Buying A Home
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Small Bedrooms...
Ok, DH and I have been house hunting for the past few months. Every single weekend we go out and look at 4-5 houses with the realtor on Saturday and on Sunday we catch all the open houses. We are getting very discouraged and can't seem to find anything that we like even a little bit. Today we found a house we love, but the bedrooms are very small. The master would fit our queen bed and one bureau, that's it. Do we settle for the house we love with small bedrooms and closets? Or do we continue our search?
We are first time home buyers, and i'm beginning to think maybe we are being unrealistic in our budget..... But i really don't think we are. I don't know anymore.....
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Re: Small Bedrooms...
How many homes have you looked at? If we're talking months of looking at 4-5 homes every weekend, plus open houses I'd say that maybe you're a little unrealistic in your expectations.
Also, what era of homes are you looking at? If you're looking at homes that were built 50+ years ago, you're probably mostly going to find homes with smaller bedrooms and closets because that's just how they were built back then. Large bedrooms weren't that important, and people didn't need huge closets.
Are you looking at a lot of vacant homes? Sometimes with vacant rooms its really hard to tell exactly what will fit in to a space.
We have been looking at older homes (which this one is, 1920's) and newer homes. We really love the newer townhouses, they have nice open floor plans, large bedrooms and walkin closets, but we really want a single family. I don't want to buy a house attached to another house, what if you don't like your neighbors etc, they are attached to you....
The houses have been both, vacant as well as someone currently living there
H and I had many a debate on room size. He grew up in a 4000 sq ft home with a huge bedroom and I grew up in a 1300ish sq ft home with a 10x9 bedroom. I don't have a problem with "small" bedrooms, especially if there is also a basement or family room for toys. My argument through it all was "what do they need to do in there? sleep, get dressed, and do homework." If you can fit a twin bed, dresser and desk I think that's fine.
That said, the master sounds like an issue. We passed up a house because that made the house impractical. I'm assuming that the closets and bathroom are also on the small side. If you have a lot of clothes/makeup that could lead to problems quickly.
I know how down and out house hunting can make you feel. You just have to keep at it and something will come along. Have you gone through the houses that have sold in your price range in the last year to see if any of them were ones that would have worked for you? That's what I did to get a sense of what we could expect.
Also, if your area is like ours it's possible that the last few months have just had crappy inventory. New things have just started coming on the market.
If you're not in a hurry to move, I would wait.
I'm personally okay with small bedrooms. Like PP said, I sleep there. I don't need a sitting area, 3 dressers, etc, etc. My current bedroom is about 10x10 and fits a queen sized bed, 1 night stand and 1 upright dresser. (We have a walk through closet elsewhere that houses my dresser.) Our second bedroom/den is even smaller.
This IS your first house, so you most likely won't get everything you want. Only you can decide what you can live with. Small bedrooms aren't GREAT for resale (I've never heard people complain about a bedroom being too big), but wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. If the houses have older charm and have been maintained nicely, and you can do some additional upgrades, it would be fine. Also, if there's enough room, would you be able to add a master bedroom to the back or upstairs in the future? Or would you be able to combine 2 bedrooms (in a 4+ bedroom house) into 1 master suite? Think about future possibilities.
40/112
It's only a 3 bed 1.5 bath, we wouldn't want to get rid of a bedroom to make a bigger master
Its only DH and I right now, so the house would work for now. But our 5 year plan would include starting a family, which I think we would quickly grow out of the house.
I guess you need to decide if you want to go the starter house route. We did not - we preferred to rent and save until we could buy what we want and this way we don't have to settle. We love the house we are under contract for. We were able to find a very nice condo to rent at a price that has allowed us to save big time.
Houses that were built prior to 1980-ish will have smaller bedrooms. Pre-1950s they're utility only. Bed, dresser, nightstand, closet. That's it, because that's all they had.
Houses that were built from 1980s to around the mid/late-1990s have larger rooms, enough for a bed, maybe two dressers and a nightstand or two and maybe a small vanity, but not much else.
Houses from late-1990s to current are much bigger. Master suites are the "in" thing. Basically enough room for a king bed, two nightstands, two dressers, maybe a couch or chaise, and a bathroom.
You'll have to decide what you want. Old house/smaller rooms or new house/larger rooms. It will be difficult to find a 1920's craftsman with modern rooms/amenities for a 1970s split-level budget.
Personally, I'd rather have small bedrooms and larger living space. That's one of the things on our list for the next time around. Smaller bedrooms, larger kitchen and living area.
http://pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi#general
I personally would also prefer larger living areas with smaller bedrooms.
Or you might have to come up with creative storage solutions, or purge some stuff to be able to accomodate smaller bedrooms and closets if you really have your heart set on a single family home.
I live in an 840 square foot 2 bedrom, 1 bath house with a dog and a cat, and think that it's also big enough for us if we have a kid. It's totally doable.
You would be surprised at how much stuff you really don't need.
Does it have a basement?
We only like older houses so storage space is sometimes at a premium. We keep a wardrobe in the basement and have 'seasonal migrations' of clothing. I also keep some under the bed storage boxes for things we don't use often like swimsuits, shawls, DH's golf outfits,etc.
If you feel like you have ample space in the public rooms where you'd likely spend most of your time I wouldn't worry too much about the bedrooms. Especially if this is your first house rather than your forever house.
Our house is from the twenties and our bedrooms are small. We only spend time in there to sleep so it doesn't matter. The rest of the house is a beautiful open floor plan and there is plenty of it so we are happy with that.
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