This is something I’m curious about that is tied to housing shortages… As in, say a hypothetical government want to encourage real-estate develpers to build more housing to solve housing shortages. But said government still wants to make most of its citizens happy, instead of just cramming everyone in the smallest accommodations possible
As extreme examples:
- A shoebox studio (<= 10 m^2) is probably too small for almost any family
- On the contrary… a massive estate (>= 10,000 m^2) is probably too big for almost any family. At that point, upkeep of the house may need several full-time housekeepers, so you literally won’t have time to do it yourself
I’d imagine there might be some cultural differences regarding this as well…?
My wife and I bought our first house before we had kids. It was ~1000sqft, 3 beds 1 bath and perfect for just us. Granted we had 2 dogs and 5 cats so it felt hectic at times, but with a nice little back yard the dogs we’re much more calm.
After having 2 kids it started feeling cramped, 100% doable, but as someone who works from home I was dying for more space. The layout was also awful, it seemed like one of the previous owners tried to make it “open concept” and didn’t think it through, so there was nowhere you could go to get an ounce of privacy aside from the bedrooms which were 8x8 all around.
We recently moved to a 1900sqft house and its absolutely great. I can take work calls while everyone’s yelling in the living room and its not a bother. My toddler can play whole the baby’s napping without waking him up. The bedrooms are big with honestly huge closets. Before I was sharing a closet with my toddler and mostly living out of hampers, now he has a closet that his bed could fit in.
My only desire is am extra to for guest if anyone needed to stay with us for a while. I’m hoping to fix up the basement soon and make it a nice 900sqft guest house type thing.
I think we have more space than we necessarily need now, but that makes me happy.