Am I the only one fed up with houses being so small? do others feel the same way?

lincroft1710

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Some people cook - rather than just take a readymeal out of freezer and put into microwave.

Some people want/need to be able to put up friends/relatives from elsewhere in the country up for a night or three.

Both of which can be done easily in houses of 1000 sq m and even smaller, as my family and millions of others have done over the years

moneyistooshorttomention

Smodlet wrote: »

This also works better in a location where the weather does not suck for two thirds of the year. Yes, I do know it is more extreme in NYC than in most of England... But have you lived through a winter in Newcastle upon Tyne? Brrrr!

.

Very true.

Where one lives does influence just how much the house is "a home you live in more" or "a base to go out from".

In a worse weather area and/or one with less facilities - the houses have to be bigger basically. Because chances are you'll be at home in them more.

My last area = better weather and lots more facilities. So, for instance, I could go out any day of the week and have a lot of choice of places to eat a meal out at and there's quite a few options for a main course of a main meal at lunchtime for between £5-£8.

In current remoter area - I rarely eat out (at any price) because there is very little choice of places to do so/etc. Hence my kitchen needs to be bigger - because I have no choice but to try and turn myself into a better cook and cook more.

In a worse weather area - there will be times when one decides to do gardening or go out for a walk - but the weather is not good enough for it. End result = the sitting room has to be bigger - as a tiny one won't do if one is in it rather more.

Little/if any public transport of an evening or Sunday = there's a chance a friend will miss the last bus and you're putting them up for the night. Space needed for that.

....and so it goes on....

fairleads

stator wrote: »

I too find it annoying. That's why I bought an old council house built in the 1950s. Very well proportioned and a decent garden.

If you want someone to blame look at thatcher. Before thatcher there were 200,000 houses being built a year, 50% private 50% council. After thatcher there were 100,000 all private.
House builders have to compete for development land. The landowner wants the most money, the most money comes from building the most houses, tiny houses.
It's also exasebated by the governments insistence on 'affordable homes' quotas. Developers have to squeeze in a certain proportion of cheaper houses, on schemes and that means small matchbox houses with matchbox gardens.
The problem could be solved by scrapping quotas and instead allowing new builds to be bigger and instead charging a levy that can be used to purchase houses elsewhere for social housing. The average house size would increase.
You also need to scrap green belt protection and replace it with something more sensible, that allows houses to be built in the south west whilst protecting only the important areas.
I would also give councils back the ability to build houses. If the councils were given the funding and quicker compulsory purchase powers they could oversee house building more efficiently and get a higher quality of housing built. They would purchase land, design a housing estate, parcel up the land with outline planning requirements and then sell off the plots to house builders. Use the profit to fund the next project

We can also blame Maggie for smaller houses because she reduced the allowable minimum room size, and Cameron reduced them even more.

theoretica

If you want bigger rooms, knocking walls down may be an option. My parents turned three tiny rooms into one in their previous house and two into one in their current home.

JoJo1978

We each bought small flats when we started out in London and after a similar period of saving to what you mentioned we bought a 3 bed semi that seemed palatial in proportion compared to the flats. But we purposely only looked at older houses knowing they were better proportioned. We also selected an ex LA property to maximise space versus affordability.

We've recently sold up in London and deliberately moved much further north so the money went further, but we did have to wait years until we'd cleared the mortgage and got to appropriate places in our careers to change them up, so I do sympathise. The relocation has meant that we now have somewhere 2.5 times the floorspace. More importantly for us there's much more open space around us that helped with claustrophobic feelings.

Again we looked at but rejected houses on newer estates that did not gain us much in terms of privacy or space versus what we had. We've ended up in something we weren't even considering, a detached townhouse. The second storey really gives us a sense of extra space.

The flip side is that we've both taken huge leaps of faith to make the move into an unknown area leaving everything we know behind.

zagubov

I wish people would stop moaning about overcrowding. Plenty of countries like the Netherlands and the former West Germany were more densely populated but didn't seem remotely so in reality and had much bigger housing space than the "overcrowded" UK.

We just simply lost the knack of planning towns and building houses big enough for our population and fitting them into our national landscape.

It's ridiculous we have a housing tenure system that discourages flat ownership, and a mindset that encourages the purchase and maintenance of inadequate housing until someone extends the house when most countries would have built them the right size in the first place.

Davesnave

JoJo1978 wrote: »

The flip side is that we've both taken huge leaps of faith to make the move into an unknown area leaving everything we know behind.

For us, it wasn't indoor space which was a concern; we wanted an outdoor area larger than 1/4 acre, and that wasn't available anywhere in our city for our sort of money.

So, like you, we upped-sticks and moved 100miles after 40 years living in the same small area.

No regrets either. When we go back to visit friends, it all seems so cramped, claustrophobic and incredibly busy. Nice for a day....

We've done the knocking down walls thing too, which is 'easy' in a bungalow. Our fiver bedder now has three. Yes, we know, it reduces value, but we value space and personal enjoyment now, not the money when we're dead.

Don't whinge OP; make something happen. Plenty of cheaper areas in the UK where your £ goes further, but convenience may not feature among their attributes. One can't have it all.

AdrianC

fairleads wrote: »

We can also blame Maggie for smaller houses because she reduced the allowable minimum room size, and Cameron reduced them even more.

The only time any "allowable minimum room size" comes into play is in statutory overcrowding - and very, VERY few private houses are anywhere NEAR that.

googler

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote: »

In Japanese cities, for example, people tend to regard the whole neighbourhood as home and their own little place is just where you sleep etc. They do much of their daily living externally.

....one bed flat in a major city (NYC).

Despite the initial huge culture shock and claustrophobia, it did actually work because we barely needed to spend any awake time in our home. Everything was there for you outside; there was little value in actually being at home.

Yes, but most everything outside costs money. Lots of it. Coffees which cost pounds instead of pennies. Savouries and other food items which all carry a substantial markup compared with what can be enjoyed at home. I shudder to think how expensive that would be in NYC.

And that's before you consider how depressing it can be to be outside on a cold, wet, wintry evening...

And once you've spent a week in the park watching the world go by, a week in the local coffee shop watching the world go by, a week in (hopefully not) the local pub watching the world wobble in front of your eyes, wouldn't you be yearning for ... somewhere to call home? Somewhere where you can, for instance, read without being disturbed, listen to music without being disturbed, do a crossword, etc. Things you want to do away from the rest of the population.

And even if you do have many other forms of entertainment in the area (cinema, concert venue, art gallery, theatre), you're going to run out of those pretty soon, unless you happen to be in a choice area of ... NYC. But there's not enough room there for everyone. And you're unlikely to have all of these in Grimsby. Or Cleethorpes. Or Dundee. Or Southport. Or ...

After a day's work, I like to go home; not to my neighbourhood.

poppasmurf_bewdley

In my youth I went to live in the USA for a couple of years. When I came home, my first impression as I left Manchester Airport was how small everything was - the road widths, the houses, the shops - everything seemed so much smaller and crammed in.

But since then, houses seem to have got even smaller. I remember visiting one newly built house where the main bedroom could only just accomodate a double bed and a small bedside cabinet. Literally no room for a wardrobe and chest of draws. I've also been in a lounge which was so small you could almost touch the two long walls if you stretched out your arms.

To me, it's all a matter of builders putting as many units as they can on a particular plot so they can maximise profits, which are already scandalously high.