5 ms·

> ...2500 square feet. Which is probably fine for a nuclear family... Post-War homes (e.g. after WWII) in America were intended for the nuclear family and were

> ...2500 square feet. Which is probably fine for a nuclear family... Post-War homes (e.g. after WWII) in America were intended for the nuclear family and were typically under 1000 sq/ft. Most 60s and 70s ranch homes were 1200-1700 sq/ft and considered spacious. A modern 2500 sq/ft house is at a minimum 3 bedroom, 3.5 bath, and a bonus room.

gurkendoktor 6y ago
To spare fellow non-Americans the jump to Google: 2500 sqft = 232 sqm 1000 sqft = 92 sqm I am living in the latter with my wife plus one small child, and it's clear to us that we want more space for children later. 2500 sqft seems pretty large, but not crazy large either, especially with ~3 kids (=just two generations).
- cptskippy 6y ago
  In my opinion, 2500sqft/232sqm is more than enough for a family of 6.
  - rconti 6y ago
    Agreed. I grew up in a 2400sqft house, there were 4 of us. Ample bathrooms and bedrooms and an office, and 2 living rooms plus a separate dining room. Not massive, but larger than necessary for 4.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - honksillet 6y ago
    That just your opinion, though. Others may want more.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      "The earth has enough for everyone's needs, but not for everyone's greed" - Ghandi
hinkley 6y ago
Am I correct in thinking that attic space doesn't count as square footage? There are hardly any attics in Seattle, they've all been converted to cramped living space and everybody stores their crap in the garage. You can put a lot of people in 2500 square feet if you design it well instead of just slapping walls together.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The usual is to count "finished" space. So if an attic has been converted to a bedroom like the house I grew up in, that would normally be counted as part of the house space. Same with basements. My current house has both an attic and a basement but they're very unfinished. My basement can get wet so I don't store much down there but there's a lot up in the attic. Having storage space outside of the living quarters makes a big difference.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    This is true, usually. It leads to interesting quirks in real estate listings, where identical houses get listed with very different sizes. Example, my house was listed at 1500sqft. Same model one row over was listed at 2000sqft. The 500sqft different is the basement - it's finished in both homes, but was not part of the original building listing (1972).
- tunesmith 6y ago
  I guess the corollary is that 2500 square feet can be eaten up very quickly if you don't have a good floor plan, which is pretty common.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    A lot of these construction companies have figured out that most of the labor is in the walls. In a square room, the walls are sqrt(2) of the area. Bigger rooms = lower cost per square foot. Another hallmark of these houses are complete lack of trim. They're just big boxes. A more future-proof way to get around these building code limitations is 1) attic space, and 2) higher ceilings. You get a better feeling of space, and you can get more board-feet of storage in the same footprint. Seattle is also full of illegal remodels, only some of which a lender will balk at (source: bought a quirky home, the owners had to remove features for us to buy it).
jschwartzi 6y ago
You can live in a 1200 square foot home as long as you have access to outdoor spaces and a third place down the block. I live in an 1100 square foot post-war home with my fiance and it's plenty of space for what we want to do with our lives. Other homes in the neighborhood are much larger but don't have a back yard or trees on the lot. So we're basically in this beautiful thoughtfully-built 40's era home surrounded by cedar trees, while our neighbors are these huge ugly 2-story houses rammed right up to the back edge of their lots with no yard. You do have to get creative with second bedrooms by installing Murphy beds or otherwise reducing furniture size and floor space. Modern furniture is way too big to fit in the rooms of a post-war house. A stacking washer/dryer is very useful. Basically anything that substitutes vertical space for horizontal space will help immensely. Ikea has stuff that's size-appropriate but very cheap. The reason most houses are 2500 square feet nowadays is because you have to maintain a space for all the things you want to do inside your house. Whereas if you share space with your community for those things that many people do then you don't have to maintain a separate space for it.
- rconti 6y ago
  We live in an 1140sqft house, just 2 of us. With just 1 (small) bathroom it is less than ideal, particularly when we have guests, but it works -- just. It is basically a box of a house with 3 bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a place to eat. There is no "extra" space aside from the rooms -- no wide hallways, no sitting areas, no extra horizontal surfaces to put junk. Of course, we have more space than we "need" -- 2 additional bedrooms. But, again, they're just large enough for what they do. 1 has a guest bed (and not any room for anything else, really) and the other is an "office" which is handy during covid-19 for sure. If we had kids, there would be room for them to sleep, but no playroom, for example. Our laundry is in the garage, as is our "workout room". That space is not counted in the official size of the house, because the garage is converted.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    That sounds like a pretty cushy setup to me. What exactly is it you're lacking?
stickfigure 6y ago
A friend of mine has four kids and three au pairs. Plus frequent overnight guests like grandparents. That's not going to fit in 2500 sq ft.
- cptskippy 6y ago
  Would you say that's the norm? One au pair is a luxury, 3 seems lavish.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    It's certainly not the norm. But we're not talking about average house size, we're talking about maximum house size. You're clipping off the edge of the bell curve. People with big families don't get to live in Portland? FWIW he's a single dad, and au pairs aren't always on duty. It's less lavish than it sounds.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      It'd be interesting to take a look at how much existing housing exceeds 2500 square feet, and how it is occupied. It's quite possible that not allowing new construction over that size would leave plenty of it available.
    - microtherion 6y ago
      > People with big families don't get to live in Portland? Nothing in the legislation prohibits big houses. All it does is legalize small ones.
      - GurnBlandston 6y ago
        The image near the top of the article explicitly states the previous maximum house size was 6750 sq ft, and new maximum house size for a "1-plex" is 2500 sq ft. This is a prohibition on new big houses.
        6y ago
bluGill 6y ago
The houses at my local historical center were much bigger. Sears sold many different sizes of house in the early 1900s and some were pretty large even by today's standards. I have noticed that as houses approach 2000 Sq feet that luxury goes up faster than space, almost as if there is an asomtomic limit in that area. That is people buying smaller than 2000 seem to be looking for more space for the money, while those looking bigger are willing to spend more for the space to make it nice.
ip26 6y ago
3 bedroom is not some kind of ridiculous luxury if you have teenage son(s) & daughter(s).

gurkendoktor 6y ago

To spare fellow non-Americans the jump to Google: 2500 sqft = 232 sqm 1000 sqft = 92 sqm I am living in the latter with my wife plus one small child, and it's clear to us that we want more space for children later. 2500 sqft seems pretty large, but not crazy large either, especially with ~3 kids (=just two generations).

cptskippy 6y ago
In my opinion, 2500sqft/232sqm is more than enough for a family of 6.
- rconti 6y ago
  Agreed. I grew up in a 2400sqft house, there were 4 of us. Ample bathrooms and bedrooms and an office, and 2 living rooms plus a separate dining room. Not massive, but larger than necessary for 4.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- honksillet 6y ago
  That just your opinion, though. Others may want more.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    "The earth has enough for everyone's needs, but not for everyone's greed" - Ghandi

hinkley 6y ago

Am I correct in thinking that attic space doesn't count as square footage? There are hardly any attics in Seattle, they've all been converted to cramped living space and everybody stores their crap in the garage. You can put a lot of people in 2500 square feet if you design it well instead of just slapping walls together.

ghaff 6y ago
The usual is to count "finished" space. So if an attic has been converted to a bedroom like the house I grew up in, that would normally be counted as part of the house space. Same with basements. My current house has both an attic and a basement but they're very unfinished. My basement can get wet so I don't store much down there but there's a lot up in the attic. Having storage space outside of the living quarters makes a big difference.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  This is true, usually. It leads to interesting quirks in real estate listings, where identical houses get listed with very different sizes. Example, my house was listed at 1500sqft. Same model one row over was listed at 2000sqft. The 500sqft different is the basement - it's finished in both homes, but was not part of the original building listing (1972).
tunesmith 6y ago
I guess the corollary is that 2500 square feet can be eaten up very quickly if you don't have a good floor plan, which is pretty common.
- hinkley 6y ago
  A lot of these construction companies have figured out that most of the labor is in the walls. In a square room, the walls are sqrt(2) of the area. Bigger rooms = lower cost per square foot. Another hallmark of these houses are complete lack of trim. They're just big boxes. A more future-proof way to get around these building code limitations is 1) attic space, and 2) higher ceilings. You get a better feeling of space, and you can get more board-feet of storage in the same footprint. Seattle is also full of illegal remodels, only some of which a lender will balk at (source: bought a quirky home, the owners had to remove features for us to buy it).

jschwartzi 6y ago

You can live in a 1200 square foot home as long as you have access to outdoor spaces and a third place down the block. I live in an 1100 square foot post-war home with my fiance and it's plenty of space for what we want to do with our lives. Other homes in the neighborhood are much larger but don't have a back yard or trees on the lot. So we're basically in this beautiful thoughtfully-built 40's era home surrounded by cedar trees, while our neighbors are these huge ugly 2-story houses rammed right up to the back edge of their lots with no yard. You do have to get creative with second bedrooms by installing Murphy beds or otherwise reducing furniture size and floor space. Modern furniture is way too big to fit in the rooms of a post-war house. A stacking washer/dryer is very useful. Basically anything that substitutes vertical space for horizontal space will help immensely. Ikea has stuff that's size-appropriate but very cheap. The reason most houses are 2500 square feet nowadays is because you have to maintain a space for all the things you want to do inside your house. Whereas if you share space with your community for those things that many people do then you don't have to maintain a separate space for it.

rconti 6y ago
We live in an 1140sqft house, just 2 of us. With just 1 (small) bathroom it is less than ideal, particularly when we have guests, but it works -- just. It is basically a box of a house with 3 bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a place to eat. There is no "extra" space aside from the rooms -- no wide hallways, no sitting areas, no extra horizontal surfaces to put junk. Of course, we have more space than we "need" -- 2 additional bedrooms. But, again, they're just large enough for what they do. 1 has a guest bed (and not any room for anything else, really) and the other is an "office" which is handy during covid-19 for sure. If we had kids, there would be room for them to sleep, but no playroom, for example. Our laundry is in the garage, as is our "workout room". That space is not counted in the official size of the house, because the garage is converted.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  That sounds like a pretty cushy setup to me. What exactly is it you're lacking?

stickfigure 6y ago

A friend of mine has four kids and three au pairs. Plus frequent overnight guests like grandparents. That's not going to fit in 2500 sq ft.

cptskippy 6y ago
Would you say that's the norm? One au pair is a luxury, 3 seems lavish.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  It's certainly not the norm. But we're not talking about average house size, we're talking about maximum house size. You're clipping off the edge of the bell curve. People with big families don't get to live in Portland? FWIW he's a single dad, and au pairs aren't always on duty. It's less lavish than it sounds.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    It'd be interesting to take a look at how much existing housing exceeds 2500 square feet, and how it is occupied. It's quite possible that not allowing new construction over that size would leave plenty of it available.
  - microtherion 6y ago
    > People with big families don't get to live in Portland? Nothing in the legislation prohibits big houses. All it does is legalize small ones.
    - GurnBlandston 6y ago
      The image near the top of the article explicitly states the previous maximum house size was 6750 sq ft, and new maximum house size for a "1-plex" is 2500 sq ft. This is a prohibition on new big houses.
      - 6y ago

bluGill 6y ago

The houses at my local historical center were much bigger. Sears sold many different sizes of house in the early 1900s and some were pretty large even by today's standards. I have noticed that as houses approach 2000 Sq feet that luxury goes up faster than space, almost as if there is an asomtomic limit in that area. That is people buying smaller than 2000 seem to be looking for more space for the money, while those looking bigger are willing to spend more for the space to make it nice.

ip26 6y ago

3 bedroom is not some kind of ridiculous luxury if you have teenage son(s) & daughter(s).