Large House

[Lazyi]

Hello. We moved out of London a year ago, and are living in rented accommodation in the South West, where I am from. Our plan was that we would be able to have a bigger house than we had in London and a smaller mortgage. We have sold our London house and have money in the bank. I have always lived in a “normal” terraced house, either three bed or four bed. We are now looking at some houses that are large… up to 4,000 sft, and with multiple reception rooms and up to six bedrooms and large gardens. My partner is enthusiastic about this. I’m worried that it will mean non stop cleaning and gardening. People have said that it’s possible for houses/gardens to be low maintenance, but I am nervous that we (I) will need to spend all my time tidying, cleaning and pruning. We have three young kids. Because I have never lived in a large house, I don’t really know what to think. My partner seems to be seeing all the benefits (room for stuff, spare rooms, lovely lawn) and I seem to be seeing all the downsides. Advice and thoughts really welcome. I also realise we are in a very lucky possition to be able to have a choice like this. Thanks all

I'm with you - my main concern would be running costs.
I used to want a massive house with swimming pool etc but now I realise we dont NEED that, and I would rather not have the running costs of it, especially in retirement etc. Parents live in a large house and it costs many thousands to run a year and now they are retired its an issue..

You do need to factor in the additional costs of a large house, you're right. We used to live in one (4,000+ square footage) and our gas and electricity was £550 a month, council tax was £400, buildings insurance was £200, it all adds up. If there's a big garden you'll need a gardener, budget £25+ an hour and a cleaner, we paid £25 a hour for that too.

But the upsides are great, it was amazing bringing up our 3 children in a large house and ours was always where their mates congregated (upside is that you know where they are, which is helpful when you have teenagers, downside is they are messy and noisy!) It was a great house for hosting but it meant large family events were always at ours because we had the space so everyone expected us to spend the time and money hosting, which is exhausting. The other downside is the large house premium you'll be charged by trades, they see the house and add 20% to their prices.

I don't miss it but I'm glad we had it while our children were growing up. They loved it too and really appreciated the space. So I think you should go for it as long as you can afford it.

Hello. I live in a large house - 6 bedrooms, 3 reception rooms and a large kitchen/ diner. We have a cleaner - but things that have helped are:

• the guest bedrooms are ready to go, but doors shut and not used. They happen to be on one floor, so we just ignore it completely until the day before we have guests. I therefore feel like we're in a 4 bed house most the time.
• cleaner cleans floors, downstairs, kitchen, downstairs loo, family bathroom and used en-suite once a week. Non used rooms are ignored.
• the playroom is a tip. The cleaner ignores it, I occasionally sort through toys. But I mostly close the door on it each night. Once a month I get the kids to do a proper tidy of it (to varying degrees of success).
• we have 2 gardens. The 'larger' garden we spent a lot of time on. It was all over grown and a mess. We've kept it really simple - eg, taken out rockeries. Just a large lawn with plants around the outside. Choose bushy plants like rhododendrons and hydrangeas as they have good ground cover and you're not endlessly weeding. Get a petrol mower so you're not using a cord (or sit on mower). We have a good relationship with our neighbour and share the mower between us. Our other garden is a bit of a mess but that's where we have our paddling pool and general plastic garden toy crap.
• the cons to a large house: decorating is a long a tedious never ending project for us. And expensive if you're not doing it yourselves. Expensive to heat (but we've made big changes to our heating and insulation that's helped).
• the pros to a large house: kids have loads of space and I love watching them charge around the place, and have freedom. I also love hosting and being able to comfortably have people to stay.

We earn good money but are not massively wealthy. We just happen to live in an area where this house was in our price bracket and we fell in love with it. I absolutely love my house and feel so much joy living here.

(Ps - we installed a heat pump and solar panels which has made living in the house much more affordable. We ignored the scare stories people told us about a heat pump in an old house and did it anyway and it works brilliantly).

You're right to consider all those things like running costs, maintenance costs, cleaning etc. And you will accumulate more stuff just because there is space to store it. I'd personally much rather have a modest house that's cheaper to run, easy to clean, forces you to declutter, and have spare money to work less, have nice holidays, treat yourselves. We're in a 3-bed with 2 kids and I can't see any reason to move.

@TheStroppyFeminist "The other downside is the large house premium you'll be charged by trades, they see the house and add 20% to their prices. "

Exactly this! Our house is big, which is not rare here, and with period features (more rare since most houses are gutted but it does not really influence the price). My husband warned me that this would happen with trades, and he was right! Luckily not the builders - I told them my budget and they stuck to it. But all the others, including the gardener! It's insane. Then we found a gardener who gave us his price before seeing the house, it was less than a half of the quote of the first one.

I always dreamed of a big house but was completely naive about the running costs/effort. We bought an 8 bed Victorian house (we have 5 DCs) and although the positives were obvious I didn’t really think it through properly. The cleaning never ends, but the biggest negative was the cost. For example, if you need a new bedroom carpet in a normal house it’s probably a few hundred. When your bedroom is four times the size, it’s four times the cost. Even something relatively cheap like giving a room a lick of paint costs so much more. If your skirting boards are a foot deep, that’s a LOT of rubbing/sanding and tins of gloss. One tin of emulsion covers half a wall.

The cheapest quote we got was £20K to re plaster the hall, stairs and landing.

Routine things like having your windows cleaned adds up when you’ve got so many windows.

If you’ve got high ceilings you can’t just bung in an Ikea wardrobe, it would be lost in a big room. You need bigger furniture, and more of it, and it’s not cheap.

And the damp patches! Even after having the damp roof done, new gutters, re-pointing the wet patches just kept coming. Countless builders couldn’t suss out where the water was coming from. It’s just the price of having a big old house.

I wouldn’t say don’t do it. Just be aware of the potential pitfalls before you jump in because your dream home can quickly become a millstone.

Oh, and the gas bills!!!

Get a cleaner and a gardener! We have a cleaner every other week, the rest of the time we sort the obvious surface stuff, I dont find it any worse than when we had a small house. The garden is another matter. Its huge and everything grows so fast. Having a gardener is not currently in our budget but the garden and all the overgrown bits bother me greatly. We had a massive cut back and sort and tidy a couple months ago which was great but it all needs doing again. It needs a couple hours a week to keep on top of it, hence my recommendation to get a gardener!

We have a big house but in London, so not a huge garden to keep on top of.

I find it easier than a small house because you can figure out really good storage, or, worst case scenario, shove clutter into a less used room and close the door. It does take longer to clean, but imo, spaces tend to get used less intensively, so most don't need it quite as often - 5 people using one or two bathrooms needs more cleaning than 1 or 2 people per bathroom, high use areas, like kitchens, need pretty much the same amount regardless of house size. It's the first house where we've had space for a big utility and pantry, so that helps keep things organised and clutter-free. We also do the same as a pp and have guest rooms made up, but keep them closed until needed (also keeps the dogs from making themselves comfortable on the lovely clean bedding 😅), then just a quick dusting and some flowers and they're ready to go.

We renovated ours, so made it very energy efficient - heat pump for heating and cooling, zoned underfloor heating, double glazed windows, and haven't found it more expensive to maintain than a less efficient smaller house. We do have a cleaner and someone maintains the garden once a week.

My H likes really big houses but then actually does screw all to keep them nice- !!

I think there's a happy medium here OP- I would be looking at houses 1700- 2400 sq ft- big enough to have plenty of room and space to grow into - not so big that the costs totally rocket or you feel weird rattling round it on your own at times.

An awful lot of men ( and women) to be frank do it for the 'look what we've got' show off factor - but actually don't pull their weight when it comes to the maintenance

We have a 6 bed 6 bathroom period house on 9 acres. I grew up in a 5 bed and the first thing my parents said when they saw it was wow it’s beautiful but will be a lot of work and they weren’t wrong, it is a lot!

Some of the cons:

We are constantly being ripped off by tradespeople, I get multiple quotes and they will vary by thousands even for the exact same product. Eg. Carpets

House insurance can be tricky to get especially when you get over 5 bathrooms, that’s deemed too risky for lots of insurers so there is less choice and you inevitably pay more.

Everything costs a lot just based on the sqm of the building so painting a room can be £400 in paint! Same with flooring, repointing walls etc. Furnishing the house took forever as we went from a small London house to this one and as some one else said you need bigger furniture to fill a room.

Electricity and oil are obviously more but I don’t find them proportionally more. Getting solar panels has reduced our electricity bill significantly.

Cleaning is hard work but our cleaner does core spaces for 4 hours a week and the I will clean the less used rooms on an adhoc basis. There are rooms for the barely use so might not need cleaning for months!

I love gardening so I don’t mind the garden but it does take me hours a week. If I didn’t enjoy it I would hire a gardener. Also we have fields that need topping through the summer so that’s an additional cost. Large gardens have the same sqm problem as houses so buying plants to fill the space cost thousands (we did this recently!).

Despite all the cons above I adore our house and its history, we love the space and that we can fit a home gym, library, games room and multiple living rooms into our home. It is a part time job to manage the bloody thing as something constantly needs doing and just make sure you have a lot of cash to fund works if it’s an older house as something will always need doing even if the house is in relatively good knick.

I too had always lived in 'normal' sized houses, and in fact I really like a small, cosy house. However, we bought a large 5 double bed, 2 reception, detached with large garden (completely bare, just gravel). Do I regret it...yes! It is a lot of effort and I miss the cosiness and simplicity of a smaller space. There were objective reasons why we bought this house, and those reasons still stand. But honestly I do regret it.

Things I like about it:

• Space to store things (although you just grow into the space so it still feels cluttered)
• Being detached
• Both DH and I can WFH without crossing paths or encroaching on our normal living space, so it doesn't feel like we work at home together
• We have a lodger and have sufficient separate rooms (he has his own bedroom, living room and bathroom) that we rarely see him

Things I don't like about it:

• Cleaning - there are just soo many rooms to clean. It's basically never fully clean.
• Lots of extra things to go wrong. More walls, more doors, more floors, more pipe length, more lights, more radiators, more everything.
• Ours needs a total decoration overhaul (think dark nasty varnished skirting and doors everywhere, everything from the 80s). It's a lot of work to do and we are having to do most of it ourselves due to cost and lack of trades people who get back to you.
• So many rooms! I sometimes forget how many we have. It's not open plan at all and the house has been done in such a way that I don't think we could change it (or afford to change it).
• Re-sale - not many people need a house this size and it's not first time buyer type of house. So the pool of people we could sell it to is small.
• Heating - obviously being a big house it takes more energy to heat it. But one benefit of not being open plan is we can close doors on rooms and keep the heat in more easily.

Would I buy this house, or one like it, if I had a do-over? No way. Give me a little 3-bed terraced or semi-detached any day of the week. I even miss my tiny kitchen from our old house as everything was so accessible. Our current kitchen is like entering the void 😂

The downsides are as previous posters have said. The upsides outweigh them for me.

The big thing is to get your storage sorted early and keep spaces designated.

The fact there is a space for everything makes it easier to keep on top of, but you must keep on top of it as otherwise it gets overwhelming.

If you can afford it then a cleaner is a godsend. Our cleaner only does downstairs. Upstairs (and we have a second Hoover upstairs and that makes upstairs so much easier!) is the job of each person to keep their own room clear and the kids hoover on rota. Knowing he's coming and not wanting to waste money on him tidying, rather than cleaning, also helps me as I'm not a naturally tidy person, but that inspires me.

Our house is this size. Gardening / cleaning costs a fortune as it takes hours. We need our hedges cut and the quote was nearly £2k and we recently had a new roof that was about £65k.

Ours is well insulated but still £300 ish a month for has / electric. More in a really cold snap.

Everything is bigger so costs more. New carpets (just entry level wool) for our bedrooms was £10k. My house insurance is £1k, council tax is over £400 a month

I love it though. We do all congregate in the small room at night though!!!!

Personally I would never want a house bigger than 5 beds with one family bathroom, one en suite and one downstairs loo.

Who wants to spend all that time on cleaning? Unless you're rich enough to be able to afford a cleaner a couple of times a week.

Depends on your personal circumstances though. I have 5 children living at home and wanted them all to have their own room (and bathroom).

Ok I should have added that I can't personally see the point in having more than a 5 bed house with the usual 2/3 children most families have in the UK.

I wouldn't say 5 children all need their own bathroom but that's my opinion and obviously it's up to you if you want each of your 5 children to have their own bathroom.

These houses sound lovely but I'd also be thinking about the opportunity cost of putting that money into the space instead of (say) investing it for the benefit of myself and children when older, for example providing them with deposits to buy their own houses in due course.

This ^

Decorating and maintenance are a Sisyphean task. Heating costs are insane, especially if you live in a Victorian villa with high ceilings or similar period property. You will accumulate stuff to fill the space 😂 You will be heating rooms that are rarely used. I once realised it had been over a year since I had been into one wing of the house 😂

Cleaning isn’t too bad. The more space, the less you use rooms, the less dust and the cleaner they stay 🤷‍♀️ Gardening depends on the garden. Often mature gardens with shrubs and trees are fairly low maintenance. I would stay clear of anywhere with a large garden that needs landscaping.

On the other hand, it’s amazing having space for a playroom, not sharing bathrooms, rooms for hobbies, a library, a gym, a laundry and drying room, guests and house parties, a swimming pool.

My advice would be to buy well under your maximum budget so you don’t have to worry about maintenance and running costs and can afford to enjoy your home.

There has got to be a decent half way position between what you want and your husband wants. Not all detached houses are massive.

Don't do it. Large houses are so much work and are expensive to run and maintain. There is always something that needs attention. Unless you have time for the grounds, have livestock or can afford a gardener, land is overrated too.

Thank you everyone so much! To the poster who asked about compromise… absolutely! There is a middle ground, but I am trying to work out if my concerns are legitimate or if I am being overly pessimistic and ignoring all the positives. Thank you again all, I am reading and digesting!

@Lazyi We have a large house and have remodelled it to our liking. We have 5 bedrooms in the main house. There were 6 but we amalgamated 2 to make a large double aspect bed/sitting room. We have 3 en suite bathrooms and a main bathroom shared by 2 bedrooms. I don’t clean all of the bedrooms and bathrooms all of the time.

We have a cleaner who just does our ground floor space. We have heat pumps, solar panels and great insulation. We store our electricity in batteries. All of this has cost a fortune but so were our fuel costs! To be honest, you need deep pockets. If you cannot afford heating and maintenance (we have decorators and a maintenance builder) and all the costs like council tax and a gardener, don’t take it on. If you are doing it all yourself, it will take up so much time! Great if you love it, but a chore if you don’t. I also wouldn’t have six bedrooms if you don’t need them. Four bigger ones is better.

This is one of the reasons I live in a small house with lots of money in the bank. I grew up in a big house. It is non-stop cleaning and maintenance and even then, unless you have a good income to decorate regularly, it will still look rubbish

@Ozanj I have a big house and lots of money in the bank. It’s not either/or. If it is, and life stops because of house expenses, I’d trade down too. It really depends what money you actually have available to you.