less building per sq.m of land) dramatically increases the value of land, and therefor drives up house prices. That in turn excludes the younger generations from owning homes, unless you throw millions into subsidy schemes and welfare.

The free market may result in more cluttered living in areas where housing is required most, but it is at least equitable when it isn't being meddled with by government.

As regards modern flats, most are now 5-6 storeys of timber kit, built around a concrete staircore with an outer skin of brick/block and pressed metal panels. The shrinkage/settlement, and the movement back and forth, of the timber structure is substantial compared to the outer skin of the building, and this inevitably leads to problems with window cills, balconies, copes, etc. Modern flats are a plethora of faulty design and poor workmanship, all nicely concealed behind plaster and paint, and all there because timber kits go up in half the time a steel and concrete building does.

You may pay £350K for a nice new flat and get a magnum of champaign and complementary bathrobes when you move in, but those titbits pale into insignificance when you find your warranty and indeed your rights to redress faults are virtually insignificant.

Yes, it might be well laid out and have lots of cupboards, but it won't still be standing in thirty years, and it won't be waterproof in five.

lljkk · 03/07/2015 19:02

I hate en suites. Don't want to sleep next to the toilet.

Could have bigger gardens & just as many houses in same space, if new estate roads were laid out in simple straight lines. I hate the ridiculous curvy cul-de-sac road layouts of modern housing estates.

DisappointedOne · 03/07/2015 19:10

lljkk it's obviously flat where you live then!

FraggleHair · 03/07/2015 19:12

I don't like new build flats either. A block of 'luxury' apartments were built near me and I got to have a good peek at every stage of the build. They flew up in a matter of weeks and the walls looked like the flimsiest plasterboard with sheets of blue plastic in between.

Oldraver · 03/07/2015 19:12

MrsHatthaway.. I would love to be in charge of 'rules' of new builds.

We have a huge estate were we live that was built around 2000-20007.. the planners thought it would be a lovely idea to promote people walking and cycling, and didnt want cars to be seen. So they made the developers design houses not with traditional drives but with car parks round the back...but only allocated 1.5 spaces per house.

Cue 10 years later and there are cars all over the road anyway as parking is a nightmare ....and they didnt think to put double yellows to keep the roads 'car free'.. This has meant that there are lots of town houses that have doors that open directly onto the street ala Coronation Street. If you walk round on weekend it seems like a ghost town as there are no 'fronts' to houses

serenmoon · 03/07/2015 19:15

Is there one of the big developers who has better designed houses than the rest? I like the idea of a brand new house but find it so depressing when k actually look at the room layout and sizes.

DisappointedOne · 03/07/2015 19:24

Ours was built (12 years ago) by a small family run building firm. I think the houses are the right sizes for the plots, we don't feel like we're on top of one another.

Our house has 4 beds inside, 3 of which are on the back of the house. Bathrooms are at the front and only as big as they need be (1family bath and 1 ensuite). There's lots of glass, so very light, and the reception rooms are good sizes. The only thing that pees me off occasionally is that the living room is 25ft long and 13ft wide, with the door and fire place in the middle of the 2 long walls. Makes furniture placement a bit awkward!

MrsHathaway · 03/07/2015 19:26

Sera round here they're more like £100k and brick. I agree that shoddy construction is a false economy.

No, not countrywide, just here. The council specifies %age green space in new builds here but it's across the whole estate so a swing park or tennis court satisfies the requirement and increases the desirability. Population density isn't a pressing issue out her in the sticks so it's sort of preventative, protecting drainage and so on.

PiratePanda · 03/07/2015 19:27

YADNBU. I cannot stand the trend for hundreds of bathrooms.

That being said, new builds are not all awful. Our new 3-bed is ten years old, all the bedrooms are big doubles, there's "only" a downstairs loo, a family bathroom, and an en suite for the master bed, and it has a full size garage AND a full size loft, plus a garden. It's a three-story town house so the sitting room is on the first floor, which I guess is a bit odd, but we love it. Wide hallway and stairs and a big kitchen-diner too.

lljkk · 03/07/2015 19:28

What does flat have to do with curvy roads or cul-de-sacs? SF has steep hills & the streets are laid out in a grid pattern.

This rental is in a neighbourhood where all the parking is around the back, tiny yards, and it was a lovely cosy family neighbourhood before it became a tourist mecca.