My parents sold their colonial on a whim and then very quickly purchased a refurbished split-level (it doesn’t look 50sish on the inside, all hardwood floors, beautifully refurbished by my parents + some stuff done by previous owners). They aren’t huge fans of the style but it was in a great neighbourhood and very nicely redone, so they didn’t have to start from the groundup. As others have stated, you get the benefit of a basement (only partially underground), which is cooler in the summertime with fewer stairs. It actually seems like a nice way to get two floors/additional space without a sprawling ranch house but minimal stairs (not key for when you’re young but maybe more of an issue when people get older).
The strange thing is that in terms of square footage (prior to my parents’ expansion) it was smaller than the colonial but it feels larger. There is very little space wasted on hallways and so the rooms are all very big and airy. The house is older, but for the new room my parents had built, they added cathedral ceilings with skylights, which gives it an even more spacious feel than the other rooms. I’m sure if they had added a cathedral ceiling to the living room, it would come off even bigger than it already does.
For the square footage looking so strangely small, they have a 4 BR, 3 BA house with 2 car garage, basement den and a new morning room/additional family room type area (but that’s the one they added on).
I think in a split-level the rooms aren’t directly on top of each other. For example, I have a two story house. It’s basically a box with three levels- basement, first floor and second floor have the same dimensions, one directly on top of the other, with a full staircase between floors. My brother used to own a split level. The bedrooms were to one side of the main floor, not directly above the living room and kitchen, and there were only about 6 steps to get to them. There was a finished basement area, below the bedrooms, that was about 6 steps down from the main floor.
Sure, the basement space is smaller for the square footage, so less concrete, smaller hole, less dirt to truck off the site, etc.
Another factor is that a lot of real-estate square footage reporting laws say that you can only add up square footage of the house that is above grade. So a bungalow with a finished basement might be listed at 1500 square feet, but actually have 3,000 square feet of living space. A split can typically declare 3 of the 4 levels as square footage, making the house ‘advertise’ larger. A split level advertised at 1500 square feet can only have a maximum of 2000 square feet, because only the fourth level is uncounted. A 2-story advertised at 1500 square feet can be developerd into 2250 if you finish the basement.
I’m not a builder but… I always thought the reason was that splits are cheaper to build than a 2-story house with basement.
On the other hand, I suppose a 2-story built on a slab would be as cheap, but in this part of the country (New England) they normally don’t build on slabs.
I grew up in one- my parents still live in it- and I live in one now. I didn’t purposely set out to buy one, but of all the houses we saw, this one had more of the things on our “must have” list. I kind of like them, but I’m used to the design, having lived in one for most of my 39 years.
Upsides- bigger footprint, so wider front and back yards; short runs of stairs make it easier for kids to get up and down when they start learning to walk; good air circulation.
Downsides- sound travels as well as the air circulates, so mom & dad playing cards with friends in the dining room can be heard by the kids in bed as if the poker game is being played in their bedroom; smallish basements; you never see split levels as the subject of big home renovations in This Old House magazine or the like- they’re all center hall colonials. Not everybody lives in center hall colonials, ya know!
Unless the basement is entirely subterranean (which I am guessing it’s not since it’s under an elevated floor) this is the same as the tri-levels discussed. I was asking polycarp how he distinguished between a “true split level” and a tri-level.
If I’m understanding this correctly, it’s not so much that you don’t need hallways, as that the hallways can themselves be the stairs as well. If I have, say, a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom, in a split-leve, I might have the living room at the bottom, with the bedroom atop it, and the kitchen in between, as such:
Bedroom
Kitchen
Living
I might also do the same thing, but with the kitchen and living room on the same level:
Bedroom
Kitchen Living
If I did this, I would have to climb at most the same number of stairs, and probably less, per day, and the same amount of space is taken up by stairs. However, I would now need a connection (i.e., a hallway) between the living room and kitchen, in addition to the stairs, while in the split-level, the same space serves as both hallway and stairs.
