to think that unless you spend £££, houses in the UK are not very functional??

[PussinJimmyChoos]

Seriously...what is it with houses in this bloody country (and yes, I am English!)...they are so NOT designed for family life....poxy pokey 3rd bedrooms, kitchens you can't swing a cat in, only one bathroom in most houses and no space for entertaining....

It pisses me off!! Struggling with space in our house atm and just thinking that if a bit more thought went into the design of it, it wouldn't be as much of an issue

And why are so many new builds so small?!!!!

[ivykaty44]

boring designs and boring builders wanting to make a quick and lots of bucks

what would be worng about building whole estates with water butts underground for none drinking water in the house, solar pannels for heating hot water and triple glazing and roof insulation to make zero bills?

[MollysChambers]

I think it depends where you live tbh. May I recommend moving to the country .

New builds are small because builders are greedy.

[sloanypony]

Dont get me started on some English houses - no utility/laundry rooms, so some having to have their washing machines in the kitchen, bathrooms with no shower installed (fine for really old houses, but why would they build a new build and not have a shower in there, even if its over the bath?!?), tiny rooms, parking for one car only, the list goes on.

Obviously its a bit down to space but it still gets me going.

[azazello]

Land which is suitable/allocated for development is incredibly expensive so builders have to cram as many houses as possible on to make a profit. Also, the wonders of the Govt planning guidance mean that houses have to make 'best use of land' and therefore be built at least 30-50 dwellings per hectare. The only way of doing this is to bung out as many tiny shoe box houses and flats as possible.

Also, detached houses sell for more than terraces so you get these weird estates with detached houses about 2 inches away from each other...

It is miserable but a combination of lack of land, developer greed and govt interference

[Vine]

It's just a general lack of space (that can be built on) so as many houses as possible are crammed in. The large affordable houses are the ex-council ones.

We live in a tiny 2 bed town house (with 2 kids) but it has character. People used to live with 10+ kids in these 2 up 2 downs!

[greentriangle]

Total greed IMO. The footprint of new houses is ususally tiny - they cram in as many as they can.

I live in a newish "detatched" house where next door is a few feet away and the view from my lounge window is the brick wall of their house. Fortunately the lounge is on the corner and has a window looking out the back as well!

They carpeted the whole house in the same carpet (fine), but also did the bathroom in carpet (not fine!) to save money on a bathroom floor.

[KarmaAngel]

YANBU at all. We moved into our (newly built) house 2 years ago. It has 3 bedrooms, and is a 3 storey. But honestly wasn't built with a family in mind at all. Downstairs there is 1 (bloody 1) living room. No dining room at all. And the living room is fricking tiny! Back gardens all have fences that are waist high, so no privacy. Kitchen is an all right size but no where near big enough to have a table in. So now we all eat food off our knees as there's no room for a table.

Bedrooms are a fairy decent size really, but on the second floor where our bedroom is, there is our en suite and then the family bathroom on the same floor. Then the other 2 bedrooms on the top floor with no bathroom up there. So if the kids need the toilet in the middle of the night they have to walk down the stairs in their sleepy state.

There is no bloody storage and for a family of 5 that is just crap. Obviously who ever designed it has no bloody experience of kids whatsoever!

[KarmaAngel]

Fairly, not fairy. D'oh!

[ivykaty44]

this type of thing could be rolled out across the country - they have done 3 bed aswell

[nymphadora]

My old house had 3 decent sized bedrooms( 2 large doubles) one had walk in closet. Loads of extra storage in the loft. Utility room( washer dryer/washing line/storage) galley kitchen but decent sized one. Dining room, living room. Built 1910 and I sold for £85 k.

You just live in the wrong bit of the country!

[ivykaty44]

this one costs £300 per year for gas adn electric

[ProzacTheGiggleFairy]

We are very lucky to be rehoused into a 4 bed detatched HA new build house recently.

What we are most impressed with is the eco friendly status of the house, as it has solar panels for the hot water & for topping up the heating, a water butt for garden purposes & the decent insulation & windows.

[melpomene]

YANBU. Our 3rd bedroom is so small that you can't fit a full-size single bed in it and I had to spend ages trying to find a compact bed for dd2. We have a moderate-sized front garden, so I don't know why the builders didn't just extend the house another 20cm forwards so it would be possible to fit a bed into the bedroom!

[MrsMadWriggle]

too many people crammed into a little island innit?

[nooka]

I think that MrsMadWriggle has it really. Also people's expectations have gone up. It used to be very normal for several children to share a room for example, but now that's considered hardship.

As for badly designed modern houses, well if people still buy them then why should the builder's change their plans I suppose. With older houses it tends to be more how they have been adapted over time, and what might suit one family might well not suit another. I'm not sure that money comes into it with good/bad design though, unless you get to design your own place entirely to your own specifications, which does take a whole load of cash (and time an skill).

[BertieBotts]

Vine so true - although even the ceilings are higher in older houses. I live in a Victorian 2 up 2 down too and I love imagining all the families who must have lived here :)

In my teenage years we lived in a modern 2 up 2 down with my mum and sister, and it just felt tiny. My house is probably a similar size now but it feels bigger (OK, DS takes up less room, but still!)

I find that in my house the hallways and stairs are smaller/narrower/steeper than in modern houses, but the rooms themselves seem bigger, and the high ceilings are wonderful, they make the rooms feel bigger even though the floor space is the same.

[BertieBotts]

Also, small kitchens were in fashion in the 70s/80s as convenience cooking really came in, before then the kitchen would have been more of a family hub. The kitchens were built smaller to get more room in the rest of the house, as the kitchen itself was more of a functional space than somewhere you'd want to spend time in (perhaps a thread for the feminism section there!) Now, bigger kitchens are coming back into fashion and are more desirable. But that is why houses built in the 70s and 80s (or rooms etc converted in this period) tend to have tiny, poky kitchens.

[lostFeelings]

my friend who lives in Canada has a 3 bed house with a garage underneath, so the owners gained lots of green space, 4th bedroom is really a utility room under the house too

parking for 2 cars under each house

no cars hence kids playing on the paths
cats never get hit by cars
no fumes

why can't we have similar designs here???

[BaggedandTagged]

Because basement builds(garages or living space) are expensive so you wouldn't get them in a lower cost home in a high housing cost country such as the UK where a lot of the builder's margin is eaten up by land cost.

We are one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Also, within the country, the population is concentrated into pockets around major conurbations. Efforts to spread people through enterprise schemes etc out haven't really worked so far, or havent proved sustainable.

We could free up more land for development in the South East (re-zoning of green belt)but my personal view is that we should look to restrict population rather than concreting over the entire island with Barratt estates.I do however, think that councils (esp in London) should get a boot up the backside re speeding up infill and redevelopment of derelict homes.

All that said, I think people's expectations do have to become more realistic. We're not all going to feature in Homes & Gardens. Property porn has a lot to answer for IMO.

[silverten]

We looked around a couple of new builds the last time we were moving.

Size wise they seemed alright until we realised that there wasn't a single room that had completely flat walls- all of them had a chunk taken out of at least one corner, where the adjoining room was placed. This meant that there was exactly one way you could place furniture- or you had to have it all sticking into the room!

Such a waste of space.

[mousymouse]

yanbu - I am all for minimum requirements for buildings as they have in other countries. like minimum size of rooms, storage space for pushchair orr wheelchair, abiltiy to put in ceiling hoists without too much fuss, wider doorways, proper double glazing... the list goes on...

[2rebecca]

What's wrong with washing machine in kitchen? I don't get why it would need a room to itself, but then I'm not an obsessional clothe and towel washer.

We occupy more land per person than our grandparents in general, there would be no green space left if we all had bigger houses.

Banning people from having more than 1 house is the only way we could have bigger houses and no more concrete.

Poor soundproofing bothers me more than lack of space.

[mousymouse]

oh, other european are much more densely populated and still the normal houses/flats are bigger and have a better layout partly due to minimum requirements...

[Crazycatlady]

We are looking for a new house at the moment and I have noticed that a lot of the newer new-builds and recently renovated houses have a far better layout than those built between 1950 and 1990. And don't get me started on Victorian terraces (which we're currently in).

I refuse to buy a house that doesn't have a laundry room, the thought of having dirty/clean laundry in the kitchen of all places is just so weird. I do not understand that at all. If there really is no space for a separate laundry room, better off in the bathroom or (if you have one) garage or cellar surely?

[lowenergylightbulb]

We live in a 100 year old house, it's very generously proportioned - i.e the smallest bedroom can take a king sized bed + double wardrobe - however it has no built in storage and the smallest kitchen in the world.

I want an 'american house' - like the ones you see in films from the 80's, with a den and a basement etc