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.

@Ourladycheesusedatum maybe this is a class thing too because I was born in 61- we had pretty nice homes- 4 bed semi, 4 bed detached when I was growing up and we never had en-suites or study's either- but this was in a mining town. Nor did any of my friends- the height of sophistication for us was a utility room and a knocked through lounge / diner

WFH definitely has an impact on number of rooms needed but lots of other things have moved from nice to have to essential in the last few years.

Well you must have been more privileged than me because I grew up in the North West in the 80s/90s and I can assure you most kids shared a room and an en suite was only for the 'posh'.

For those of us in social housing, it's been the way since the 90s.

We now have children spending their entire childhoods in 1 bed hostels with their entire families.

It's nice the middle classes are finally seeing what everyone else has had to put up with.

Oh God this reminds me, most homes I lived in back then had a hatch from kitchen to dining room.

I'm trying to remember cos it's a bloody eon ago, but most of my friends had a room each, only those with large families had to share. So most of those on my estates had 1 or 2 or 3 children. Easily a room a piece. Those with many more children obviously had to share. And I think the fjning room was often pressed into service as a bedroom.
We all had pretty good size gardens too I think.

I do remember one friend who had "gasp " a sunken bath. Height of luxury that was, we all stared at it thinking they really were fancy. Red carpet and all. Makes me cringe now.

Mixed feelings about this one because I tend to read all the references to ‘storage’ as evidence of our massive overconsumption. We really, really need to stop producing and buying so much of everything-clothes, kitchen gadgets, sports stuff that only gets used once…whatever.

Not children though! We really need them. I hope all the miserable fuckers relentlessly voting against young people are looking forward to the massive wave of immigration we’re going to need to keep the country running. Currently it’s too expensive and scary (what a world to bring a child into!) for a lot of people to have kids, or the number of kids they would ideally like.

Ps love a kitchen hatch. Small adventurous children can make good use of them when auntie Sandra isn’t around

There will always be people who can afford a much larger house than they need.

UK average house sizes are already small compared to those in other Western countries: https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house/#google_vignette It can seem like nowhere is affordable in many parts of the UK, as many other countries have much, much cheaper rural properties.

Among university friends it was always the aim to establish a career and purchase a house before having DC, with most of us leaving it late. Hopefully this won't be pushed further.

Newer houses have lots of bathrooms.

We grew up in a 2 bed 1 bath - my sister and I shared a room. Lots of friends shared rooms - my best friend shared with his 2 brothers, his sister had the box room to herself.

true

and people idea of what they "need" varies a lot.

Ok but it’s comparative
because a 3 bed on our street went for £900k last month

so 290 is comparatively cheap

@Kazzyhoward that seems extraordinarily naive, I graduated over 20 years ago and can't think of anyone who didn't house share (except couples in one beds) for a few years, in any part of the country! I would have loved to rent on my own, but even once I could have just about afforded it, I accepted I needed to share to enable me to save the difference towards a deposit.

@Ourladycheesusedatum ha yes - we had 'the hatch ' and yes a big garden too.

We knew we were 'posh' because we had aluminium sliding patio doors!!!

Its nice is it ?

What a shitty comment

Our 3 bed home (for 4 people) has a ground floor, first floor and attic. In total 105 square metres. The attic can never be converted. So our living space is 70 square metres.

One bathroom.

One bedroom is tiny and officially the "box room" plus has the stairwell box in it but when we viewed had a double bed in! I would do a better job than previous family in making a double bed work.

I WFH (have done since 2019) and have a Secretary desk in the living room.

I'd like a second toilet but we've decided to make do here and not upsize because we're running out of money each month and couldn't afford a bigger mortgage.

So we are staying in a smaller house due to finances.

I live in a cottage flat otherwise known as a four in a block. Two flats upstairs and two downstairs. Each of us has our own front door (no shared entry) and front and back gardens. My block are two bedrooms, kitchen, living room and bathroom. Even these modest flats are now out of reach for any individual or couple with a household income below £50’000. My neighbour through the wall has had to put up stud walls in one of the bedrooms as they have two DC, one DS and one DD who at a guess are now 10 and 12.

Single parent with an 11 year old son and 8 year old daughter. I managed to scrape enough together to buy a very small house 6 years ago after splitting with the kids dad. Could only afford a 2 bed. As the children have grown they needed their own room. Thankfully I was able to make an extra room out of my front room and the dining room is now our front room. We make it work and the mortgage costs are a lot lower than private renting. My Mum's in her 70's and was 1 of 5. They all shared as they had no choice.

Houses are already ridiculously small in Britain. People need to change their attitudes about flats and building up. They are not a bad thing, and I don't understand why they have such a bad reputation. All across Europe its totally normal to live in a flat.

IME most if not all my friends had their own rooms but I didn’t see an en-suite bedroom in a house until I was in my 30s. I guess it depends on how affluent an area you grew up in!

Bloody hell! Have you any idea how privileged you sound?

"I love my huge house and I could never live in one of those little boxes you peasants live in"?

I think you'll find you could, if you had to 🙄

why the constant race to the bottom?

It's ok for the royal family to have multiple palaces and overseas property, but the rest of us should be grateful to have a roof in over-crowded accommodation? It's fine if people have properties with a "bedroom" so small they can't even fit a child's bed?

Why do we settle and accept to live like this?

Followed by "It's worst in Hong Kong", oh so that's ok then.

In my recollection, in the 1980s/90s people had more children in a 3/4 bed house, so you often had three or four siblings sharing two rooms whereas now families with four children seem a bit less common overall and so the same house might now have two siblings, each with a room of their own.
Of course, that family of four moving to a 2-bed house wouldn't really just reset to the previous level of crowding, because the shared spaces would all get smaller too.

It's completely out of context.

My post isn't about a race to the bottom. It's about someone coming onto a thread like this to ɓrag about how amazing their house is and how they couldn't possibly live in anything smaller.

(And no, I'm not jealous, I'm perfectly happy with my house, just don't feel the need to crow about it. )