We are a quiet family and I am not worried about the noise in the open plan. I am worried about the echo. The big room has a lot of glass, mostly glass that won’t absorb sound.
We’re building homes for sale, and many of our buyers are single retirees with limited budgets. Our most popular models are detached single family homes with two bedrooms, one or two bathrooms, and an attached one car garage. They’re small, as in 700-850 sf. Nobody asks for a bathtub; showers only. Laundry hookups are a must have feature.
We’ve been able to keep them around $200k, and sales are good.
We’ve build a few without garages, and they’re much less popular. I’m tempted to build a 650 sf one bedroom/1 bath with a one car garage.
@sherpa , that sounds ideal to me. No one around here is building anything small in new neighborhoods.
My very first house was about 900 sq ft, new house, new neighborhood, two BR, 1.5 bath. It had a 1.5-car attached garage with W/D in the garage. It was great until we had a kid. I would have liked a little more closet space, though.
If this were available in my town today, I would sell and move in a heartbeat.
@abasket yeah that’s about the size of it in Southern California near a beach. Your house would be really small or you’d be in one of the mansion sizes on the beach.
I love my house and where we’re at now. I don’t think we can downsize because we are in Southern California and everyone loves the weather here. Our three kids love this house because it’s close to everything. The two who have moved away are constantly here! One flies in frequently, from Northern California, WITH friends!
I’m already fielding questions about what we’re going to do with our house, and if relatives can come visit for short term. Uh, NO.
I would love to shrink this house and stay in the same location.
We do live in a great neighborhood and we have sunny views of the local hiking trails. We can walk the trails, or walk into the next neighborhood (30min) and get to the bank, grocery store, CVS, Joann’s, etc. The San Diego airport is a 35 minutes drive; the hospital is 10 minutes from my house.
I have a total of 29 windows in my house. (The only reason I know that is because we had to shutter and pay for all of them.). I would love to reduce my energy bill during the recent cold spells. We do have an old solar system, so that helps a little bit.
Can’t live without:
-AC
-Garage
-Gas appliances (spoiled)
W/D and D/w
-Smaller fridge! With a bigger fridge, Im constantly finding interesting things, in the refrigerator, that are unrecognizable, and I don’t know who put them in there.
-3bd/3BA. (office space)
They don’t have to be big rooms. Sometimes, I need an area to decompress, or read quietly, while hubby is talking to work colleagues in the office.
-Respectful neighbors.
-Very low HOA fees. Ours are currently at $25 a month.
@sherpa I would suggest thinking about a 1 bedroom 1.5 bath option. Really, the second guest toilet is probably the single non-negotiable thing I can think of, at least for us.
@sherpa - yes, a powder room would be a must if there was only one full bathroom in the house. Probably can combine with laundry to save space. This will add to cost but will open up a larger buyer niche.
Many of you know our story, but we spent years planning our relocation from Chicagoland to a warm weather climate.
My husband had more non-negotiables than I did. He wanted a SFH on a mainly flat over 6000 sq ft lot and some lawn and the W/D indoors rather than in the garage. We both wanted 3 bedroom 2 bath and gas stove. I wanted a door that could be closed between our two tv’s - the old house had an open loft over the living room. He didn’t mind both sets being on together but I did! I also wanted double sinks in the master bath but he didn’t care.
There were areas of compromise, which is good because we got outbid on three houses before this offer was accepted. He didn’t want a pool but agreed in the end, and it’s wonderful- a dream come true for me. Our back yard is like a resort with the pool, hot tub, fire pit, and outdoor kitchen. He preferred two story but this one story will be adaptable for aging needs,
He wanted close to our old square footage (2000) but we ended up with about 1500. That’s fine because we spend a lot of time outside. And the house is easier to clean. We didn’t look for A/C but have it, along with a two car garage (the old house was one car). The lot is 9000 sq ft but much of the open space is the pool and an RV pad.
I wanted a updated kitchen but that didn’t happen. We could definitely update it but would have too much marital dispute on what to do to make that a viable option at this time.
We (mainly me) spent literally years figuring out where to look. I love our location. No view other than our lovely back yard but we can drive to fabulous views in a minute. It’s not quite walking distance to shopping (at least not for me) but plenty within a 10 minute drive. There are nice walks in the neighborhood - I once walked to the ocean, exactly one mile away but a steep uphill back so haven’t done it again. And we’re 10-20 minutes drive to just about everywhere we want to go, including the airport and beaches.
Surprisingly we’ve had very few visitors in five years other than our son occasionally, each of our siblings once, and two different friends for short visits.
@Marilyn, that sounds great. I think you need less space in a warm climate (though a hot climate like Tucson may require as much space as a cold climate as in each case you spend a lot more time indoors.
We decided that walking to hiking (and instant kayaking) beat walking to shopping. So we will drive to shopping.
We ended up with a heated saltwater pool because that came with the house. We’ll figure out how to take care of it. ShawWife will ultimately love it. We are thinking of adding a hot tub and wonder how hard it would be to put it on top of our screened in porch. If we did, we could walk from the Master bathroom to the hot tub (assuming we put in a door). This would have a great view across fields and the river.
I’m surprised you haven’t had more visitors. We lived in a loft in Soho for five years. Huge space with thirteen 5’ x 9’ windows. Everyone we had ever met decided they wanted to visit. After a while, we had to stop allowing visitors. I can’t remember this but apparently we had two sisters of two of our close friends stay with us for extended periods while they were looking for jobs. I’m surprised I don’t remember this as both were attractive women who would have been in their late 20s (one was an actress and the other in television). More recently, we rented a houseboat in Sausalito for a few winters. Again, lots of people tried to invite themselves to stay. In this case, there were only two BRs and one was my office, so we turned down almost everyone except ShawD and some close cousins.