How Much House Do You Really Need?

How much house do you really need

My parents have a 9,000+ square foot home and it’s still growing. They keep finishing off spaces to further increase their square footage and expand their living space. Their house is overwhelmingly huge, but it’s really nice too.

When I visit, the amount of open space is invigorating compared to our tiny apartment. Just for fun, here’s a list of the rooms in their house:

  • Master bedroom
  • Master bathroom
  • Ginormous walk-in closet in the Master bedroom (seriously, it’s bigger than our master bedroom, bath and closet together)
  • 3 other bedroom, each with large walk-in-closets
  • Very large office
  • Waiting room with separate entrance
  • Walk-in pantry
  • Laundry room
  • 5 additional bathrooms
  • Formal living room
  • Family room
  • Formal dining room
  • Dining room
  • Kitchen (I’m guessing it’s right around 600+ square feet)
  • Exercise room
  • Fancy storage room
  • Spa room (includes his and her bathtubs, sauna, tons of open space and a bathroom)
  • Theater room
  • Bar
  • Game room (I’m lovin’ the new pool table)
  • Workshop

Granted, they plan to retire in this house and it’s absolutely gorgeous. There are 2 humongous decks and 1 standard sized deck, 3 car garage and a large driveway that could park about 10 cars. My mom has to hire somebody to help keep up with all the cleaning, but they both love the house. I remember the first time I saw their house, I thought (and probably said it out loud too, since I do that all the time) “how much house do you need?”

Each time I return to our apartment after visiting them, I swear it shrinks just a little bit more. While the idea of having a huge house always sounded appealing to me, after the first time I walked into theirs—I quickly changed my mind. There is no way I would want to deal with owning a home that large, it’s just overwhelming. Aside from keeping it clean, there’s the fact that you have to furnish it all. That can get pretty expensive depending on your taste. Plus the more room you have, the more temptation there is to fill it up with stuff.

There are higher property taxes, utility bills and homeowner’s insurance. If you can’t clean it all yourself, then there’s also the cost of hiring a cleaning person to help out. There are so many costs to owning a regular sized home, it must be ridiculous with a huge house.

In contrast, we live in a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment that’s 1,000 square feet (give or take). It’s small, especially with all our stuff in it, but some people live in apartments way smaller and get by just fine. Over the last couple of years, I’ve decided that I don’t need a big house…the smaller the better. It would be easier to clean, less stuff would fit in it and I’d imagine the property taxes and maintenance would be less expensive.

Sometimes we just need to ask ourselves “How much house do I need?” If you stay in your house almost all the time, then of course your needs would be much different than someone who’s always out and about. The size of your family can also determine your housing needs; are you single, a couple with no children, single parent, planning to have roommates, have a herd of kids?

The amount of house you need also has an impact on retirement. There will always be repairs, insurance and property taxes, as well as utilities to take into consideration. Do you want to be paying for more house than you need to when you’re retired? Or would you rather have just the right size for your needs?

Some people might not want to live in a small house, the same way that I don’t want to live in a big house. We’re all different and want different things for our lives, but sometimes it helps to think about things differently. If we had a small house, I’d want to have lots of outdoor space so that I didn’t feel so cramped and caged. A couple of large porches could increase the feel of the living space without too much financial drain.

 

How much house do you need?

About Jen Perkins

Likes: saving money, being debt free (aside from our house), zombies, travel, getting money, blogging and dogs. Dislikes: debt, being broke, bunnies, wasting money, not having enough money to travel the world and paying interest. Facebook  ♥  Twitter  ♥  Google+  ♥  RSS

Comments

How Much House Do You Really Need? — 26 Comments

  1. I wrestle with this question often! My wife and I don’t have a huge home 1600 sq ft, but it doesn’t have a basement and I feel fairly unsafe without one (being on the western side of Missouri we get quite a few Tornadoes around here).

    If we just had a basement I’d be totally content. However, there are days I wish I could just move back into an apartment though too. Why can’t there be an apartment complex with quiet neighbors and people that didn’t stomp when they walk? Oh, I’ve move back in a second if a place could guarantee me that!

    • I’d probably want a basement too if we lived in a tornado-zone. I know what you’re saying, noisy neighbors suck—hopefully we won’t be stuck in an apartment forever. :-)

  2. This is actually something that my boyfriend and I have been debating as well. We both think our house is too big and we don’t need the space. We’ve also thought about renting out a room. P.S. I have a post scheduled similar to this for next week, so I don’t want you to think I stole the idea :)

    • Renting out a room is a great idea to bring in some extra income on extra space. Haha, I won’t think you copied me. :-)

  3. I’m going to need a picture of this house now. :)

    It sounds amazing – but I don’t think I could ever deal with that much space. I think when I have a family, I’d want a house around 2500 sq feet – 4 bedrooms, 3 bath kind of deal. Sadly, I don’t think I’ll be able to afford that kind of house where I’m living but it’s nice to dream.

    • LOL. I’ll try to remember to take my camera over there next time I visit. :-)

      2,500 square feet is a good sized house; there’s nothing wrong with dreaming. Who knows, maybe you’ll get your dream house one day. :-)

  4. We live in about 1,000 sq ft too. I’m happy with it, but an office would be nice.
    9,000 sq ft is way too much. They’ll have to pay more and more property tax as they build too right?

    • Yeah, I was in the same boat as you, an office would have made things SO much easier. Thankfully though, I’ve been decluttering and going for a more minimalist home and don’t feel that I need a separate office now—but it would still be nice. 😉 In the past, I converted our master closet (walk-in) to an office; currently I’ve got a little setup in our bedroom and it’s working out okay.

      Totally, they’re already paying almost 1 1/2 times our rent in property taxes. I’m guessing they’ll end up paying around $20,000 a year when everything is all done and on file. That’s like paying a mortgage for the rest of your life, crappy.

  5. I like this post about the best of any you have written. Really well done.

    As to the question at hand? 9,000 seems huge, but it is certainly sounds like a choice your parents are happy with. Personally, I see retirees more often than not choosing to down-size, not up-size, for retirement.

    We lived in small apartments in Taiwan (1,100 sq ft or so), and we enjoyed it. What we missed the most was a yard. Our house in Texas is far more modest than 9,000 sq ft, but it has a yard!

    I would be happy with a slightly larger home than what we now have, but would want some outdoor living space too.

    • Wow, thanks Thad. 😀

      I agree, usually retirees are looking to downsize to make things easier and to save money. My parents seem happy though, personally I guess in 12-18 years they’ll end up downsizing.

      Having a yard is really important to some people, I’ve always wanted one myself. At least you guys finally have one. :-)

  6. I am okay with my house. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it. :) Its about 1500 sq ft. and it’s not the size that I dislike it’s more of the layout.

    And like Jason I want a basement. We have so much bad weather here it would make me feel safer. But I think 1500 sq ft is plenty large enough for us right now.

    • I’m really picky about layouts, you can have the nicest house but if the layout sucks, so can the house.

      It sounds like they should start building all houses with basements in areas that have really bad weather issues. Just an idea. :-)

  7. Right now we live in a 2BR/2BA apartment that is 1,000 sq. ft. I think it’s a bit more than we need but we might find that 1BR/1BA is too small. The second bedroom is basically my husband’s space alone – he uses it as an office – so of course I think it’s unnecessary. :)

    The only reason I would want more room (aside from adding to our family) is that we love to entertain and we can’t have very many people over in our current space – no more than about 15, and that is pretty cramped. Kyle’s parents bought a new house recently that is perfectly sized for them but has a wonderful entertainment layout – open floor plan with a big kitchen. I think we would really have to have people over often to justify buying a bigger house for that reason when it is possible to host people other places. There is something very personal and intimate about having someone into your home, though!

    • Our apartments are the same size. :-) I know what you mean about the entertaining issue, we usually don’t have people come over often, so it doesn’t effect us much. If it’s important to you (and of course this depends on where you live) to have room for entertaining when you do get a house, you could always entertain outdoors??

  8. Theoretically, probably 400 square feet plus a garage – but hey, I’m married now! I could use another half bath, but 4/2 with a sunroom/game room suits me fine at this point. Now to fill it with kids!

    • If we didn’t have a kiddo, my husband and I could be fine in a tiny studio apartment, but kids love space (plus it makes it easier to hide from them when they’re being evil). Good luck filling it up. 😉

  9. 9000 sq ft! Wow! That is a big house. I don’t think we will ever own anything that large

    Our current house is 1500 sq ft or so and works for the time being. I do see us outgrowing it a bit though down the road. We have talked about building a second level on to it and if we did go through with this, we would have all the house we need.

    • Lol. I hope we never own anything that big, I’d lose my mind. :-)

      Adding a second level sounds like just what you guys need without overdoing it. :-)