Why are townhouses not popular?

[Hellobye]

The only houses stuck on the market in my area are townhouses. I don't mind them and you get an amazing amount of space but I worry about resale value. Why are they not as popular as traditional 3 bed semis say?

The split living space is particularly difficult if you have small children.

It's so hard if you have children. We've just converted over half of our garage to give us a living space downstairs. X

I don't like the idea of noise on both sides of me and I really don't like thin homes split over three floors. Parking can be tricky too depending on layout. I have never considered a terraced house - doesn't appeal to us at all.

We're avoiding them in our search because we already live in a terrace and have a noisy child with SN and need to get away from inflicting his noise on others.

The communal living space also tends to be lacking.

Weirdly I've recently heard of two couples in London specifically looking for them, so maybe it's the start of something here. I'd personally consider them if the garage could be knocked through to form part of the house.

Too many bloody stairs, and annoying split level.

I need a new house

I find the layout put me off when I was buying my first house. I seen one that was ideal 2/3 of the way so big kitchen and diner and wc on first floor good for entertaining. Living room on middle floor but with small master bedoom and didn't like how the bedrooms were laid out
Then another one was idea bedroom wise and had a "master suite" in the top floor which I loved but a tiny galley kitchen and living/diner on ground floor
If I could have mixed and matched it would have been perfect but it was just the layout for me that made me go for a more traditional style semi

Children or elderly people who can't manage stairs.
When we were househunting we were looking for enough space on the ground floor that mil could have a downstairs guest room and bathroom, otherwise we would have had to put in a stair lift for her to visit at all.

Because all the ideas we have about houses come from stupid one storey idylls with a tiny bit of fenced off countryside for our family's personal use.

So archaic.

Most of them seem to be lacking in living space. Even if they do the split level thing it tends to be a fairly small living room and a fairly small kitchen diner.

We viewed one last week. We liked the idea of a master 'suite' on the top floor but because the floor area on each floor is less than a normal family home, it felt cramped. After all, these houses are becoming popular with developers who are trying to cram in as many houses as possible on small pieces of land. Therefore they've decided to build on tiny plots and go upwards.

Where we are, they tend to have small gardens (often without rear access), limited parking (1 car max) and rarely have garages. Several have the living room on the first floor, with the kitchen on the ground floor. Not great for children, or less mobile elderly relatives. Plus, as others have mentioned, and awful lot of shared wall - a semi has much less. We lived in a terrace where I could tell you where our neighbour's toddler was in the house (and they were great neighbours). I'm glad we don't have to do that with our own child.

I hated the idea of having to carry every single thing upstairs every time we came in. Teen ds OTOH desperately wanted the ground floor room. He loved the idea of having his bedroom totally isolated from the rest of the family

Too many stairs
And j don't like the idea of sleeping on a different level to my kids, particularly because the master is usually on the top floor, so any intruders would come across my children's bedrooms first

Youve all put me off now!

Because there's no room for extension the 'loft' and sideways space are taken so therefore no room to increase the potential value of your property.
The layouts tend to be cramped and, as others have said, not very family or elderly friendly.
As with most new builds the rooms tend to be really small and crammed in. No privacy, tiny garden.

I suppose they are not suitable for a lot of families (small children, elderly) so they appeal to a smaller market.

Mind you I think my criticism could be levelled at most new houses. You seem to get less space for your money.

People with young dc don't want their bedroom to be on a different level (children needing to go up/downstairs at night to get to parents).

A lot of the total floor space is wasted with stairwells and landings.

The communal space often closer in size to that of a 2 bed, even with 4 bed town houses

Or having things like a "living dining room" on the 1st floor but the kitchen downstairs, carrying food up and down seems a faff, so kitchens need to be big enough for a proper dining table, but as often only are if you give up the garage.

Additional bathrooms to make sure there's a full bathroom on every floor with a bedroom, whereas if that was a normal house layout, you'd cope with one family bathroom, loo downstairs then have the extra room/s as extra bedrooms/study/to make the bedrooms bigger.

Often have pokey gardens and not enough parking.

I actually like townhouses, but they do need to be big to make up for the layout issues.

We re house hunting and my children love the three storey as the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms are on the 2nd floor with their own bathroom. That appeals to Me too tbh. Especially as they get older! There are two, the master and small 4th, an office, on the first. The ground floor has living room, kitchen diner and utility. My concern with this house is only the lack of loft space. Ive the square footage of this lauout and the traditional 4 beds on the same development and they have the same, except this one has no loft space so while it appears to hve the same space, it doesnt.

Those with kitchen diner on one floor and living room on another wouldnt work for me at all. I dont wnt my bedroom nd living room on the same floor

Oh yes, another issue! Storage, or lack of.

No loft space to put your suitcases / Christmas decorations / general shit you need to keep but not want for everyday.

So your garage ends up being used for that, except the lack of living space often means the garage has already been converted.

We didn't think they'd be suitable for us for family life, too many stairs and as soon as you have more than one child you have them or you have to be on different floors, plus not great with a dog either.

Also awful for hosting parties, no one is ever quite sure if it's acceptable to go upstairs to the sitting room!

Townhouse dweller here.

It very much depends on the design of townhouses. The new build ones tend to have very small living spaces compared to the size of the bedrooms.

60s ones tend to have much more generous living spaces and also tend to have big lofts. Unfortunately ours can't be converted as the ceiling height is just that bit too low. Is doable but wouldn't meet planning regs.

Horses for courses, folks but I bloody love ours. Huge Kitchen/dining/living room on middle floor, bedrooms on top floor, garage and utility on ground floor. Small garden is great. Who the hell wants to spend weekends mowing grass or tending to huge flower beds? Tons of storage, decent sized bedrooms, good family space...a lot more so than any Victorian terraced properties we viewed when shopping for a house.

I don't like them for all the aforementioned reasons- but actually as a PP says 60s/70s townhouses are actually great - usually because living/kitchen/dining is all on the middle floor, bedrooms above, and then ground floor usually 1 'extra' room which can be a bedroom, or study, plus often utility/extra shower room linking to garage. I'd live in one if the space was organised that way. Or in a new build version with teens, where you might prefer to be on separate floors with separate bathrooms!