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?

We love our townhouse too. The house is in a modest edge of town terrace but has raised ground floor, plenty of rooms with very high ceilings, large cellar with windows, been extended twice at the back to provide an office, two upstairs bathrooms, garage, rear vehicle access and good sized garden. My observation is that you may find a lot of accommodation behind the façade. Our neighbours are considerate and friendly. Long may that continue

I love my town house - never hear neighbours and they swear they never hear us (3 primary aged dds!). All living space is downstairs and dc have their bathroom and bedrooms on the middle floor and dh and I have a massive bedroom.
Having said that, we looked at others similar and hated them. Currently looking to move but that's because we can afford more. 4bed townhouses round here are rubbish though - really small paved gardens.

My colleague has a townhouse and he couldn't get anyone to quote for replacing a roof tile because of the insurance issues of putting a ladder up that high. I think it might be difficult to get window cleaners too.

I live in a townhouse, and have done for 12 years, since DD was 3. We like it.

Only issue we have had is:
(1) not all window cleaners are able to access the top floor; round here a couple actually highlight they can clean townhouses in their advertising; and
(2) getting a sky dish was trickier when we moved in as Sky themselves wouldn't do it. However a quick phone call to a local TV aerial company sorted in the next day - tall aerial and sky dish attached to that.

As with many places, a lot may depend on layout.

We made some changes to ours a couple of years ago when we added an extension.

WAS BEFORE

Ground floor: garage, downstairs toilet, 'garden' room (we used as a playroom, a dining room and a study over the years), utility room
First floor: living/dining room (big L shape), kitchen
Second floor: three bedrooms, one ensuite, family bathroom

NOW, SINCE EXTENSION

Ground floor: good size storage room (was garage, now reduced in size), downstairs toilet with storage cupboard, large utility room, good size open plan kitchen/dining.
First floor: good sized L shape living room, study/snug (could be a 4th bedroom)
Second floor: three bedrooms, one ensuite, family bathroom

Our stairs are directly above one another, so less room taken up by them than in some we have seen. We do have potential to extend into the loft (it is large enough and high enough for a good sized master bedroom and bathroom.) The stairs would fit above the others so no room on second floor would be lost. It isn't our intention as don't need the space, but others have.

Well, we very nearly bought one. It had an open plan kitchen diner on the ground floor, a sitting room, bedroom and bathroom in the middle and three bedrooms (one ensuite) at the top. It was a lot of space for the money.

TBH though, I wanted the traditional detached living/ dining space all on one level, bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs thing more. I definitely wouldn't buy one with a ground floor bedroom and then top floor bedrooms as I think the ground floor bedroom invariably becomes wasted space.

We now have a house with a massive ground floor open plan living/ dining/ kitchen then separate utility and snug. It is ideal for young DC as the back is all open to the garden so DS and his street-rat friends can mill around me and I don't have to move.

Window cleaning has never been an issue and they fixed our chimney just fine. Lots of town houses round here - we all have clean windows 😂

they are pretty popular round here, esp the new ones with build in garages. the brand ones are roomy and have it all, inc utility room.

We had a townhouse before moving here - we felt it very "top heavy". Lots of bedroom space, we had three massive bedrooms but just not enough living space downstairs.

I rented a 3 storey town house for 18 month I hated it for all the and would never live in one again.

You'd get to the front door to leave and realise something was in the bedroom so have to go back up and down two flights of stairs. I was probably fitter if nothing else ...

The lounge and kitchen was on the first floor. The ground floor therefore was a bit of a wasted floor (it had garage, "bedroom", utility room, toilet).

You couldn't just "let the (young) kids play in the garden while you were cooking the tea" as the kitchen was at the front of the house on a different floor to the garden at the back.

Sitting in the lounge if you needed the loo, you'd always have to walk either up or down stairs.

Not that we could actually afford to buy a townhouse, but from what I've seen of them, they are a pain in the arse to live in.

We spent the weekend with friends who live in a townhouse, this was when LO was 18 months old- spent the whole time going up and down stairs, and my heart leaping out of my chest as LO went for the stairs again.

Stairs. Absolutely bloody loads of them. and wtf having the kitchen and lounge/dining room on different floors?!

That is my impression of townhouses.

I don't like the entrance to them, to me is like a flat style entrance.

I went to see a beautiful townhouse show home and it had lots of space but the kitchen was on the first floor which seemed odd.

I think they could be good for families with older children. My teenager could have a floor to themselves!

It was just that I noticed a lot of them still up for sale after months on the market whereas the three bed semis around here are snapped up straight away.

Similar to what's been said here. It's different if all the living space is on the ground floor - some of the newer townhouses have more of a "traditional house with loft conversion" layout which works better imo.

I do find most of them top heavy and round here they will pop 3 or 4 townhouses onto a tiny scrap of land. Probably lovely with older kids or adult children though - more bedroom and bathroom space.

I can see why people don't like them. Ours works for us but we are reasonably central London so land space at a premium, so we needed to compromise somewhere, and we did some shuffling around of layout to suit the family.

I love townhouses but I think maybe I like older ones.

We're (hopefully) about to exchange on a 1960s townhouse in zone 4.

DD will be one next month and dd2 is due in August.

We have already started the process of extending the ground floor so we will have a very large kitchen/dining/ living space that opens onto the garden. All the neighbours have already extended and it's the perfect answer to the children/dog/entertaining conundrum for us.

It already has a toilet on the ground floor, en suite on the first and large bathroom on the second so no running up and down stairs for potty training.

The large living room on the first floor will become a large double bedroom and we will put in a wet room as that will be my mum's room (DH and I are police officers and work crazy shifts so my mum offering to be our live in childcare means we can both work).

The house has loft space and a garage we will use as a utility room, off-road parking and even after the extension we will still have a 100ft garden.

We looked at loads of 1930s and period properties in the area and they just didn't offer the same space that we could adjust to suit our needs.

I'm really looking forward to it.

I was really against town houses when we were searching for all the reasons above (narrow, split living space, parking etc). Then we viewed our current house. It's semi detached (but looks detached from the front) and is double fronted. Separate detached garage with drive in front, large office in an outbuilding. In the house on the ground floor there's a big kitchen diner (with space for a proper table), utility room, wc and dining room/living room (we use it as a big playroom for dc), first floor has another living room, guest room and en suite, then on the top floor another 3 bedrooms (master is ensuite) plus family bathroom. Loads of built in storage, and we have a loft space both in the house and the office (plus rafters storage in the garage). Love love love this house and would definitely not rule out a town house in future! I get why people are not always keen - I was the same - but there are some lovely townhouses out there with so much space for the money if the layout has been properly thought through.

I loved ours, but we moved in with primary school aged children. Didn't work so well with a baby.

All the rooms were big and all the living areas at the back. I liked that we had no ground floor windows at the front; it was more private.

We really love ours but bought it when our children were teenagers. Best house we've had , works for us as a family but as people have said, it's horses for courses

The stairs!
We lived in a town house and the stairs drove me crazy in the end.
Having to schlep shopping up to the kitchen got old fast.
We lived in an area where houses were going for 10% above their asking price at sealed bids in the first weekend but our house (pristine) and other towns houses in the area took months to sell.