A 5 bed house but 2 downstairs.. with young children?

[Floorplanhelpp]

We’re currently looking at buying a house that ticks most of our boxes (we have a healthy budget but in an expensive area where we are unlikely to get anything that meets all requirements). However, there are two downstairs bedrooms (and bathroom). Upstairs has three large doubles and two bathrooms.

We have 3 children under 5. We are thinking of having the master plus two bedrooms for the children upstairs (two can share), and once they get bigger, we’ll move the master downstairs and they can share upstairs.

Would this bother you? We’re not sure if it’ll make the house hard to resell incase people view it as a 3 bed rather than a 5 (and it’s just over £1m, so it would be seen as a 5 if reselling rather than a 3!).

YABU - it wouldn’t bother me
YANBU - it would bother me

I think it depends on the rest of the house. Has it got multiple reception rooms as well as the downstairs bedrooms, or has a second reception room been repurposed as a bedroom? Is one of the bedrooms a garage conversion?

There is an open plan kitchen/living area, and then a seperate lounge off of this. The house is 2600sq ft, so a fair size.

One of the bedrooms isn’t a garage conversion.
It’s a renovated chalet bungalow style house, and still has a double garage.

It wouldn't bother me - I wouldn't want a 4 bed with 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs but loads of them round here that always seem to sell fine - but 5 beds means you can be upstairs when DC are young and then give teenagers their own space. Think it could work well for WFH people as well as you could have 2 studies downstairs or study and playroom

Ours is a 3 story 5 bed with 2 on the 3rd floor and 3 on the middle floor, my dc are 10 and 13 and they are on the middle floor, we are on the top floor. It’s absolutely fine for us at the ages they are at now , so I would say your plan is fine.

I see this as a huge advantage in fact and would love a set up like this. For any number of reasons:

1. Keeping children on a separate floor when old enough is great. They get privacy, you get privacy. x1000 when they start having friends over.
2. Downstairs bedrooms with bathrooms are hugely helpfulf or multi-generational living. Elderly people can live downstairs without having to navigate stairs.
3. Downstairs bedrooms can often be more easily re-purposed for any number of reasons, according to what any individual family needs - studies, music rooms, games rooms, art studios etc.
4. Guest bedrooms away from the family living area can be an advantage - allows children/teenagers to live their usual lives while guests get peac eand quiet downstairs.
5. Or flip it around - teenage/young adult children have downstairs bedrooms allowing them to come and go late at night without disturbing the whole house.

We have our main bedroom downstairs (barn conversion) there’s a spare downstairs and 2 bedrooms upstairs, all at the other end of the house. This house doesn’t work for families with small kids, but it’s PERFECT for teens and now young adults.

what you’re describing @Floorplanhelpp would work for the short term, the question is how long do you think the kids would want/be able to share? What age would they be when would you move downstairs

you’ll have to make sure you have good tech behaviour locked in so they don’t have devices accessible etc etc but as you can be close by when they’re small, this sounds doable

it’ll be fantastic when they’re teenagers, both for you and for them. As you’ll have space from each other etc etc.

Whats the bathroom situation? Would you have your own bathroom?

Ours is like this. We have a teen boy in one upstairs and the younger girl in the other. Teen girl has the garage conversion downstairs and we have the other downstairs bedroom (under younger girl) so the thumping alerts us when she’s awake 😬 works for us

We had this exact layout and it was fine. We started out upstairs with two DD’s down, and 2 DSS’s up. But eventually we swapped with DD2 as she said downstairs was too loud for her to revise for her GCSE’s. (It wasn’t really, she just fancied our slightly bigger room with a skylight).

It was actually handy having bedrooms downstairs when my elderly parents came and it would have been pretty future proof for us too for when we got older.

Thanks for your post.

We have two girls and a boy. The two girls would be ok sharing for the next 8/9 years I think. Until 13 I would say?

So I’m guessing we’d move downstairs when our children are 8-13. But this is hypothetical as I think I’d have to see when I thought they were mature enough for this to be ok.

There is a bathroom for the downstairs bedrooms (and a seperate downstairs loo off of the hallway, so the downstairs bathroom wouldn’t be used by anybody else, eg. random guests and friends).

Yes I do like the idea of being able to use the rooms as other things until we need them all as bedrooms. We could use one as a snug/adult living room whilst we’re still in the huge plastic toys taking over the living room stage. So effectively using the ‘living room’ as a giant playroom.

It sounds ideal to me as a forever home. The DC will be fine on different floors once they are about 8.

We had a downstairs shower at our old house and I would never be without one. It was a life saver when dd smashed her leg and couldn't get upstairs for two months. (Stairs that wound top and bottom).

When we renovated this house, a shower went in downstairs.

Perfect for older people too so I think it woukd be easier to sell rather than harder. It's what DH and I would want if we downsized.

This meant to say “would be an issue if it was seen as a 3 bed and not 5”!

When mine were younger, we had one downstairs bedroom, which we moved the oldest into when he was 11, and it worked fine.

Now, as a retiree, it would suit me as I could have a downstairs bedroom if I wanted, either all the time if stairs become a pain, or occasionally, leaving upstairs for guests (I have lots of grandchildren, mainly teenagers)

I'd view it as a 3 bed. We're currently looking at buying a 4 bed house and are ruling out any that have a downstairs bedroom and only 3 upstairs. But if it suits you and your family and it works for you then I'd go for it. My kids are 4 and 1 so I don't want them downstairs away from us, and aside from that I don't particularly want to sleep downstairs either. But that is just personal preference. I'd only use an extra/bonus reception room as a spare room for guests and it'd probably have a day to day use as an office or playroom or similar.

For a 3 bed this would bother me because some of the children would have to sleep downstairs, for a 5 bed it wouldn’t as much because you can wait until they’re a bit older to move them downstairs (or have the master downstairs as you’re planning- I think that’s what I would do too).
You can use one of the downstairs rooms as a playroom for now, that’s a plus point

It wouldn’t bother me, we are four bed over three floors. When we first moved in. We had the middle floor room as a playroom and then when DD went to high school she moved downstairs and younger DD had both rooms on the top floor, one for sleeping and one for all her shit.

From a fire safety perspective I would struggle having DC’s bedrooms above mine until well into Teenage years but also wouldn’t really want them on the ground floor on their own from a security perspective. It’s different in a 3 storey or more house as you can be above them without them being on the ground floor. It’s definitely a layout which works well with older teens and young adults but why would you want 2 sharing for 10 years with 2 spare bedrooms. You might find that the girls can’t share for very long for lots of reasons. I’m not sure this is the layout for you at this life stage.

The girls really do like sharing (aged 5 and 3 at the moment). My 5 year old would refuse to sleep in a room alone and my 3 year old is more than happy to share with big sister.

I hadn’t thought of fire safety. I’ve always ruled out 3 story houses where the master suite is above the children’s floor for security reasons, but I feel that being below the children is ok from that perspective.

@Floorplanhelppunfortunately there are many people who now find themselves with DC who just cannot share a room when they expected them to be able to. Being the same sex doesn’t automatically make them compatible to share. Loads of ND DC really really need their own space. I can’t see the point in paying for a 5 bed house and only planning on really using 3 of those bedrooms for many years unless the other rooms downstairs can be properly utilised. Otherwise it’s all just a nice to have.

Very few people get everything they want in a house so it just comes down to which compromises work best for you.

I don't really know why it would matter what a hypothetical buyer would think in 10-15 years time. Why don't you focus on what you need right now? It seems like you have a plan for the next 9 years at least.
What if you love it so much that you never sell? What if your next buyer is someone like me who needs all the extra non-bedroom rooms for a home gym, home office and an art studio?

It matters as I’d hate for us to be in a position where we lose money on the house if we were to sell.

Two of my teenagers sleep downstairs and have done since they were 9 and 10, it's been absolutely fine and works really well for us.

@Floorplanhelpp This is the perfect layout for us so it wouldn't bother me at all, but our needs are different in that our dds are adults who live at home due to disabilities. Plus you have a separate living room to the kitchen diner space is a bonus.

I don’t understand this concern… just because you use a room as a study instead of a bedroom doesn’t make it not a bedroom. It will forever be a 5 bedroom regardless of how you use the rooms.