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!

That's the thing. Large numbers of families aren't going to willingly have neighbours above and below and either side, rather than just either side, and pay another few hundred a month for the privilege. It's not as if these charges replace anything else other than buildings insurance. There's still the bills/council tax etc to pay.

Together with this the only 3 bed flats here have been put in mill conversations or in old churches and they expect you to pay more than a 3 bed detached because it's got an original stained-glass window or is a "penthouse".

Threads like this make me really appreciate my ex council property that I have lived in for years...large rooms, loads of cupboards around the whole house, just incredibly well thought out years ago by local authorities when these homes were designed for families moving in.

Nothing could encourage me to move to a new build. Our tiniest bedroom is massive compared to newbuild standards.

I have also experience of living in ex MOD housing and again, massive bedrooms, living room, huge gardens etc, ample storage space throughout the property.

Flats in Scotland are another ball game - shared leasehold, very often decent sized rooms. I know someone who lives in a conversion and the rooms are huge with some enormous storage cupboards. Good sized all with space for coats and shoes, table in the kitchen, big living room.

I've also stayed in enormous, well-planned flats in Europe, which had basement storage allocated to each household for bikes and camping gear and so on - like having a garage. But we go on building tiny flats in the UK - like one I saw recently which had 2 small double bedrooms, limited storage and bugger all kitchen but still had to have a bloody en-suite.

Scotland has indeed had a really different history to England where this is concerned. Scottish cities retained their defense functions much longer than English ones, so needed to pack their development into the area within the city boundaries. By the time this defensive function became unnecessary, Scotland had developed a very graceful culture of "aspirational" flat-living which has included the middle classes and families. In fact, apparently one reason why bungalows are quite common in the Scottish suburbs of many cities is because many Scottish city dwellers were used to the convenience of one-storey living and wanted to continue this when Scottish cities started to develop suburbs!

This is criminal the floor plan looks decent, until you look at the dimensions and realised they have made the furniture a third of the actual size.

Those bedrooms couldn't fit single beds, even my babies cot bed would be too big

Having spent some time in Scotland, I concluded that it was because stacking houses one on top of the other made it warmer...

But yes, there are some very elegant flats in Scotland, good sizes and well laid out.

They're getting smaller and smaller. My mate had a 'bedsit' in a council block, large room, then separate small kitchen and bathroom. If you look a newly built one or two bed flats, the floor space is similar to the 70s bedsit.
My other mate left her social housing flat in a 60s block to the new built lower style block next door. In the hope of a bigger, nicer home for her two kids. It's much smaller, and way more expensive. She wishes she'd never left the allegedly 'grim' block.

YANBU. People are all for a glossy new build but many of them are really poorly designed - small, poky rooms with low ceilings, often the rooms are corridors because the sitting room has to be a through route to the kitchen, virtually non existent storage, prioritising multiple en suite bathrooms so that bedrooms are tiny and often awkward shapes, tiny halls with nowhere to put shoes or coats, etc.

They're also often riddled with defects and poor workmanship - walls out of plumb, fake weep vents, wonky door frames, bad finishes and shoddy installations.

I’d take an ex council house any day to have quality workmanship, decent sized rooms and a sensible layout, even if it meant I didn’t get my choice of bathroom tiles (from three options pre-determined by the builder…).

This!! Why don't built in cupboards come as standard??!

I'm currently looking for a house and struggling. While we do like some period features, finding a period home with said features that has also been modernised, and done well that would suit our anxious rescue pup (detached, good sized garden) has become harder and harder.

What do you and others think of this? I can't decide. I can say that i have been to view and what isn't apparent in the pics is that the ceilings upstairs are over 4 meters high. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/154472198#/?channel=RES_BUY

My DA has an ex local authority house from the 1950s and all the rooms are a really good size on a huge plot but it would have been quite rural when it was built. My housing association house was originally built in the 1800s and it was tiny but we live in a city.

I don't think there's enough land to have more space and councils are pushed for 3 beds so you end up with one that isn't really a bedroom.

What we need are big flats not small houses imo.