To ask all Americans here

[OftenHangry]

What's up with the houses in US???
Is it real or is it just in movies? I tried to google some pictures and it looks real.

How come houses have 2 giant living rooms, gigantic kitchen, probs even a dining room, yet when couple has an argument it's "Slee on a sofa" thing. Considering the size of downstairs, there should be enough space upstair to house even an extended family, yet one always sleeps on a sofa...
Applues to ginormous flats too btw. Can't believe a flat which has living area bigger than my upstairs and downstairs would have 1 bedroom😳.

It's been bugging me for years...

I'm not American, but I reckon that as a plot device flouncing off to sleep in the lovely cosy second bedroom wouldn't portray quite the same level of angst as sleeping on the sofa.

Especially a pull-out futon type that'll kill their back.

My sister has whole bloody flats in the basement and the top floor of her house. Of course she does live in AFN that doesn’t even have pavements, but the views are very pretty.

It's not a bad question... the space in most homes is horrendously badly used. I'm not kidding. And it's the same with American cars. They're like Reverse Tardises. Huge on outside but pokey on inside.

My cousin's 2 story house is nominally 3bed + 2 living + an office. Its foundations (including double garage) probably takes up about 10m by 14m (so pretty big).

She has a cathedral ceiling at entrance (ceiling is all the way up to top floor ceiling). This makes the house seem huge. It's generous but not huge at all. The cathedral ceiling is a huge waste of space that could be a whole extra bedroom (or 2).

All open plan from the large foyer entrance to kitchen to den. Small bathroom, small office & laundry cupboard off the den space. Upstairs 2 small-medm bedrooms, 1 accessible bathroom & an enormous bedroom with huge ensuite bathroom. (literally >2x bigger than other bed/bath).

If the office isn't set up for sleeping in, then it's a house for a couple with just 2 kids. A couple rowing, one of them might well need to sleep on the sofa.

My DH and I just closed the purchase of a newly constructed home in a suburb of Atlanta,Georgia yesterday. My new house has 2600 square feet. Three bedrooms and three full bathrooms with a bonus room upstairs. It's a craftsman style home with an open floor plan. The kitchen has a huge island with granite counters. There's a laundry room. There's a fireplace and a small back yard. All floors are hardwood except the bathrooms are tiled and bonus room is carpeted.Two car garage. We are very fortunate but both work full time and have been married 26 years. We swear this is our last move. Lived in an apartment for six months while the house was built.

Forgot to say there's a dining room and a concrete patio outside in the back

What is a bonus room?

If you were to believe the movies on the subject of American housing then you would believe that in NYC everyone lives in either a Brownstone or a vast loft apartment. Outside of the city it’s a fabulous clapboard property with an enormous porch.

In the UK almost everyone lives in quaint Villages in gorgeous manor houses or perhaps the type of swoony home occupied by the Brown family in Paddington.

I guess reality doesn’t sell many movies.

Everything in America is bigger. Washing machines, cars, size of crisp packets, everything. Including houses. And beds.

But yeah, the 'sleep on the sofa' is usually just a plot device.

England has the smallest average home size anywhere in Europe, and American homes are larger still. Obviously not all Americans have large homes, but on average they are much bigger than we're used to.

I’m not really understanding the question - is it about sleeping on the sofa in a huge house or why just the huge house? When I was in a lg house (3200 Square feet not including full basement) and my dh snored I slept in the spare bedroom, one of them, we had 5 bedrooms.

Are you asking if these giant houses in America really exist, it’s yes they certainly do. We are now in what we consider a medium sized and irs 2500 sq feet, 4 bedroom.

If you are asking how...it’s simple really we have Land!

Thanks all.
I was really just flabbergasted when I saw square footage of some 2 bed properties. Could easily be 3-4 bed. It looks like the upstairs foot print doesn't match downstairs.

I grew up in a country with big houses, but the size of the ground floor reflects upstairs. If you have mass downstairs, you have at least 3 bed upstairs. All nice double/king size. Because what's double bed in uk is classed as 1.5 in there.

Agree that sleeping on a sofa adds drama in movies 😁

I grew up in the US. I think the answer is the same there as here: because people still can only afford so many bedrooms. Square footage is bigger, but if you need a 3 bed house, you buy a 3 bed house. Where else would someone sleep besides the sofa in that scenario? If you have two kids in their rooms and you’re kicking your partner out of your’s presumably? There aren’t extra bedrooms.

That said, for all the extra square feet, American houses are relatively inexpensive. But they are a terrible investment. Not only is the cost of living quite high relative to salaries (think like $2000 just on health insurance), but house values are very unstable. It’s not unusual at all to end up selling a house for $100,000 less than what you bought it for. I looked up my childhood home the other day. It’s valued at $20,000 less than what we sold it for in 2003! So unless you’re rich, there’s not really money for extra sleeping space in a house when property is otherwise such a poor investment.

What is a bonus room?

I'm not American but spend a huge amount of time there ... a bonus room is literally just an extra space which doesn't get listed among the usual rooms in a house

This can be because it's in an odd place - often over the garage, linked onto another room or even in the roof - or because it lacks something you'd expect a "average" room to have, such as a suitably high ceiling, a window, a normal shape or something else

They're brilliant, though, and IME extra space is always a good thing

Many of th really big American homes for people who aren't rich are way out in distant suburbs so people have very long commutes to their jobs. They're also often badly constructed (which is why they're referred to as "McMansions"). They're built to look better than they actually are (hence the cathedral ceilings). When I lived there the people I knew (young successful professionals) preferred to pay more for smaller homes closer to work and urban amenities rather than to buy less expensive but larger houses out in the 'burbs.

We hired a house in New Jersey. It was amazing. Huge kitchen, living room, 2 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms .... but then a huge basement which was basically a hidden apartment underground with its own kitchen, bathroom and utility room. I love America.

Depends on where you live.

I grew up in a large house (5000 sq ft) with circular drive, swimming pool, on 2 acres of land in a great neighbourhood but in the midwest. My parents sold it and moved to a smaller house with no property maintenance (still is just over 3000 sq ft) but in a nice suburb of Philly for the same price as the house they sold.

More sobering, they have a studio in New York City in a prime location (5th Avenue) which is worth twice the house they were living in!

I know what you mean OP, like if you watch Modern Family the Dunphy house looks massive to me, big living space/kitchen/office but its only a 3 bed and the girls were sharing? Surely it could be a 4 bed easily.

My bonus room upstairs is huge with a full bathroom and closet just no door so cannot call it a fourth bedroom will be used as an office

The American TV house that makes the least sense is Lorelei Gilmore's

Downstairs :

Lounge, Kitchen, Rory's room

Upstairs :

One Bathroom, Lorelai's room

Exterior: Easily a 4 or 5 bedroom house

Rooms tend to be large in US houses. It was one of the things I had to get used to when I moved here.

In the house I grew up in, the 500 -sq feet were divvied out as follows:

Basement: utility room, mum's flower decorating room, tv/game room, billiard table room, shower room

Ground Floor: library, master bedroom suite (bedroom, WIC, bathroom with double whirlpool and shower), living room, tea room (where mum grew her orchids), dining room, kitchen/family room, 2nd kitchen, laundry room

First floor: 4 ensuite bedrooms, one with walk-in closet. Weirdly, the room with walk-in closet was the guest room! The walk-in closet had windows and could fit a cot in the middle (I used it as a baby's room when I visited).

5000 not 500 square feet.

I'm Canadian and it is the same as the States here. House sizes run from tiny to huge. I think my house at 1300 sq ft is small but it's what one is used too. Our countries are also large so more room to spread subdivisions out. Downtown living usually has much smaller sq ft, every one is squished in a smaller area. Lots of people have the mentality that bigger is better and keeping up with the Joneses, not everyone mind you. Sleeping on the sofa is usually just something we say to mean someone is in the doghouse lol. There is also the tiny house movement to reduce living expenses, foot print, have freedom. I have always loved the look of British home and villages, so beautiful!

My DH and I just closed the purchase of a newly constructed home in a suburb of Atlanta,Georgia yesterday. My new house has 2600 square feet. Three bedrooms and three full bathrooms with a bonus room upstairs. It's a craftsman style home with an open floor plan. The kitchen has a huge island with granite counters. There's a laundry room. There's a fireplace and a small back yard. All floors are hardwood except the bathrooms are tiled and bonus room is carpeted.Two car garage. We are very fortunate but both work full time and have been married 26 years. We swear this is our last move. Lived in an apartment for six months while the house was built

What’s all that got to do with the price of fish!

Bear in mind that a room has to have a built in wardrobe / closet to be classified as a bedroom. So although British houses would squeeze in an extra bedroom or two in the same space, it's not always possible to do this in an American house

Plus - re the sleeping on the sofa thing - bigger houses lead to bigger furniture. So the sofa is probably as big as - if not bigger - than a single bed would be

I grew up in Canada, and moved back to the UK (North Wales) as a teen.
For our 5 bedroom, two kitchen (long story) two bathroom, three reception room house with a swimming pool, we got a 4 bedroom house in the suburbs 20 miles from Chester.
Where space is not an issue, large houses are affordable.