Town house pros and cons

[BibbidiBobbidi]

Viewing a town house tomorrow, need to upsize from where we’re living now.
Layout is:
Ground floor - garage, utility room, shower room, bedroom (thinking of turning bedroom into playroom for DD) large garden
1st floor - kitchen diner & lounge
2nd floor - two bedrooms with ensuite each

DD is 19 months old so will be sleeping on the same floor as us (obviously!)

Can anyone who’s lived in a house like this with a little one tell me the pros and cons please? I really like the house so may be looking at it through rose tinted glasses!

Food shopping

We have a different layout but...

Downstairs utility room is really another kitchen for us. When kids are playing in the garden in summer they are in and out all of the time and it's great that they can have snacks/you can fetch things for them whilst being 'right there'.

If kids are playing in garden and they're small then it's very hard to run up to kitchen etc and leave them. So while they are wee I'd maybe turn downstairs into a minikitchen and playroom/casual sitting room.

This does mean that your main kitchen and living room tend to have less clutter/footfall so don't need cleaned as often!

Our DD is a lot older and she now has the top floor of the house to herself- when your kids are older you could move her bedroom downstairs and do similar. I think it is great as they get plenty of space and so there's not the same pressure to move out.

Townhouses can be expensive to heat. We've got seperate heating for top floors vs first floor and it can get pricey. If you're in a terrace it might not be so bad.

Can be really hard to sell on, the lay out doesn't suit many people. I've a friend trying to sell one for about 9 months, whilst more traditional houses on the same development get snapped up.
If you had dc2 where would they sleep?

Thanks all. You’ve made some good points.

If I were to have another DC then they would have to share for a few years until DD is able to sleep on the bottom. Or we would sleep on the bottom and they would both have the top.

I didn’t think about selling it on.

Could maybe convert the garage into a kitchen, have the bottom bedroom as a dining room and then change the old kitchen to a bedroom.

A play room on a seperate floor to kitchen/living will be a nightmare while she is young. You won’t be able to leave her playing while you cook tea etc
I wouldn’t want kids on a lower floor than me, I’d want to be the first bedroom a burglar got to, plus as a teenager it will be very very easy for her to sneak out if she’s 2 Floors beneath you.

It's wonderful! So much space you can never tell where everyone is and you eventually end up with a floor each.

Every room can be exactly what you want it to be as your family grows. From playroom to Xbox room to teenagers bedroom to parents music room/library. Ours is now destined to be part of a large kitchen diner.

I would find a conventional house extremely boring and restrictive after 15 years in a town house.

I live on three floors and if I’m completely honest, I’d prefer to live on two floors only. I’m forever leaving things on the ground floor when I’m at the top. I worry about how to get out in a fire when kids are sleeping three floors up. Love my house but hand on heart the stairs are a pain.

We moved our main living room and kitchen to ground floor with bathroom and garage. Mid floor is 2 bedrooms with ensuites and an office and top floor is 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. Much better flow of space for our family needs.

RE:Selling on. I think it depends where in the country you are and what kind of townhouse you have. They rarely come on the market in our area and so are highly in demand for the extra square footage.

Kitchen upstairs is a pain the bum. Also found we didnt use the garden as much as we couldnt just pop out from kitchen or lounge. Although did find lounge upstairs kept cleaner and was warmer.

Thanks everyone.

A few good pointers there!

I’m looking forward to seeing it tomorrow, the pictures look lovely and I love the big windows!

I’ll leave a look and see if there’s anything I could change to make it suit us better.

Will update after I’ve seen it

In our old house we didn't have a kitchen door and has to go out through the living room into the garden. I hated it as with young children it's nice to have easy access.

Being on another floor sounds very awkward.

I think if you could convert garage into kitchen and have a family room/kitchen/diner on ground floor it could work but then would you want living room upstairs?
Personally I wouldn't but I would prefer that from current layout you describe.

I viewed a house like this and for us it didn’t work as we had a dog, I’m going to assume it’s the same with a child as it would have been when our daughter was young. When they are in the Garden you need to Be with them, you can’t just open the kitchen door and let them run in and out. You need to actually go downstairs. Unless they are of an age it doesn’t matter you’re further away,

In addition few people want to be sleeping that far away from their kids. For us it was a no, the lay out didn’t work in reality.

There’s no way I’d sleep 2 floors up from my DC and I can’t imagine doing so for many years - maybe 10.

I think that 3 storey houses are a way of maximising bedroom space at the expense of living space. You see 4 bed town houses with the living area of 2 bed houses and 6 bed houses that are really 4 bed houses with a couple of rooms in the roof. I’d always choose more living space than bedroom space (if at all practical) as you don’t need a big room to sleep in, but a pokey lounge or kitchen is annoying.

Some thoughts that come to mind:

Playroom on a different floor to the kitchen/living room is not going to be useful to you for several years. You can't leave your 19 months (or even 2/3 year old) playing downstairs for any length of time;
What use is a shower room on the ground floor when you have two bathrooms upstairs? Are you paying for a facility that you won't use?
How will you feel about bringing shopping etc upstairs all the time?
Conversely, every time you need to put something in the bins it's a flight of stairs down? Obviously people in flats manage this all the time but what is the point of buying a house with a front door and ground floor if you still have to do this?
Why would you buy a house if you felt that you needed eventually to make such major changes to the layout as moving the floor on which the kitchen is located?
If you have another child, the second bedroom needs to be large enough for them to share for quite some time? I wouldn't be happy with a child of probably primary age sleeping two floors away. Depending on the child themselves, they may not be happy even older than that

I live in a town house with twins at aged 3
Unless you really want to get on housing market my advice is don’t do it. The layout is impractical and I am desperate for a normal house...

We love ours. Kitchen diner, snug/tv room/playroom on ground floor level at the front of the house, utility and lounge is the whole of the lower ground floor but also leads out to bottom garden at the back of the house, then 3 beds and 2 baths on top floor.
Like a PP said, we lose each other on different floors and everyone has their own space. I think it helps because there is garden from 2 floors floors though.

We had one with a kitchen on the ground floor and a living room and one bedroom on the middle floor and 2 bedrooms plus 2 E suites and a family bathroom on the top floor. My biggest issue was the upstairs lounge, it drove us nuts combined with a small narrow garden. I wouldn't do it again

I know three families who sold houses like this because the layout was inconvenient.

We live on three floors. Kitchen on ground floor, living room and one bedroom on middle floor, two bedrooms top floor.

It was a pain in the bum when kids were small and not stair safe. I couldn't leave them in the living room to play while I did stuff in the kitchen.

Now they are older it's good. The separation between kitchen and living room gives us more space. We can have adult guests in the living room and Chuck the kids upstairs and no one is in each others way.

Main advantage though is that you squeeze a lot of house on a tiny bit of land so it's good value. I think in suburban neighborhoods these houses sell for quite a bit less than more conventional layout. We are in central London though where three storey layouts are very common.

I love mine. 2 beds and a bathroom at the top - now kids have the whole floor to themselves but previously it worked with DC sharing.
Middle floor has been lounge, playroom, office, spare room and is now office/study/2nd living room plus my bedroom and ensuite.
Ground floor - huge kitchen diner/family room/ utiltity room.

Wonderful space. But heating can be problematic and in the summer it is like a chimney. Stairs don't bother me.

The issue isn’t it’s three floors, mine is three floors, but my kitchen and sitting room are on the ground floor. The issue is the kitchen is on the first floor, as is the lounge. You then have a garage, utility room and bedroom (or playroom) on the ground floor and two bedrooms on the second floor. That’s why it’s awkward.

If the kitchen and lounge were on the ground floor it would work better, and more practical.

I couldn’t sleep that far away from children so a townhouse is a big no no for me. It would feel too much like a flat. I’d want access to the garden from the kitchen or lounge, especially in the summer

I live on a new(ish) build estate. Many of the houses have 3 (or 2.5, in the sense that they were built with rooms in the roof space) but only some of them are ‘townhouses’ like you describe. The townhouses appear to be much more difficult to sell on than the more traditional houses. The ones with the kitchen on the first floor really don’t tend to sell (especially the design with the bedroom and ensuite right next to the front door, alongside a utility room); the ones with the kitchen on the ground floor but the living room on the first floor are also tricky to get buyers for. In contrast, the more standard layout (all public rooms on the ground floor, with bedrooms above, whether over one or two floors) sell pretty well.

I see what you all mean about selling it on. I’ve had a look and it was built 11 years ago and has had one owner, they’re selling it for £2000 more than they brought it for where as my house (traditional 2 bed) has gone up £20000 since I brought it two years ago.

This concerns me!