When we were looking for House2, we bid on a beautiful house, a builder’s own home with every detail done to perfection. The man built it as their forever retirement home. The reason they were selling? Several grandchildren needing room for playing. The broken front glass cover on the marvelous Ortal fireplace confirmed that it was the true reason. 
(apparently, one of the g-kids decided to practice his pitching skills).
(We got outbid by a Chinese investor by a gazillion of money - ?!!!)
I am downsizing to 2 BR 2BA. Couldn’t your son take the 2nd BR when they visit? Certainly doable when kids are young? That was my plan anyway to let my kid have the second bedroom.
Our S is currently casually searching for a place to buy—2 bedrooms, one or 2 bathrooms with someone to sign for and receive packages. He isn’t interested in larger and ok to rent out for Airbnb.
The whole family in one bedroom? That isn’t ideal with a baby or toddler who isn’t used to sleeping in a room with others. It’s difficult enough for some young children to sleep in an unfamiliar place, let alone with the whole family.
We shared hotel rooms with our D until just recently. Certainly didn’t think twice about it when she was small. Both sets of grandparents had a portable crib type thing available for when we visited.
We’re in a 2BR 2BA apt, and so far when S, DIL & GD have visited, they’ve taken the 2nd BR. A Pack n Play fit in there with them. Once baby #2 arrives, we’ll let them take the larger MBR which should fit in 2 kids, or they take the apt & we sleep at a nearby hotel. It can work.
Call me odd man out, I like a big house. I seem to have a revolving door of visitors, a few boomerang kids, dogs, cats. I also host holidays and have parties. We also work from home. I like having a big bedroom where I can get away. I like having an area for a home gym, a home office, etc. I also like my big yard that gives me a buffer from the neighbors and gives the dogs plenty of space to run and lets me practice my golf without breaking a window.
I don’t want to be on top of people. I use my dining room. We use the whole house.
My in-laws had the big house. Then they moved into a big condo with three bedrooms and a finished lower level. They wanted this space for when their kids and grandkids visited. There were a lot of kids…so no matter when you went, grandkids and their parents shared one room.
At some point, we realized there was a very nice hotel at a modest cost that was 15 minutes away. If we were going to share a room, at least we got our own bathroom. So we all started to stay there. It was nice, quiet, and really worked well.
When we “right size” (not sure how much smaller), it will be to meet our living needs. There will be an extra bedroom, but we aren’t planning to run a B and B.
Just sold our 4600 sq foot house in January; one month on market, for very close to listing price, which was more than what we paid for it 8 years ago (actually sold for 10% more than we paid for it), no major upgrades since it was built 9 years ago. Other homes in our neighborhood, even on our street had languished on the market for 6+months. we sold to young professionals (wife is a doctor, not sure of husband) with 2 young kids, 1 set of grandparents will be living with them. This was their 3rd home…condo, starter, now this one.
We are empty nesting, as of last fall, and “downsized” to 3200 sq ft, new construction. We moved to be closer to husband’s work place that has moved across town and because we didn’t want to have to sink money into renovations to sell our home when we retire. The cost to replace flooring, roof etc. on a 4600 sq ft home adds up fast! We only plan on being in this new house 5/6 years before retirement, when we will move to another state. We purposefully choose a smaller home, New constrction, with a bigger yard, no backing neighbors, in a neighborhood with young families, in a price range that most would consider to be a first step up home.
We found just downsizing the little we did was awkward. We thought we might be able to do 2500-3000sq ft without much issue, after all our first home was 1500sq ft, but when push came to shove it felt tight to us (even our college age kids had a hard time with the smaller houses we looked at). We are in Texas, so our housing market is still growing and housing costs are significantly lower, in comparison to east coast. When we were looking, we considered some homes that were in the 25-35 year old range…there are lots of home sitting out there in this age range, but most have not had a darn thing done to them to upgrade. There have been huge improvements in insulation, plumbing, mechanical, windows etc. in that time. I am not going to pay the same amount of money for a 25 year old home that needs $75K in renovations, when I can go to another neighborhood, within a few miles, with the same school district and buy a newly constructed home for the same price.
The house we sold is the 6th home we have sold in 26 years of marriage. We have lived in multiple states, although our house sold fast, IMO. I definitely feel that there was a slowness to the market this time and the majority of people looking at our house were older. Location is vital, lot size and not having backing neighbors is important, but we are finding that buyers, particularly young people, do not want to renovate, period. today’s buyers also seem to have a hard time visualizing potential. If you want to sell you have to have a home that is competitive to a new build. All of these HGTV shows have influenced buyers, every one seems to think they should have a brand spanking new home or at least one that looks like it could be on HGTV. But, yes, I do think younger buyers are not wanting huge houses, but I also think, most, simply can’t afford the size of home that they may have grown up in. Ultimately, I think large homes/expensive houses going to be harder to sell.
@Iglooo @momofsenior1 @shellfell
Ds and a future wife could stay in our second bedroom - absolutely. We have had other couples (friends) stay with us multiple times. When one retires to a beach, there is basically a revolving door of company. It’s fine for three days or so. It would be extremely cozy trying to add a pack n play for a baby. The bedroom itself is only around 11.5 x 11.5 in space. Our whole condo is only 935 sq ft. I want my ds and his future family to want to visit me - not feel like it is uncomfortable for them to do so. Additionally, as someone who has always been expected to stay with the in-laws, I would have preferred my own space to retreat to in the evening.
Friends in the building say their plan is to have the grandchildren (when they are a bit older) stay with them but put the adult married children somewhere else. Give them a break/give them some privacy.
All of this is pure speculation at this point. These issues are not ripe yet. I will say that one not previously contemplated twist we had last Thanksgiving was that my widowed mil and our son both came to visit. Fil passed away last August. I had never thought about son and mil both visiting us at the same time. Thankfully, those friends in the building were visiting their son out-of-state and we used their place as overflow. We were able to do the same for their family when we traveled out-of-state at Christmas, However, our respective holiday travels aren’t always going to work out in such a mutually beneficial way. We can’t rent a unit in our same building because the minimum rental period in our building is 30 days. Same reason we don’t want a second unit within our same building - too hard to cash flow with those longer-term rental requirements. But friends/family can use units as guests.
I just don’t want my son and his future family to dread coming to visit us because they are cramped in a small space. We will pay for them to stay elsewhere if necessary. It’s one of the stipulations I made to dh when we did this downsize.
Also, we have “downsized” twice, though the first one wasn’t that much of a downsize - from 4,300 to 3,450 sq ft. The recent one in conjunction with dh’s retirement was far more significant. We had a living estate auction to get rid of our “stuff.” They came and packed and hauled it all away to their auction site. I think we paid 23% - it was an uneven/unusual amount. Would have been a lower commission had we had it at our home, but I didn’t want to do that. We were on a cul-de-sac and parking would have been horrible (and likely irritated our neighbors significantly). We didn’t get tons of money for our furniture/things, but it was easy and guaranteed everything would be gone. We had gotten a lot of use out of furniture anyway.
Both of our large-ish homes sold quickly. We were in a flyover state but with a couple of LARGE corporate offices in the area. The first home sold in a couple of weeks and the second one in five days. My dh firmly believes that the popularity of larger living spaces is going to dwindle signicantly. He was the one who pushed for the major downsize. It took me awhile to get on board, but I wouldn’t go back now for anything. However, I wouldn’t mind a bit more elbow room and storage space - 1,200 - 1,300 sq ft would be the maximum I would want. We have gone to some open houses for condos that are in the 1,700 - 1,800 sq ft range. Just seems too big at this point.
We recently visited my college roommate and her husband in California. Their 2,400 square foot home seemed enormous to me! Indeed, it was more than they wanted to buy. They call one loft space the “sweater drying room.” Their third bedroom is basically used as inside storage. Their challenge in home shopping was that they wanted/needed a garage for athletic equipment, bikes, etc. They had other requirements as well that necessitated buying larger to get the features they wanted (walk to the beach, etc.). They have no kids so won’t face the adult kids/grandchildren visiting issue. They bought after the recession out of foreclosure, and their home has doubled in value since that time.
D2 still lives part time with us while on break from law school/grad school. She finished law school and has another yer to get her MBA as part of a joint program. She’s living here this summer (along with her two cats) while she clerks at a firm. During the school year, she comes home for weekends at intervals (also with cats), longer periods during holiday breaks. We also have our 14 y/o nephew here (his Dad died and we have him when he would have been staying with his Dad). He’s about to arrive for six weeks.
All this to say that for the next 4-5 years, we will continue to have regular sleep over visitors, so we prefer to have plenty of space to accommodate everyone. But my knees really are not liking having the master bedroom up. There are 20 steps up the curving staircase to my bedroom, which I take 20, 30 times a day. I’m tired of it. So we will be selling this house within the next year to buy a house with the master bedroom down. This is a big house square footage wise, but small in our neighborhood. The huge houses sit on the market for a long time, but the “small” ones on the zero lots go quickly because they are on the golf course. I’ll get to see if that trend holds when we sell I guess.
We live in the south, in an area where the schools for our neighborhood are rated 9s and 10s. The downside is the commute into the city. Demand for houses <$500K, which are usually about 3K - 4K sq. ft., is strong. However, there’s now about a 3 yr. supply of houses >$1MM. I dread the selling process whenever dh is finally ready to put our house on the market. To sell relatively fast would mean pricing the house at about half of what we have into it.
Once I was eager to move on; now I’m conflicted. Our house is absurdly large, yet there have been times when it’s been nice to have room for multiple overnight guests, with each bedroom having its own bathroom. We could age in place here with a few minor modifications. Our doors are 36" wide, we have nearly flat access to the backyard, and we have an elevator that can hold a wheelchair plus 2 more people. We also have a gorgeous view.
Dh thinks we should spend money on the help that would enable us to keep the house, and whatever changes we might like to make. Our finances have turned around in the last decade, so we’re not pressed to sell. Property taxes are very low, less than a weekly cleaning service.
When we look at options elsewhere, the purchase price of a house less than half the size is usually equal to what we’d get for this place. The taxes are often double or more. The final kicker is that none of those houses have been fully accessible. The biggest downside to this house is not its size but that it’s not in the same town as any other family.
First world problems, indeed. Still, it’s a constant topic of discussion for us.
^^^We have an elevator as well (the houses in the zero lot area were designed with empty nesters in mind, so the purpose is to help them age in place), but I hate using it. It takes FOREVER to get up to the second floor. I could have walked upstairs, grabbed what I needed, and walked back downstairs by the time the elevator gets up there. So I only use it when absolutely necessary (came in handy when I had knee surgery and a sprained ankle though). My dream house is a one story home.
@Nrdsb4 , my dream home is also a one story. We recently found a house near one kid that has most of its space (3K SF) on the main floor, with a bonus room and bathroom upstairs. Dh is okay with that arrangement, but I’d still rather not have any finished upper level. We had a bad experience with dried out drain traps a few years ago when I was recuperating from surgery and dh forgot to run water upstairs. If dh couldn’t run water in the upstairs bathroom’s drains, I’d have to ask someone else to do it.
The second home we’re building has a first floor master and a guest room in the first floor as well and two bedrooms upstairs. We built it with retirement in mind.
When the grands, their spouses and great grands visit my mom in Florida (she has a 2 bedroom 2 bath + den) they now rent an Airbnb. This year they were about 1/2 mile from my mom and got a house with a pool, too. They spent plenty of time with her during the day, and at night all went out to dinner or they did dinner at their place.
My across the street neighbor - who is on an around the world for a year trip has her house on Airbnb. She’s rented to families visiting their parents, family ReU’s, parents visiting their kids who live here and even families just visiting friends here.
For me it’s not about the size or the price, but the use of space, traffic pattern and dealing with repairs and maintenance. I don’t want any empty rooms or spaces that are never used, or only used once a year, silly architectural features that look great, but make the place dysfunctional, large outdoor spaces that require constant mowing, pesticide spraying etc. I dread a mental hazard of constantly dealing with contractors and maintenance people. Our roster of annual service contracts seems endless: water sprinklers, boiler service, AC service, gutters and windows cleaning, chimney sweepers, pest and insect protection, arborists, plumbers, snow removal, leaf blowing… The list goes on and on. I also hate dealing with constantly keeping all appliances and gadgets in working order, changing water and air filters, maintaining drains, checking CO and smoke detectors etc. The more rooms we have the more work and effort it takes. The more stuff we install, the more often it needs maintenance, repairs and replacement. Not to mention renovations. The environmental impact of large houses is real no matter how low thermostats are set up, or how many EVs are parked in the garage. My next house will be all about efficiency and simplicity, but I will have as much room and storage as needed to live comfortably, including a dedicated guest bedroom and bathroom. Enough outdoor space to feel private, but minimal landscaping and maintenance. I would be happy with a very small lot or a townhouse, or a condo given the right arrangement.
@Hoggirl, I love your plan! Sounds perfect to me.
I can also understand that under 1000 sq.ft is pretty small and a couple hundred more would give you a little more room.
We upsized our empty nest but lived in a really small house in a great school district so our kids could go to the best school in our area. It was fine and there were some things about living in a small space that are positives. One being that everyone had to hang out in the same space. I know plenty that have big houses and every person hung out in different parts of the house. We were forced to congregate!
Now we have 2400 sq.ft., which is small for our neighborhood but we think is huge! We originally wanted a ranch with a walkout basement but settled on this house. That has a first floor master and 2 bedrooms upstairs and finished basement that isn’t a walkout. It is perfect and I love almost everything about it. I figure that when we can’t anymore, we will hire out our lawn.
Here, condos are as expensive or more than single family homes. Add in maintenance fees, higher taxes and we are looking at a bigger outlay. So we hope to stay in place.