To think it will soon become more normal for families to live in smaller houses

[flipflopfloop]

With the recent rates increasing, borrowing costs are so high now that it would be at least 1200pcm in repayments for a small 2 bed house around here and it’s a relatively cheap area of the country. If not higher than this. Surely this will mean the days of having more bedrooms than people are numbered, and more and more families will have to make do with smaller living space - possibly leading to smaller family sizes even. I personally don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. They are building lots of new developments on the outskirts of our city with prices starting from 350 for a 2 bed. A 4 bed home with three useable bedrooms there is easily 450-500. I find it interesting to wonder who will occupy these as presumably they are not yet sold and you would have to have at least a 6 figure household income to be able to afford this.

Grew up in the 60s/70s
Everyone I knew lived in 3bed terraces with one family bathroom
very few children had a bedroom of their own as if families only had two kids they had a lodger in one of the bedrooms.
Generally a small family was 3 kids.

My parents grew up in Ireland
Mum 7 kids to two bedrooms and one other room that you cooked in. No water they had to walk to the well.
Dad 14 kids same size house, sleeping nose to tail just about everywhere they could. Also no water.

Dont think many have to live like that these days 🤣

Social housing drained pushing prices artificially high....now the norm. Only way to revert is a massive social housing rental build.
Can't see it happening but you can hope

One f/t min wage should at least buy/rent a 2 bed terrace with garden. (Obv probably never happened in London).

It's not older people in big houses that are the problem....it's political policy.

Social housing don't give each child their own room. There are families in social housing who are so overcrowded that the parents are sleeping on the couch. Children of opposite sex are not meant to share a bedroom over a certain age but in reality this doesn't often happen. I don't really understand your post to be honest, if those who are buying a house can't afford separate bedrooms for their children there will be a problem. Why? What problems? I am a private rental tenant, I can't foresee me ever being able to buy a house while my DC is young but I'm not upset at those in social housing. I would love to be able to own a home but it's unaffordable to most young families at present.

True that most people have running water now but re the lack of space, absolutely plenty of families live in similar circumstances. 62000 families housed in temporary accommodation last year and that typically means not even having a separate room to cook in, but just literally one room to live in, plus a kettle if they're lucky. So, nowhere to store/wash clothes, nowhere to store/cook food, nowhere to sit and sharing beds. Over 800000 families classed as overcrowded and over 300000 children are living in such overcrowded conditions that they have to share a bed with a family member. Regardless of three Yorkshiremen type stories of historic rural poverty, it is completely unacceptable for a third of a million children in a developed economy to not have a bed.

I didn’t say it was. OP suggested people will have to live in smaller houses in the future.
Clearly when compared to the recent past that is not the case.

Also temporary accommodation is just that. In the past temporary accommodation was the streets or the workhouse.( before the6 closed them all down)
Figures for overcrowding today would have been ridiculously large in comparison to the not very distant past.

So you see, what some are used to who may have been born 80s/90s in comparison is absolute luxury.

Hence my relevant examples of life in the not very distant past.

I believe the point the PP was making was that separate sexes after a certain age cannot share a bedroom…So for social housing they can be given, and should be, enough rooms to accommodate this.
In private housing of course no one dictates how many bedrooms you can squeeze your children into based on what their salary is.

We live in a 4 bed house and two of the bedrooms go unused because our two boys, despite having their own room, always want to share. Maybe it would be different if they HAD to share but they like their little chat before bed.
saying that, if one of them is ill or they’re messing around, I can use the other bedroom. But i do think there is a trend to thinking “oh I need a playroom, den, study etc” (especially in Australia where there was a short and insane fad for building TWO kitchens, one for using and one for kind of show?) but when you live in a house and don’t care what people think, you basically end up using the kitchen, bedroom, living room, dining room and maybe a study if you have one. We’ve got these things and also a den AND a games room and both these rooms are used very sparingly.
Even the garden is way too big for what we use. We’re renting at the moment and it’s so good as it’s totally made me reevaluate what’s actually necessary in a home and garden.

We have this 'problem' we bought an ex council and it has 3 double bedrooms, a utility and a separate dining room. But we want to move to a nicer area and school catchment. To buy a similar house to ours in size is double our mortgage which was unaffordable before the interest rates and now is impossible.

So we will have to stay put - despite despising the neighbours and location

Me and my partner both work FT. Rent a HA house, 2 bedrooms. There are 4 of us altogether so children share a bedroom. I can't see us ever being able to afford more, let alone ever buying.

I've never lived in a house with more bedrooms than people!

Growing up, family of 6, 4 bed house - parents, boys, girls, lodger.

Now, 3 bed house - dH&I, ds, dd. We couldn't have comfortably afforded more.