Too many bedrooms?

kris said :

Stamp duty plus makes moving house very expensive so it makes sense to always buy a house with a bit more room than you think you’ll need because the cost of getting it wrong is very high. It will be interesting to see if the removal of stamp duty results in people building and buying houses that are appropriate for their requirements now rather than trying to predict future needs.

+1 Plus if people more readily move as their circumstances change, there might be less need for the larger garage or carports for what has become the traditional two car families.

But won’t this make our rates triple?

Stamp duty plus makes moving house very expensive so it makes sense to always buy a house with a bit more room than you think you’ll need because the cost of getting it wrong is very high. It will be interesting to see if the removal of stamp duty results in people building and buying houses that are appropriate for their requirements now rather than trying to predict future needs.

devils_advocate said :

Ryoma said :

NoImRight said :

Bow down in awe and terror at the humungous size of my mighty residence! You know you want to be me.

Lol….yes, of course that *must* be true. I’d rather have enough to retire on, thank you very much

Do you think you’ll have enough to afford a prosthetic sarcasm detector?

Hmm, that sounds like it would be worth inventing, anyhow. I did say “Lol” above, but that’s OK…

*shivers at NolmRight’s mighty residence, with its impregnable front door, circling bats and howling poodles (oh, sorry, they’re wolves, are they? From the Isle of Man? You don’t say!)*

Ryoma said :

NoImRight said :

Bow down in awe and terror at the humungous size of my mighty residence! You know you want to be me.

Lol….yes, of course that *must* be true. I’d rather have enough to retire on, thank you very much

Do you think you’ll have enough to afford a prosthetic sarcasm detector?

NoImRight said :

Bow down in awe and terror at the humungous size of my mighty residence! You know you want to be me.

Lol….yes, of course that *must* be true. I’d rather have enough to retire on, thank you very much

What Ryoma said. Also, I think some of it is the developers who get the new land… they want to maximise their profit on that land, which means HOUSE. The only way to get a little house out of those guys is to get one of those ones on a pocket-hankerchief block.

There’s a few monster houses where I currently live, and it’s amusing to go on AllHomes for a stickybeak… massive rooms, with little collections of (usually shit-ugly) furniture clustered in bits of the barn-like rooms. Those people aren’t living in their houses, they’re occupying them.

Back in the early 60s, there was a bit of a northern-euro thing happening with some homes, which was about having people live in the communal living areas, with bedrooms just for sleeping. So the bedrooms were very small, and the living areas were larger. Ski lodges built in the 50s and 60s follow that model.

Now we have these “parents’ retreats”, god help us. In my day, the kids were banished outside and the “parents’ retreat” was the whole house. And media rooms. Uh huh. And every kid MUST have its own bedroom. Why? And if so, why does it have to house anything larger than a single bed?

Too many things are assumed as necessary…. wants have become needs.

People seem to assume that all the new houses they’re building in the new developments are massive, but I cannot find any proof of that. In fact, most of them are pretty small. 120-140m2 for a 3 beddie. Maybe they look big because they’re on small blocks…

Same goes for the new apartments in Gungahlin and North Belco. You’re lucky to get 70-80m2 of floor surface in a 3 bedroom apartment.

Bow down in awe and terror at the humungous size of my mighty residence! You know you want to be me.

Ryoma said :

What do people think? Let the flaming begin 😉

I think you’ve pretty much summed up the situation.

I’ve been in several McMansions (at least 5 bedrooms occupied, at most, by Mum, Dad and two kids) and they’ve been so soulless, badly-built and badly-designed that I can only conclude that the people who buy them believe that big=status, whereas for most of us big-and-awful=bogan. Because of the way their suburbs have been developed few, if any of them, are solar-aligned, let alone solar passive design; there’s no room for deciduous trees for shading/lighting and they’re totally reliant on constant heating and cooling.

They’re going to be white elephants come sale time, but at least that’ll mean that there’ll be plenty of low-cost, if pretty awful, houses on the market.

It’s funny that this topic should come up right now, especially after this recent article about 3 bedroom apartments in Canberra not selling; http://canberratimes.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/few-takers-for-units-with-three-bedrooms-20121017-27rxi.html

While I’d love to live in one, I’m not willing to pay the prices asked for it at present, and it appears the same for many Canberrans. The reason is that if I’m going to pay that much for a house, it will be my home for a long time to come, and I’d need a share in the capital appreciation of the land underneath. By contrast, buying a smaller apartment is more flexible, as it’s easier to rent out and would sell faster.

I bumped across this house in a book recently;
http://greenarchitecturenotes.com/2011/12/frank-lloyd-wright-and-the-solar-hemicycle-jacobs-ii/
http://althouse.blogspot.com.au/2009/06/i-was-caryatid-for-frank-lloyd-wright.html

It’s called the Jacobs II house, and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright back in 1944. It appears to me to be a fairly sustainable house, especially for its era, and it allows for the type of natural light and free flowing spaces common in Australian houses in the past 15 years or so. What astounds me is that if there was a relatively good idea like this that long ago, why didn’t it take off?

To get back to the point at hand, I think there are a number of reasons as to why houses are bigger;

1) It is a status thing, without a doubt. It has to be, as I think it helps to explain why the country appears to be so grumpy with its current politics, society, and economy, despite a record run of economic growth.
In essence, what I’m getting at is this; in theory, we say we work to live, but we are so tied up with these houses and their increasing size and cost that we are, as a country, now living to work in many cases. The cognitive dissonance between who we think we are, and who we want to be, and the way we actually act, is something we can only put to sleep by being able to point to our large houses as “proof” of our “success”.

2) Our expectations are infinitely higher than what they were 20 years ago. Now that many of our domestic industries are not protected, we have access to a far wider range of goods than we did back then, and are exposed to ideas from overseas a lot faster thanks to the Internet. I think this explains the wide range of different housing styles in new housing estates, as opposed to the relatively similar houses of the 1980’s and 90’s.

3) I think part of the problem lies in the overall lack of financial intelligence. I’d suggest many of the larger houses are being build either in expectation of being able to be sold on in future (to who, I ask, if family sizes are shrinking?) in the hope of capital gains, or to rent it out as share housing. The trouble with a whole generation of people trying to fund retirement in this way is that it resembles a game of musical chairs.

On the plus side, there are movements towards more sensible housing. Jigsaw Housing (see their blog) was smart enough to actually ask the public what they wanted in a house as part of their “8-Star House for $200K” project in 2011, and I think some of the answers surprised them. If only the rest of the industry would follow their lead, and if only people would put more thought into what was built, rather than just accepting the best of a bad bunch.

On a broader scale, the Not So Big House movement led by Sarah Susankah in the United States (http://www.notsobighouse.com/books.asp) suggests that people consider how much of their floorspace they actually use, and then think about how to design things into a smaller space. Murphy wallbeds, and a lot of Cleg furniture can save an awful lot of space, by folding up or away when it’s not needed. Building storage space under window seats or under stairs is also useful.

It may end up costing around the same amount for specialised cabinetry, but such houses also keep skilled craftspeople in work, can be more individualised, and can potentially use less resources and energy.

What do people think? Let the flaming begin 😉

schmeah said :

Another Thunder-Bird Mansion in the middle of suburban Canberra.

Some people have too much money and no fn taste …

Oh come on, Lady Penelope would sack Parker if he ever took her to a house like that. (Although some of us worked out quite early that Parker’s job as chauffeur was just a convenient cover for other functions.) Thunderbirds are cool!

(I hope there are no other Thunderbirds. If there are, please ignore the above.)

schmeah said :

Another Thunder-Bird Mansion in the middle of suburban Canberra.

Some people have too much money and no fn taste …

Damn right. What is it about McMansions that they’re all so fugly?

Another Thunder-Bird Mansion in the middle of suburban Canberra.

Some people have too much money and no fn taste …

[A large single income if you think that you could afford a large place in the boon docks…]

I said larger. Not large. I place importance on being able to walk to work and walk to amenities.

ThisIsAName said :

There was also this quote:
“In 2009 Australia built the largest new homes based on average floor area in the world. Guess which city in Oz was building the biggest of them all, yep, the Capital. So much so that in new greenfield estates on the edge of the city, the average floor space per person exceeded 120 square metres.”

120sqm? Sounds totally wrong. That’s about the internal footprint of a 3BR house.

It’s not quite as absurd as it sounds. The average floor area of a new house in Australia was 243m^2 according to a domain article from 12 about months ago. The average Australian household has 2.6 people, so that’s 94m^2 per person as a national average. All it takes is the knowledge that new houses in Canberra are above the national average, and maybe the assumption that the average household size is smaller in new greenfield estates (maybe more childless couples expecting children later on) and 120m^2 per person becomes easily achievable.

Having a big block is wonderful. Having a big house on a big block is even better.

The other wonderful thing with a nice big block is that it moves your neighbours that much further away. We have chickens, dog, vegie patch etc. which are all wonderful, but even better is that it feels like we don’t even have neighbours – until we choose to talk to them, rather than hear their morning ablutions.

I wouldn’t have thought it was bedrooms taking up all the yard space, but rather increased living space (media rooms/rumpus rooms/cavernous lounge rooms). The little remaining yardspace seems to be dedicated to “landscaping” (paving, stones, a few flaxy things and a BBQ). We weren’t prepared to compromise on outdoor space, so have a smaller house on a bigger block in an older suburb. I suppose we’re bucking the trend by wanting (and enjoying) a big yard for gardening and playing, and are happy to pack 3 kids into a 3BR (+study) house for now. But the time will come when we’ll have to make the decision to increase the number of bedrooms by whatever means possible, and my regular browsing of allhomes doesn’t give me much hope – upsizing houses to the nth degree still doesn’t seem to result in extra bedrooms very often, particularly in those areas we’d consider moving to to retain that all-important backyard. 4BR seems about the limit.

Interesting article, but there some gaping holes. From a skim read, there was no mention of the practicalities of trying to squeeze a growing population into a finite amount of space. There was an implied assumption that some spare rooms are wasted (empty?) space, although it seemed to ignore the usefulness of some of these spaces. Without a study, I’m sure a lot of people would have junk crammed throughout the living area.

There was also this quote:
“In 2009 Australia built the largest new homes based on average floor area in the world. Guess which city in Oz was building the biggest of them all, yep, the Capital. So much so that in new greenfield estates on the edge of the city, the average floor space per person exceeded 120 square metres.”

120sqm? Sounds totally wrong. That’s about the internal footprint of a 3BR house.

On a related note, the ACT has some specific development conditions forcing larger houses in specific areas (eg. mandatory 2 story places on some boulevards).

Some big houses are necessarily wrong. A close friend is single with 2 kids – her brother has sole custody of his 3 kids but he has a degenerative disease – they are looking for a place big enough for all of them to live together but also so that each little family still have their own private space – the idea is mutual support but remaining independent – the other option is side by side townhouses….. It is something I can see happening more and more often.

jessieduck said :

but to be honest, I’d rather live in a suburb I like and be a stay at home mum while we have little kids rather then move out to the boon docks and have a larger place.

A large single income if you think that you could afford a large place in the boon docks…

And I agree with whoever mentioned living spaces in 2 beddies being smaller. My yet to be built house will be like that and I dread it. If I could afford to buy whatever I wanted, I would look at the size of the living areas first and if the house I liked had extra bedrooms, then so be it.

For me, I’m happy to compromise on a smaller house to be able to afford a mortgage on a single income. As a family of 4 in a 2 bedroom townhouse, things can feel a bit squished but that’s all the incentive I need to get out and go do things rather then being at home all day.

When we decided to buy a two bedroom home knowing we were expecting a second baby, some friends were horrified on my behalf but to be honest, I’d rather live in a suburb I like and be a stay at home mum while we have little kids rather then move out to the boon docks and have a larger place.

yellowsnow said :

NoAddedMSG said :

I don’t think the small block/large house is a problem if you plan well. Look at the bottom part of Franklin – it has some really nice common spaces, and that suburb is going to look really pretty in a few year when the trees have grown. The newer suburbs certainly represent a more efficient use of land than the older suburbs.

Are u serrious? Franklin will forever remain a charmlesss, treeless, grey ghetto with passive aggressive neighbours afraid to talk to each other except to exchange narky, anonymous notes or lodge noise or parking complaints with the police. A social utopiia it is not.

Ha ha ha ha ha, you’re evidently someone who has never set foot in Franklin.

yellowsnow said :

arescarti42 said :

Neat article.

There’s a guy at UC by the name of Andrew MacKenzie who did some really interesting research in to changes in land use in Duffy after the 2003 fires ….

Wow, what an incredible coincidence – Andrew MacKenzie is also the name who wrote the article in the OP. And he also works at UC. What are the chances? LOL

Heh, I didn’t notice the author of the article in the OP, that sure explains a lot.

One thing I see a lot is living space in anything with one or two bedrooms is small. If you want more living space, you have to go for places with more bedrooms. It’s like a sole occupier will stand still and not want a generous area to live in.

I deplore these giant houses on tiny blocks, the outdoor areas become paved and over-designed, and generate heat. The homes all have to have air conditioners, and they’re like fortresses against the dangerous world. No more the front verandahs were people might spend time, waving or sayign hello to passersby.

devils_advocate said :

1) the big-ticket expensive items in a house are wet, plumbed areas with appliances/fittings (kitchen is most expensive, bathrooms, laundry etc). Recently there is a trend towards a higher ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms (i.e. gone are the days of the 4brm house with 1 bathroom, 1 toilet) but once you have a ensuite to main brm and another main bathroom/toilet, you probably only need to add a powder-room for each 2 brms, IMO..

On Allhomes you can pretty easily find places with two bedrooms, one ensuite, one full bathroom [i]and[/i] an additional powder-room.

(I would personally rather have fewer toilets to clean…)

As for additional bedrooms, I could sure use an extra one to store all my junk in. Or have an office, or a home gym, or a library… It’s easy to fill the space. In some cases we’re talking +10% to the price to add +30% usable square footage. If you don’t want a garden, it seems like a no-brainer.

DrKoresh said :

“The first is that these empty bedrooms sit on top of landscape spaces that could be better used as gardens, lawns, play areas or a chook run, or just left alone, for shrubs, bugs and grubs to multiply”

Oh no, the humanity!
Not everyone wants their own garden and a chicken crap-factory, and I think it’s fair to say that those who do won’t have to much trouble finding a property that suits their needs. Do we really need this moralising article on house-size, for Glob’s sake? I reckon these new places being built, especially in the gray/granite colours like the one in the OP are fugly as all sin, but I don’t think it’s something to start a crusade over. Besides, so many of the lovely old houses in the ‘Berra are heritage listed anyways, so it’s not like they’re tearing down nice places to build these dubious dwellings. Well okay, I can think of a couple of places in O’Connor that went that way, but for the most part these are being built in newer suburbs.

The lack of green space – including front and backyards – affects everyone. And it’s not as if all those living in Gungahlin actually chose to live there because they like that kind of concrete look. I’m only buying there because it was the only place I could afford. I’m buying a very small house on a very small block so I cannot help my backyard being the size of a tea towel. But I would mind less if my neighbours would leave some space for greenery on their bigger blocks. Instead their back walls will be meters from mine.

If you don’t want a yard at all, why not live in an apartment instead anyway?

I would much rather stay in the leafy Inner suburbs but clearly that is unrealistic. And my current neighbour across the road built a McMansion there recently…

There are lots of 4 beddies for sale in Gungahlin. More than 3 and 2 beddies, I think. And the rare 2 beddies for sale often have an ensuite which drives the price up. Who needs two bathrooms in a 2 bedroom house?! Or in a 4 beddie even… We had 5 bedrooms, 4 kids and 1 bathroom when I grew up. Can’t remember it being an issue at all.

NoAddedMSG said :

I don’t think the small block/large house is a problem if you plan well. Look at the bottom part of Franklin – it has some really nice common spaces, and that suburb is going to look really pretty in a few year when the trees have grown. The newer suburbs certainly represent a more efficient use of land than the older suburbs.

Are u serrious? Franklin will forever remain a charmlesss, treeless, grey ghetto with passive aggressive neighbours afraid to talk to each other except to exchange narky, anonymous notes or lodge noise or parking complaints with the police. A social utopiia it is not.

arescarti42 said :

Neat article.

There’s a guy at UC by the name of Andrew MacKenzie who did some really interesting research in to changes in land use in Duffy after the 2003 fires ….

Wow, what an incredible coincidence – Andrew MacKenzie is also the name who wrote the article in the OP. And he also works at UC. What are the chances? LOL

Looking over the fences of houses in my suburb reveals that the majority use their backyards to cultivate weeds, broken cars, piles of junk and falling down garden sheds. Houses are getting bigger because most modern folk have become more interested in inside activities. They need more space for more goods. Expectations of personal space for children and adults have expanded. You also have to take in consideration that cars now take up the space that used to be available on a block for ‘space’. 3 car garages are quite common.

“The first is that these empty bedrooms sit on top of landscape spaces that could be better used as gardens, lawns, play areas or a chook run, or just left alone, for shrubs, bugs and grubs to multiply”

Oh no, the humanity!
Not everyone wants their own garden and a chicken crap-factory, and I think it’s fair to say that those who do won’t have to much trouble finding a property that suits their needs. Do we really need this moralising article on house-size, for Glob’s sake? I reckon these new places being built, especially in the gray/granite colours like the one in the OP are fugly as all sin, but I don’t think it’s something to start a crusade over. Besides, so many of the lovely old houses in the ‘Berra are heritage listed anyways, so it’s not like they’re tearing down nice places to build these dubious dwellings. Well okay, I can think of a couple of places in O’Connor that went that way, but for the most part these are being built in newer suburbs.

Whilst our average houses have noticeably been getting bigger over the last few decades; since the 1970’s, the Australian self storage industry has been silently booming as well.

As a nation of capitalists, materialists and consumers, many of us feel like we need more space for all the stuff that we don’t really need… whether that be in the 5th bedroom, or in a $200 per month garage.

Combined with living in an era where “minimalism” is in, many families may prefer to look like they don’t have lots of stuff. A large house helps create that illusion.

Neat article.

There’s a guy at UC by the name of Andrew MacKenzie who did some really interesting research in to changes in land use in Duffy after the 2003 fires. He found that new houses replacing the ones that had burnt down were on the whole much bigger (which isn’t surprising), but what I found really interesting was the result of interviewing residents on why they built bigger houses. Most of them didn’t actually want or need the extra space, they saw it purely as an investment decision, thinking that bigger houses would sell for more in the future than smaller ones with gardens.

I think the drive for smaller blocks is being largely driven by the ACT government in their quest for easy revenue. They’ve managed to drive the price of land up so far in excess of incomes and debt availability that blocks have to be tiny in order for people to actually afford them. At current land prices, a large 1000m^2 block typical of Canberra’s older suburbs, were it sold today in the outer suburbs of Gungahlin, would cost $600-700k.

There was a recent newspaper (SMH?) which said that in the last couple of years the average size of house being built by developers has actually started to fall a bit.

I don’t think the small block/large house is a problem if you plan well. Look at the bottom part of Franklin – it has some really nice common spaces, and that suburb is going to look really pretty in a few year when the trees have grown. The newer suburbs certainly represent a more efficient use of land than the older suburbs.

Those houses are terrible!

But I want one. 🙂

We need higher density living!

For other people.

My theory/preference is that space is greatest luxury a home can have, but quantity is not. That is, larger rooms, but less of them is the way to go.

Unfortunately, that’s a view not necessarily shared by the majority and so a 4br house with small rooms will most likely sell for more (comfortably) than a 3br home with larger rooms.

johnboy said :

the building calculus drives it from my understanding. The more square metres built the lower the cost per square metre.

So why wouldn’t you build as many as possible?

1) the big-ticket expensive items in a house are wet, plumbed areas with appliances/fittings (kitchen is most expensive, bathrooms, laundry etc). Recently there is a trend towards a higher ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms (i.e. gone are the days of the 4brm house with 1 bathroom, 1 toilet) but once you have a ensuite to main brm and another main bathroom/toilet, you probably only need to add a powder-room for each 2 brms, IMO. So, rooms like additional bedrooms (as well as the garage) are very cheap on a per sqm basis. Expanding the size of living areas is also fairly cheap, especailly if you are going with less expensive floor coverings etc.

2) house prices in general, and likely the size of houses, are apparently positively correllated with willingess to pay (merit good, normal good). Incomes (and credit availability) have increased in real terms, so this has probably increased house sizes. Of course some of the increase in incomes/credit would be captured by higher land prices. Also it is definitely a characteristic of Australians that they spend additional disposable income on housing. Whether it’s a status symbol, simply an obsession with real estate, or some combination of these and other factors I don’t know.

3) For households living in a detached house, it’s probably the norm for 2 adults to each have a full time job (and potentially kids) so I can understand how people wouldn’t have time or inclination to look after large gardens.

the building calculus drives it from my understanding. The more square metres built the lower the cost per square metre.

So why wouldn’t you build as many as possible?

davo101 said :

They’re called McMansions for a reason. McDonalds food is terrible and experts all agree it is not good for you but it still sells. Likewise with McMansions they sell because that’s what people want. If people are choosing to buy smaller homes, as suggested in the article, then the supply of McMansions will dry up.

I think it’s more to do with the fact that developers can make more money out of these houses rather than people deliberately choosing to have a McMansion. It’s nearly impossible to find a smaller house on a larger block these days, they simply aren’t there.

The huge house trend is even stranger, given that family sizes appear to be getting smaller. I’m one of three children, and that seemed pretty standard when I was growing up. These days one or two children (if any) seems the norm.

I think the planners and developers of the newer suburbs in Canberra have a lot to answer for. The blocks are too small, the houses are too big and the roads are far too narrow. The places just feel cramped and congested. There also seems to be a definite lack of footpaths, parks and communal green space.

This is not surprising given that we have created a world of indulgent excess.

They’re called McMansions for a reason. McDonalds food is terrible and experts all agree it is not good for you but it still sells. Likewise with McMansions they sell because that’s what people want. If people are choosing to buy smaller homes, as suggested in the article, then the supply of McMansions will dry up.

Is it merely a coincidence that humans are also proportionally bigger over the same period.Size is King.