How much Sq ft is your home?

R

rkser

Full time employment: Posting here.
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Oct 26, 2007
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I am 52 DW is 47 & we look forward to "Have Funds Will Retire" stage of our lives.

Our House is a full 3600 sq ft (Heated & Cooled)4 bed 3 bath 3 garage, and has & is serving us well. I want to downsize as the House maintenance is becoming a chore & comes in the way of spending time in other joyfull activities apart from the huge expense involved.

Our baby will soon be leaving home for college, at which time me & my wife will have the house for ourselves. I want to downsize and DW does not, & we keep going to & fro in our deliberations. She wants enough space for children & future grandchidren visits, apart from the relatives & friends who visit us often(We live in Florida).

We wonder how much sq feet living area, other 50 plus yr olds live in ?
 
We have ~1250 sq.ft., single-story, almost 100 year-old house with 1 bath, 2 bedroom, living room, hobby room, eat-in kitchen, large utility room, no basement, detached 20' x 20' [-]garage[/-] workshop that has an additional 220 sq.ft. hobby room attached to it. It's plenty big for the two of us......and plenty small enough so visiting relatives have to stay at a hotel with a heated swimming pool and a jacuzzi. We enjoy visits from relatives, but we also enjoy the peace, quiet, and privacy at night after they head back to the hotel, and also first thing in the morning before they come back. When we travel to visit relatives, we prefer to stay in a hotel for the same reasons....peace, quiet, and privacy. It keeps all of us from doing Lizzie Borden re-enactments! ;)
 
We have a 5 level split, 2500 above grade, 4000 finished. I'd like to downsize but it has a 26 X 28 garage which I love. DW likes the space for kids, grandkids (actually only 1 so far) etc.

We can afford it so, WTH?
 
Our "retirement home" is 4372 sq ft. It was built/finished about 2.5 years ago, and the only reason we built it so big is so that kids/grandkids can and will want to come visit. We also have an 18x38 pool (also for the kids/grandkids). DS has already flown the coup, and DD has one more year of HS. As of right now, we only use that home at Christmas and a couple of months in the summer when DD is out of school. Our apartment in Asia is about 1850 sq ft, and that much is enough for the two or three of us as the case may be. We'll be here another year at the minimum and probably a couple years, three at the furthest out projection. I would have been very happy with 2500 or so sq ft in the retirement house but DW wanted to make sure there was room for the kids/grandkids, and now we are thinking of building a guest house so that the kids/grandkids don't damage the furniture in the main house...:( Although I would like the extra garage/workshop/exercise area that comes with it, I'm not sure the extra year(s) of w*rk are really worth it...but we are giving it consideration. All of this said, even though I wanted a smaller home, we both really do love the one we have. If we ever decide to sell it, we will more than likely move to another state, and will have less land and probably a little less house, but that is yet to be seen...kind of far off in the future.

R
 
My condo has 860sq ft. Far more than I need. I may get a roommate since it has a second bedroom and 1/2 bath. Couldn't imagine filling 1000sq ft let alone 3 or 4x that much.
 
Ours is 2270 sqft. We have picked out our retirement home (plan), it's just over 1500 sqft. We can afford much more, but we've never been interested in paying or caring for a big showy house. We are fans of quality over quantity, see "The Not So Big House" books.
 
Ours is six years old, one story with a basement, 2 car attached garage, 3 bedroom 3 bath (one downstairs) top floor is ~1710 sf, basement is halfway finished off with a large workshop area. This is more than half again larger than the house we lived in before retirement or either one of us grew up in.

For us it is more than enough room and we've discussed downsizing later on, but want to keep a garage since this is the first home we've had with a garage and are now spoiled rotten. That's very nice in the heat of summer, and no more scraping ice & snow in the winter!
 
Ours is a Condo 2,105 SF (2 BR, 3.5 Bath; Ranch Style, End Unit, two level and basement) with an additional 750 SF finished basement, The basement is 50% finished and the other 50% (another 750 SF) is used for Exercise Equipment - Tornado Shelter and Desktop Computer location (there now). So the total is about 3,600 SF (heated and AC) SF. The garage is 2.5 car in size. We moved here (Central OH) 3 years ago and bought new. Compared to the SF home in Florida we love it. No grass to cut, no outside maintenance, come and go as we please; should have done it 10 years ago. Love the 4 seasons (and the option of heading south for the winter, if we choose).
 
1200sqft. 3br 2.5baths not counting 1 car garage. Way big enough - most of the time.
 
1820 sq ft not counting the 2 car garage. 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.
 
About 1150 square feet. When we lived in Houston we had almost 2300 square feet -- not so much because we wanted that much room but because that's what we had to buy in order to have a house in a decent neighborhood very close to my work.

I like the property tax bills and electric bills much better now. And the lack of a mortgage.
 
1450 sq ft with carport and a large barn/shop for hobbies. We built this 25+ years ago back in the woods on a back country road for our retirement home. We may have to add a downstairs bedroom if we really stay here into real old age.

Been told for years it was to small, as our friends built 2500-3500+ sq ft houses. We are setup to heat with wood, LP or electric and even with the current high energy prices it will not break us up to continue retirement in comfort.

Jeb
 
rkser said:
I want to downsize and DW does not
Click to expand...

Sounds like for you, 3600 square feet is the right size ;)

I've lived in homes from 890 square feet to 3500 square feet over the last 15 years.

890 was kinda small, but easy to keep up and heck, it was only three steps between any two places in the house.

Anything over 2500 for two people seems overboard. We always end up with a room or two that has little use. When I lived along in 2800 square feet I hardly ever used the formal dining room or living room, and two of the bedrooms sat for over a year without ever having the doors opened. That was about 1200 square feet of little unused space.

We were a little tight in our last house at 1800 square feet with the two of us, three dogs, three cats and a baby. Plus two households of merged furniture. :p

I think the good part about downsizing is that you can usually get decent mid range square footage in a single story house. That'll save you a ton of money on maintenance such as painting, gutter cleaning and so forth. You can DIY or hire someone for a lot less than doing work on a 2-3 story house.
 
1450 sqft, 3 bdr/2 bath, one car garage, 200 sqft screened porch. More than enough room for just me and the mutt with two rarely used spare bedrooms, so I think would be about right for a couple.
 
50's modest rancher, 972 sq ft, 3 bedrooms 1 bath. Detached 2 car garage. Comfortable for a single.

Coach
 
Our main residence in the desert (where jobs are) is 2800sq.ft., with 5 bedrooms. It is only our 2nd home since I got out of college. Houses in AZ were not expensive, and still aren't. I bought it before the arrival of our 2nd child, who is now in college. Even with more than 4 people, we always have a guest room open. We never consider upgrading to a 4000-5000 sq.ft. MacMansion.

Recently, we bought a second home in the AZ high country (7000ft). It is a "mountain home", only 1700sq.ft with 3 bedrooms, but with an open floor plan and 25ft high ceiling. It is on a crest with a nice view, and a 1200 sq.ft deck to make the most of that view. Although smaller than our main residence, it costs more! My wife wants this to be our "final resting place", while I still have not given up my dream of relocating to somewhere in the Puget Sound.

With my son still in college and staying home, it is too early to us to sell the main home. But then, we may need a place to stay when we want to get out of the "boonies". Short of reducing to one home, we may not save much money selling our main home to get into a nice condo.

Small as it is, our "mountain home" turned out to be just right for us. Without the large deck which is partially covered, it may feel small however. I found that to have an outdoor space as an extension of the house really helps a house feel more spacious, yet keeps the house footprint small to reduce heating or cooling costs in extreme weather.

If we ever relocate and buy another home, I will keep it between 1500 and 2000 sq.ft. That's all an aging couple needs, and still have room for some guests. The location would be more important to us.
 
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Ours is a 1500 sq ft cape cod style (1.5 stories) 4 bedrooms and 2 full baths. It's been a great house for raising a family. When it's just the 2 of us we can leave the upstairs unused (2 bedrooms and a bath) and just use the first floor (2 bedrooms, 1 bath, LR, DR and kitchen with breakfast room). The first floor is just over 1000 sq ft by itself. The basement is half finished with the laundry room in the unfinished half. We added a nice large deck on the back with a Sunsetter awning which is my favorite spot in the summer.

We plan on staying here (it's paid for and the taxes and utilities are reasonable) and hopefully one or both of the sons with come up with a grandkid or two.
 
2000 sq ft rancher, 4BR, 2 Bath, oversize two car garage, 1800 sq ft basement. Just about right with 2 grade school boys.

RE2Boys
 
1900 SF plus 450 SF attached garage. It's 4 bdrms & 2 bathrooms. I don't know that we'll go to smaller house in retirement square footage-wise, but most likely will be a 3/2 instead of 4/2.
 
~3700 sq ft mostly finished, about 1/3 of that is in a finished walk out basement. Designed and built during the dot.com bubble. I would do things differently if I was building it now, as I could easily see taking off about 1000 sq ft, but I'm not motivated to downsize and move. I don't know that the utility bill savings would ever make up for the real estate commission I'd have to pay. Besides, I really enjoy the space for a pool table and train layout, and having room for guests is nice because rentals at the resort are expensive--there's no cheap motel just down the road.
 
We live in a 40-year-old ranch style tract home, just under 1400 sq-ft, 3 BR, 2 bath, decent sized kitchen with adjacent dining room and a living room. The house is plenty big for just the two of us, however, the attached "two car" garage is really only large enough for one vehicle and I often wish it was a bit larger.

Our back yard is fairly large by today's standards and includes a 500 sq-ft deck with a built in hot tub and a 400 sq-ft covered patio.
 
3,400 sf, 3 br, 3.5 bath, 3 car garage with detached 500 sf garage / workshop on 5 acres in Il. 1,300 sf, 2 br, 2 bath, 1 car garage condo in Az. I like the condo for easy maintenance, but I like the house for more space.
 
Our recently constructed home (designed by DW with some input from me) is 4000 sq ft. We've got 3000 downstairs, where we live. The 3 bedrooms upstairs are kept for guests. Since we now live by the ocean, we seem to be much more popular, and have used the space a fair amount. ^-^

When we don't have guests, we keep the AC set higher upstairs, and we'll keep the heat lower in the winter. It was part of my plan to limit costs. Seems to be working fairly well so far.
 
We have an ~1800 sq ft colonial, 3 beds, 2 baths. It works for the two adults, two kids, two dogs, and the evil cat. Only thing I miss is a garage, which was converted by the previous owner to living space. DW uses this as her office and it doubles as a guest room, so its OK. Since we park the travel trailer in the driveway, we have overflow space for guests, although we have not used it for that as of yet.
 
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