How to Find the Perfect Home: Capacity

I'm highlighting Money magazine's excellent resource on how to find the perfect home. Today, we'll talk about considering the home's capacity. Their thoughts:

To squeeze into a budget, you might have to get a smaller - wait, I'm a real estate agent: cozier - house than you'd like. So forget about square footage, often a misleading number. More important is how that space is allocated.

They go on to say you should ask the following questions:

• Does it have enough closet space?
• Are there enough bedrooms?
• Does the kitchen suit my needs?
• Is there a spot to work from home?

A few thoughts on this issue from me:

1. This is probably the biggest area of disagreement between me and my wife. I want a house a bit bigger than our current place, she wants a house that's easier to clean (which means smaller.) I've offered to pay for a cleaning person to come in and take care of the cleaning for us all, but she doesn't want to do that. So, we remain in disagreement.

2. The comment about square footage and layout is correct. If designed properly, 2,000 square feet can seem like 2,300. And if done poorly it can seem like 1,600. That's a BIG difference.

3. Closet (and storage) space is key. We've seen some houses with closets so small you could barely fit a hanger in them.

4. Bedrooms is an issue for us too. We'd like to have rooms for our family, a spare room, and office, and a workout room. But I'm not sure we can find all this in our price range. That's six bedrooms if the place doesn't have a den, library or something similar. One solution for us: a basement designed the way we want it.

5. I ignore the kitchen when we look at homes -- my wife spends 50% of her time there while looking. :-)

6. I would love to work from home some day and want a place that gives me that option.

Money ends this section with a few interesting facts:

• The median American single-family home has gotten 61% larger even as household size shrank.
• Median American single family home in 1970: 1,385 square feet; In 2005: 2,227 square feet.
• Median American single family home in 1970: 3.14 people; In 2005: 2.6 people.

We have four people. Does this mean we can get a 3,426 square foot house and just be average? ;-)

Click here to read part 4 of this series.

Click here to read part 1 of this series.

Comments

[Kevin]

Your comments on average house size growing are on point. I always have to laugh when watching "House Hunters" or some other show when a couple with 2 kids and a 3 or 4 bedroom house say they "have to move" because they are "running out of space". Hmmm, maybe you have too much crap! These are the same people that park their $50,000 SUVs on the driveway because the garage is full of boxes.

[Anne]

I live in a 500 square foot 1-bedroom and I have to concur that layout matters. Looking over this list, even though my place is tiny, it meets all 4 of these criteria. Big bedroom closet, enough bedrooms (1; I live alone), a spacious kitchen, and it even has a little nook in a hallway that I set up with a desk to work from home. And, funny enough, it never feels cramped.

[Bears]

Those facts are so true.... I guess builders just want to get more bang for the buck, which is why it is almost impossible to find new construction homes under 3k sqr ft (at least where I live).

I would love to find a smartly laid out 4 bedroom home + office that is only 2400 sqr ft.

[Jon]

I bought a new garden home last year. It's 3 bedroom, 2 bath and 1,300 square feet. It's so spacious for me, but I'm single and not a packrat. I think America has a real problem with hoarding. There's so much benefit to being clutter-free (less to clean, less to dig through when something is lost, less to worry about it)...I don't know why more people don't embrace it.

[Lord]

A few comments. Flow is very important. Stairs take up a lot of space. Walkways through rooms provide space; separate hallways eat it up.
Proportion is important; excess in some areas can't make up for shortages elsewhere.