The trend for three storey new build houses 🏠 - but with very little living space?

[MCBfan]

I’ve noticed a lot of these springing up round here recently and I wondered what people’s thoughts were.

The houses have three storeys but are built on a very small footprint. You have just two rooms downstairs: a kitchen/diner and a small lounge. On the first floor, there are two bedrooms, and a bathroom. In the loft there are either two more en suite bedrooms or a large master bedroom, en suite with walk in wardrobe.

Clearly, these are designed as family homes but the living space downstairs is really small.

I’ve just seen one for sale where the owners have designated one of the first floor bedrooms as ‘the living room,’ and the small original downstairs living room as ‘a study.’ But it seems like it would be a pain having a living room on the first floor?

Just wondered what others thought of this trend! I’ll try to find a floor plan. The gardens tend to be very small too, as the houses aren’t very wide.

I think that three-storey town houses are potentially very useful if we want to build more houses without using up too much space. They're common in much of mainland Europe so perhaps we can learn from them how to make them more practical here.

I like: garage, utility room, study on the ground floor; kitchen diner and living room on the first floor, and bedrooms on the second floor.

They try to cram too much into them. We flirted with the idea because although I adore period properties, the idea of very little maintenance for five years or so is appealing.

Most of the modern ones are around 1200-1450 sq ft over three floors, and in those they often put four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a ground floor WC. The spaces are claustrophobic. Quite often the lounges feel like a garage conversion because they are so narrow.

I understand that modern life changes and I am an old fashioned sod, but when I was a kid we coped with one bathroom. One bathroom plus a loo is the dream for me. I don’t want to be cleaning three bathrooms and a toilet thank you very much (I have M.E., before you come at me for being lazy).

Besides that I often find that they fit about a third of the amount of kitchen units in them than I would like/could cope with. But I also find that with a lot of older houses too. It’s not specific to new builds. Disability plus a bunch of food intolerances means finding a good size kitchen for us is a royal PITA.

I suppose it is quite snobbish to say I don’t like the overlooked, tiny gardens, we should just get over lack of privacy and all that. But some of the tiny, regimented ones where you have a square of gardens all backing onto each other just give me the massive ick and as much as I have tried (and I have tried, and tried and tried), I don’t seem to be able to get over that. I don’t even know where it comes from. I grew up in very close proximity to all our neighbours across three properties and I don’t remember particularly disliking it back then.

So I am just a snob? Whatever! There are worse things to be.

Lived in one - hated it. It was really narrow too and difficult to furnish.

If you're a snob then so am I! I can't deal with really narrow lounges, not enough kitchen cabinets and tiny over looked gardens! Also don't like bedrooms on different floors and the idea of walking upstairs to my lounge doesn't excite me either nor having it on a different floor to my kitchen. However, I'm not sure I actually am a snob, as if I had to move to a slightly less desirable area to achieve what I want, then so be it!

Wouldn't apartments be more common on the continent? So you have one large floor to yourself with people above and below - so you get the benefit of density - with decent building regs for noise and maintenance

They are a blot on the landscape here in this rural area. It is just a way of trying to cram in more houses to the acre, so more profit for the developers. And they can't be great to live in.

Hate them. Greedy builders cramping in pretend houses so people think they've lots of space when buying then they spend their lives developing leg muscles and staying away from their teens cos the teens can spend time in their room but they have not enough space to all hang out together. Kitchen downstairs with living room upstairs is unnatural for today's life ... Had three friends who sold these within one-two years... It might be a starter house for a couple or for students sharing a house, but theyre no good for family life really...

Sorry, totally off topic but @KievLoverTwo I'm sure it was you that was having trouble with their rangemaster a while back? I said I'd check mine regarding whether my super duper ring stayed on or kept cutting out. I totally forgot but today noticed it does cut out when I guess it reaches temp and remembered you 😂 Sorry 😳

They are a trend in Ireland too.

Squash as many of them onto a site as possible as the footprint is smaller than a traditional semi means a builder / developer makes more money.
The ones I have seen have a narrow hallway, a small sitting room (lounge) and a kitchen diner at the back with big glass doors out to the small garden.
Bedrooms are on the upper two floors.

Well remembered!! Thank you.

Actually, we are having problems with a whole host of electronics and we think we are getting power surges/spikes from the farm. I was talking to a MN electrician about it recently. In any case, I am not buying an EIGHTH cooker and we now have a load of air fryers and appointments booked to find another rental ASAP because even if we resolve the cooker issue, the other issues with this home are insurmountable.

Hope you find somewhere soon. Are you not looking to buy anymore or just nothing suitable around?

Same. We love ours, it's great!

'Upside down' houses are built quite often on Grand Designs, so there are some people who like the lounge on the first floor. For us, we have a stunning view from the lounge that you just wouldn't get if it was downstairs.

Yeah, ideally we'd have bigger bedrooms, but we're getting a built in wardrobe put into our room, which will help with the space in ours. The living space is great though.

OP, I am so sorry for derailing your thread!! I guess this history is old and some folks have really been rooting for me.

We have had three potential purchases that were out of pure desperation to get out of awful rentals and the motivation overrides anything else. We were loathe to get another rental due to past experiences. But really we need to be IN a comfortable rental in order to make the best possible purchase decision. If vendors even get a whiff of desperation they take advantage of you and I am really not good at putting up with that. So - we are trying to move to the area first - which is 2.5 hours away. Then once we are settled in a less dreadful rental we can either decide to buy the absolutely right house for us at our leisure, or chuck all our savings into investments and not buy. We keep mulling over the idea of emigrating as we have no strong ties to the UK. In terms of “renting is wasting money” yeah, in the long run, maybe. But with current interest rates you wouldn’t make back in equity what you are not paying by renting a house of the same financial value. There is a very definitive ceiling that people will pay for large rental homes and right now, it’s vastly cheaper than buying them. And we are very disciplined with putting away large savings amounts in high interest accounts so I am not too bothered about “chucking money away on rent.”

It would be entirely different if we were looking at <<200k purchases, then the argument for buying versus renting is far grayer - but we’re not - sadly - not even close. I would love to live in a small house but my body won’t let me.

Thank you for caring! <3

Mines pretty big tbh, converted garage (guest room) and kitchen/diner on ground floor, living room and office on 1st floor, 2 bedrooms on top floor. There is a toilet on every floor and we have a conservatory that we use as a utility room.

Certainly seem some smaller ones though, like all types of house tbh.

So if you have little ones playing or having a bbq up have to go upstairs and downstairs with food/drinks!

These are the ones on an estate near me
They seem popular, built about 20 years ago

Oh why why do new builds have so many bathrooms/toilets/ensuites!!! Such a total waste of space! Too much cleaning and expensive to replace!! Ok if you have moved up the ladder but when you are just starting out just a waste of space!!!

All those toilets yet the bedrooms are only 7 ft odd wide 😬

True but its probably code now. Mine had a crapper on all 3 floors. You can only take a dump in one at a time.

@MCBfan I know. It's weird as I have an apartment on the same site and this is mine which I don't think is small

Unfortunately these are the only houses we can comfortably live in as we need a 4 bed and all other houses have box rooms. Literally every house we view has a 4th box room apart from these townhouse style ones. I will just have to learn to live with all the stairs. We need to get double beds in 3 of the rooms and 2 kids sharing the 4th so we are hoping to buy one that has 3 floors with equal sized double bedrooms on the top 2 floors

Says who?

Families who poop together stay together!

Always thought this would work great for us. I WFH so having a downstairs study with access to a toilet and the kitchen and then the living room up a floor with our bedroom and bathroom, kids bedrooms on the third floor.

I think it would work great.

We are currently considering offering on a town house. The down sides of the one we are considering are a very small garden and living dining room could be bigger. Bedrooms, bathrooms and storage are all brilliant. There isn't much else we can afford that ticks so many of our boxes. I think they are difficult to sell so we will aiming to beat the price down a lot.

I live in one but I happen to really like steps, especially running up them Sonic the Hedgehog style. Now trying that with a hoover is a bit of a pain in the arse I will admit.

It's our first house and next year we hope to move 🎉.

But, they are very narrow and all you hear is ow! Bloody wall, omg I hate this house, who puts doors there FFS, muuuuuuum I think my toe has come off......