Katsmeow
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2009
- Messages
- 5,308
The reason I ask is that in our area (mid-Atlantic) most folks don't necessarily downsize just because they retire.
I don't know that it necessarily because of retiring but I just don't want the heavier upkeep and maintenance of the large house now that my kids are going to soon be gone. We live in a 4500 sf house now with all the secondary bedrooms upstairs. If we didn't have kids, we would get zero use out of the upstairs (not even for guests, as we have a guest house). Yet, the existence of the upstairs creates "value" for which we have to pay property taxes, increases utility bills, more places to have to possibly clean/repair/maintain. It is just having something that acts as a drain on finances for no benefit to us. By building a smaller house we get to have exactly what we want but with every foot of the space being usable to us and resulting in less overall cost.