Other than the obvious answer of ‘1000-3000 extra square feet’.
I know a married couple with two kids. The wife has found a better, much higher paying job and they are wanting to get a bigger home. Current home is 2 levels, about 2500 sq ft. I think 4 bedrooms, 3 full bath.
They are thinking of a home closer to 4000-5000 sq ft, but they seem confused as to what amenities a house like that offers above a house like the one they live in.
A bigger house would obviously have an extra 1-2 bedrooms and baths, so it may be 6 bedrooms, 5 bath. But other than that, what else would it have that you don’t see in a 2000-3000 sq ft home?
Three car garages seem common in houses that big. What common features does a house that large offer that you generally do not find in 2000-3000 sq ft homes?
Do homes like that usually have some kind of communal party room instead of or in addition to a living room?
This actually isn’t obvious. I have no idea what the space is for, but there are plenty of 3000-4000+sf houses that still only have 3-4 bedrooms. There’s a 14,000sf house for sale in town - it has 4 bedrooms. In fact none of the above 3000+sf houses currently for sale here have more than 3-4 bedrooms.
My home is closer to 6000 square feet, and has two libraries, a formal dining room, a pretty elaborate kitchen with eating area, a formal living room with fireplace, an informal living room with fireplace, a TV/Exercise/Billiards room, a large workshop, an electrical/utility room, a walk-in vault, a wet bar, 3 bedrooms (each with own bathroom) and a guest wing which has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, one kitchen, two living rooms and another wet bar (and neither the Mrs. nor I drink.) There’s also a full bathroom off the exercise room and a half bath off the laundry room. The master bath has a 6 person tub.
But it only has a two car garage.
The most under-utilized rooms are two of the bedrooms in the main house, and the guest wing (unless we’ve got overnight guests, which we frequently do have.)
I enjoy having the room, though I admit sometimes it’s easier to call my wife on the phone than to try find where she is in the rest of the house.
Yes. A Great Room may be in a addition to a separate living room and/or dining room. A media room. A gym. Huge bathrooms with huge spa units. Huge closets. A playroom for little kids. Any room in that 2000-3000 sq.ft. house could be bigger.
Some houses have enormous master bedroom suites, with sitting areas, big bathrooms and twin walk-in closets. Some have big kitchens.
But what I’m wondering is why your friends seem to think they should get a better house despite no specific need for one. I would understand if they want to move because they need more bedrooms, or an in-law suite for the parents, or whatever. But just to move to a larger house because their income has grown seems pointless and wasteful. (Plus the bigger house is going to cost a lot more to furnish, clean and heat.)
Interesting. They are looking at homes on realtor, and virtually every home in the 4000-5000 sq ft range has 5-6 bedrooms and 4-6 baths. They assumed this was just a standard feature of a home that big, the same way you can pretty safely assume a home in the 2000-3000 sq ft range will likely have 3-4 bedrooms and 2-3 baths.
Their thinking seems to be they want a master bedroom, one bedroom for each kid, plus the guest bedroom for a minimum of 4 bedrooms. They wanted to also have a den or office, a recreation room, etc. and they were assuming the other bedroom(s) would serve this purpose.
Office, great room, theater, library, sitting room off the master, larger foyer, 2 living rooms, 2 master bedrooms, larger kitchen island, much larger kitchen, butlers pantry, larger pantry, mudroom.
More hallways to connect everything, and every other space being larger. Instead of the bedrooms being 10x10 or 10x12, they are 14x12 or 16x14. Repeat that for every space
Qadgop, I believe that is firmly into the “Lair” category:D.
When my maternal unit was looking in the 55+ community, every 3 bedroom house had a one car garage, but every 2 bedroom house had a two car garage. Real weird.
What the others have been saying. It’s mostly about the addition of specialized rooms like libraries, game room, home gym, hobby/craft room. Whatever floats your boat. Oh, sun room and indoor sauna or pool.
I kept our house under 4000 sf. Just barely, over my wife’s objection. 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, bonus room, a bonus bonus room (can’t live in it according to code), 3 car garage, etc. Easily could lose 1000 sf and not notice it, even if the in laws come for a visit.
Seems ludicrous now that I’m home alone for almost a month.
We recently went from not-quite 2,000 sq.ft. to almost 5,000 sq.ft. What the larger house got us was:
[ul]
[li]More closet space. Despite living in So. Florida (where I actually need fewer clothes than other parts of the country), my wife travels all over the world year-round, and so needs four seasons of business clothes. Plus, we have a small room off the garage where I can keep all of our SCUBA gear.[/li][li]More specific-purpose rooms. My wife sews and quilts, and she now has a room where she can really spread out and have a large work surface for her sewing machine, a separate station for her serger, and lots of fabric storage. I now have an actual office for my home-based business. We have a bonus room off the master bedroom that is our gym, a little space under the stairs that we turned into a little reading nook, and a small room off the kitchen that we turned into a bar/wine storage.[/li][li]An extra guest room.[/li][li]Larger bathrooms.[/li][/ul]
Oddly, we waited until the girls were grown and out of the house before getting the largest house we’ve ever owned. I expect it to be the last place we’ll ever own, and it’s nice to have the space to have extended family over for holidays, have multiple friends visit at one time, etc.
Just for shits and giggles we looked at a 6500-sqft house with four bedrooms.
Basically, everything was huge. The bedrooms were vast; the master was 400 square feet (our current bedroom is quite large at 16x14, and that’s less than half the size; it was like a airplane hangar) and the other bedrooms were all 250-300 square feet. The dining room was 25x20, the kitchen was 350 square feet, easy. The foyer was 200 square feet. There was a laundry room on the main floor the size of a decently appointed laundromat. The bathrooms were vast. The greatroom was great.
If you think about it, if you double the size of a hours, of course you’re not going to double the number of bedrooms, you’re going to want LARGER ROOMS. Getting twice the hours but subdividing it into smaller rooms create unnecessary rooms and would make the house a bit labyrinthian, and cause you to be unable to appreciate its size. I would like for my kids to have larger rooms; they’re in fairly small ones now. I’d like our guest room to be bigger, it’s very small. A fifth bedroom would be nice, but less important than expanding bedrooms 2-4, and a sixth bedroom would be of very little value at all. We’d LOVE a bigger dining room; why would we want two dining rooms, though?
I wonder why these 5000-6000 square feet homes often only have four or five bedrooms. Certainly one reason is that’s all that most people need (but then again most people don’t need houses that big), but I wonder if it’s also a tax issue. Are the property taxes higher for a larger number of bedrooms?
I encountered something similar - but it was easy to understand why when you looked at the available floor plans. There were three or so basic designs , each available in a 2 bedroom version and a 3 bedroom version. And in the three bedroom version, the space for the third bedroom was taken from a garage or a covered porch , so the two bedroom version might have a covered porch while the three bedroom didn’t. Or the two bedroom had a one-car garage, while the three bedroom had a golf cart garage. And there was one where the two bedroom had a two car garage and the three bedroom had a one car garage.
I’ve always wondered - for those of you with 3000+ square feet homes, what’s the cleaning situation? How often do you dust bedroom 5? Does bathroom 4 get dirty? Does someone come 'round to vacuum the formal sitting room or do you do it all yourselves?
I have 1080 sq ft for one person and it’s pretty hard to keep up with some times. How is it for 6000 for two people?
I expect it to be the last place we’ll ever own, and it’s nice to have the space to have extended family over for holidays, have multiple friends visit at one time, etc.