To think new builds are too small

[Neuroticmillenial]

Especially social housing.

Much prefer old style council houses with the smaller kitchens but larger living rooms and dining rooms.

I’m in a rented new build and I’d trade a hallway/porch and grassy garden for our bigger kitchen (bigger than living room) and downstairs toilet. Our stairs is less than 2 metres from our front door and it’s a pain with the buggy!

Where in Europe.
Because where I am from 2 beds are 60-90 generally.

Just to add. That's apartments

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/house-size-by-country

According to this, and various other bits of internet research, UK house sizes have been shrinking and are now smaller than most of Europe.

Like rooms in a “boutique” hotel.

Even the Victorians worked out cramped, overcrowded housing isn't a good idea. Good quality, secure housing isn't something that should be only for the privileged, it should be available and accessible to all.
The modern shoebox will be the slums of the future.
Homelessness and poor housing is a shame that everyone government for 40 years carries. Every MP should be accountable for it in their constituency.
'Affordable' needs redefining. It's not a term fit for purpose. If someone on NLW can't afford accommodation to suit need, it's not affordable.

Yes, Dickens wrote at great length on the cramped and miserable conditions of the Victorian poor and the harrowing lack of shoe storage.

Sadly, the decent stock was sold under the ridiculous right to buy scheme. Councils were forbidden to build new stock for decades.
Now we have spit and kleenex built houses

Yep, absolutely, but I bet families that can't afford rentals with enough rooms and have multiple kids in one bedroom and parents on a sofa bed in the lounge with no room for a table and damp on the walls would love to have shoe space as a problem.

But the cost of housing isn't the design fault of new builds. New builds are a style of house people can choose, and often do, in favour of larger and older properties. And typically aren't riddled with damp.

8 million people in this country live alone and the average household size is 2.36. So there a market in this country, where the preference is for houses rather than flats, for homes that don't need to accommodate the number of people you describe. And this smaller design doesn't meet the threshold of some Victorian slum hellscape jeopardising the health and well being of its inhabitants.

The new builds, usually shoddily built will age.they might be all shiny now...they will be the slums of the future and families unable to 'upgrade' will be stuck

People thought it was odd but when we were looking for our house the priority was where the hoover and ironing board would go. You need them frequently but don’t want them on show.

Unlikely because the demand for houses in this country will always outweigh the supply. You might not like new builds but they are built to a standard of compliance and are perfectly fine, admittedly there are some shoddy developers but slums they will not be.

Agree. Low ceilings, narrow hallways, cramped gardens, squeezed up against the neighbours’ even when detactched. We don’t have the space to build on that we used to and what we do have comes at a premium. There is a new build estate near me and for the price of some of them you could have a lovely, haunted looking older house with decent gardens. I know some people love them and you move into a ready built community sometimes which is nice for families but I know where I would rather spend my money. DH has a building company and feels the quality of certain companies seems to go down year or year as the price increases.

£800 for a new fire door to your flat if you are a lease holder, Most flats abroad have laundry rooms, rubbish chutes. Live in an SH flat in the UK and they think you dont need to wash and dry clothes if you dont have children.

I was surprised when I went to view a house with my much younger sister when she was buying her first house recently. She was looking at a 2 bed new build.

When DH and I bought our first house twenty years ago we could only afford a 1 bed between us.

It was absolutely enormous compared to the 2 bed new build my sister bought! We had a really quite large living/dining room (as big at least as the living room we now have in our four bedroom family home) and little - bit big enough - kitchen, a tiny hallway and then the top floor matched the bottom. Small bathroom above the kitchen, and large bedroom. We could easily have converted into a 2 bed if we'd have wanted to, lots of the neighbours had. That house was built in the 1980s.

The rooms in new builds definitely seem much smaller to me!

You mean laundry rooms in each flat, or communal laundry rooms? I'm sure it varies worldwide, but where I live, flat usually have a washing machine in the flat but no separate laundry room.

We use yokushitsu kansoki in most modern flats these days where I live: Laundry Lessons From Japanese Bathroom Technology - Bloomberg

The bathroom is basically a walk-in wetroom (which itself is brilliant, as they are quick to clean, space saving and accessible for those with mobility issues); they have bars hanging over the bath, and the door shuts tight with a kind of extra-tight seal. You hang laundry racks on the bars, shut the door and switch on the drying function, which then heats and dries the clothes and sucks the moisture out of the bathroom via the ventilation fan.

The UK is now quite a densely populated country and the population will not start dropping until the late 2030s, and has similar floorspace-per-person to Japan (in fact, Japan's is now slightly higher than the UK's, believe it or not), so learning from other densely populated countries like Japan and the Netherlands (including all the "little" things, like drying clothes in ways that does not cause mould issues) is the way to go.

In terms of ownership formats, England needs to learn from Scotland, where certain cities have long had "family flats" as an option for middle class families and where some excellent commonhold/freehold ownership options for flats have developed.

Balconies are a great option for families as long as they can be made safe with cages or netting if desired; you can put out laundry, paddling pools, chalk, furniture, and they are actually more private than a tiny overlooked garden. My neighbors would have lean right out and crane their necks sideways to steal a glance into my balcony. My balcony has a frosted-perspex front and laundry bars just underneath the top, so laundry can be hung invisibly, yet the balcony and flat are full of light.

I just think that it's really worth sorting out and cracking these issues, so that spacious "family flats" can become more of an option for those who would like to consider them. Because the UK's population is going to keep going up for another 15 years. If that is the case, and if everyone insists that they must have a house with a garden, the only options are "smaller and smaller rabbit hutches/subdivided houses" or "concreting over a lot more greenspace in a country that is already highly nature-depleted."

I'm house hunting at the moment and looking at new builds - more because I can't deal with the drama and stress of chains etc than anything else

Anything 3 bed IS small - usually only one store cupboard - lounge is tiny. Sacrificing 3rd bed size for sake of an ensuite which I don't see why people so desperately want - who wants to go for a 💩 near where they sleep.

Where abroad. I come from abroad where this is certainly not a standard.

When people keel saying "abroad" and "in Europe" they should be more specific...

Shared laundry rooms are very common in apartment blocks in Sweden and Denmark, and I think in Norway and Finland too though I'm not sure if to the samr extent

Yeah common ones used to be in mine too decades ago, but nowadays it is storage for bikes etc, flats have own washing machines. Rubbish shutes were never a think in any flats I lived in or visited.
I believe common laundry is still common in Switzerland. Friend has one andone of the flats is absolute refusing to adhere to schedule. Every weekend drama

Shared laundry rooms are probably OK for childless people, or in cultures where it's considered fine to leave small children alone. No way would I want the hassle of dragging children and laundry baskets around as a parent esp when kids create a lot of laundry.

I don't really understand the idea of having shared laundry rooms; surely a washing machine does not take up that much space. I think that in places where this was common, it was more about buildings where it was difficult to pipe large amounts of water to higher-up floors, but modern hydraulics should take care of this.

Shared communal spaces are better used for other things IMO. Bike parking, daycare, mingling spaces, party rooms that can be booked for when you want to host big gatherings, children's soft play area. Not laundry!

Bloody genius!

If the UK adopted a culture of living in flats this wouldn’t be an issue surely? If developers could build large spacious 2, 3 and 4 bedroom flats we would have much better accommodation that better suits our needs. The issue is twofold: nimbyism stops a lot of flats from getting developed in the first place, and government are reluctant to put proper planning regs in place for the developers. So this is what we’re left with.

I'd love that. But here they build flats with no lifts or shared laundry rooms and then gouge you on the ground rent and maintenance. Even if you own the place you spend hundreds a month to live there on top of utilities, and insurance.

I think when it comes to flats the biggest issue i leashold for me. >12 years and conditions. It's basically super long term rent. As pp said share of freehold or commonholds might make them more popular?
Mum owns her flat,. She can amend as she wants to as long as structurally sound. Everyone pays into common fund for repairs etc. Proposed and organised by a comitee But for example window changes, which affect individual flats can still go ahead without everyone. Hence why you can see apartment building with couple of flats with windows from 60s still.
They also have rotas for cleaning their floor's hallway 😁