Ask:
The trend is definitely bigger houses these days. In the 50s, the average size of a new home was around 1000 sq ft. Now it's around 2200 sq ft - over double the size, even though the average family size is smaller!
Has anyone ever bought a "big" home, then downsized because the payments/upkeep weren't worth it, to consolidate debt or to just get ahead financially? If yes, what was your reason? Are you happier now?
Answer:
Yes we did this in 2003. We sold our home. paid off our loan and bought another house with no mortgage. The house size is around the same. We gave up lake front living. With no mortgage and taxes cut in half, We are happier. We now are going to build another house in a few years when we save down payment plus the money for this house we want to get a 15 year mortgage next. Next house will not be that big ether we our looking for land, to hunt on and have a shop for husband's knife making. The goal is to have the smallest mortgage we can have and be more self sufficient with hunting and gardening. We are also looking at solar and wind power to be off grid as much as possible. Our old payment was 800 amonth and taxes were 2000+ a year. We had 8 acers of land on lake. With a special needs dr. We needed to change things. The loan was risky had we stayed there it would have balloned and we would be selling now and market is real slow here now.
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Sorry gals I never had understood the need for a 5000 square foot house. We have about 1100 right now for a family of 3 and are starting construction on our new house in 2 months and it is only 1300. Everyone was like you wont be happy with less than 2500 sq ft and you will regret it. How can that be true. My house size now is fine and I am gaining 200 feet. We are done having kids so we are not a growing family. We are country people and building on our new farm so we spend most of our time outside anyways. In our little town property taxes are really high. Those 5000 foot houses pay about 7K a year in taxes/ That is just crazy.
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here we upgraded. we went from 1040sq feet to over 2500 sq feet and 30 acres of property, part of which is fenced in farm land for grazing. we didn't need thi sbig of a house, but we got a really good deal on it. we only paid 118,000 for the whole property. and we only pay about 2000 a year in property taxes. plus this is the best deal we could have gotten for living out in the country. our property is assessed at being worth well over 160,000. we love having the larger house, but mostly we just love being out inthe country. i could never go back to intown living.
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we just less then two weeks ago closed on our little home we went from 2000 to like 1400 we HAD a 3 bedroom 3 bathroom HUGE kitchen +a diningroom +morning room and now we have a little tiny house I LOVE it our other home was 2000 on one floor and now we have like 700 on the main floor. its alittle hard now cuz we went from 3 bathrooms to now only having ONE so thats been the one hard thing. But yes WAY CHEEPER!!!
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This is exactly what we are planning on doing here in the next year. We have been working with the County we live in to separate out 2.5 acres and sell our huge house with an acre of the property. We have started our house plans for our new house which will be more modest and we build it on the 1.5 acres we have left. We have a goal to be mortgage free! We have a lot of equity in our house because we built it ourselves 2.5 yrs ago for much cheaper then it would have cost us with a builder...along with that the housing market here jumped. Right now we are so house poor. We make pretty good money but we have a large mortgage and property tax. When we sell it and downsize we will be mortgage free and all the money worries we have right now will be lifed away. I know our lives will be so much more enjoyable!
Answer:
Yup I went from a 2300 sq foot house to 1250 sq it about killed me, because I had all this stuff and was like uhh what do I do with it now.. Slowly I am begining to love my small house. We are planning on adding a workshop in the backyard to store all our tools and eventually added another room that can be my office. I am not sure what will do right now if we have another baby. But the payment is good, i will own it in 15 years and I am happy with all the upgrades we make. Plus I am paying about the same amount on a 15 year loan in my smaller house as I was for a 30 year loan in my big house, so that is always a plus. It is fun actually being creative in finding ways to store stuff or make more room. Like counter space and cupboard space. My dh is building me a pantry that I will put in my dinning area that will store food. I still miss the space of my old house... but now I am like, I can barely keep up with cleaning on this house, I would have died trying on our old one!!
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We went from a 900sq.ft. /one bath ranch with 2 kids (felt like we were tripping on one another)to an 1800sq. ft./2 bath split foyer(sp). We My oldest DS has his bedroom downstairs, but ather than that, we rarely use the lower lever. the kitchen, 3 bedrooms, livingroom, and bath is upstairs. We talk about dowsizing after the 12 year old goes to college and we back down to 4 at home. I would have no problem downsizing now, but DH wont here of it.
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we bought our house 12 years ago when we were just 20 and 21 it was such a good price for the size and property in a small town with only 700-800 people currently. we have 2500 sq ft but only 1900 is finished(we have an unfinishable basement so it is just for storage and washer/dryer and freezer. we plan on staying here for ever. we have 3 kids. we have 3 bedrooms,living room, dining kitchen combo, 2 baths(though we really only use one) and an extra room upstairs right when you walk up(its a 1900's farm house) that we have our computer in wich is soon going to be the playroom and we are moving the computer to our walk incloset wich we don't need because our room has 2 double closets...the only draw back to this house is that we have accumulated to much stuff...so sometimes i wish it were a little smaller but we are working on purging.. but the price is right and the school district is awesome so here we will stay.
Answer:
We have the opposite problem.Our house is to small for us.We live in a 1008 sq ft house with 5 people.My boys share a room and my daughter has her own.We have thought about upgrading but we decided not to.We can add on a few rooms and I iwll be happy.Just another bedroom,a master bath,and bring my kitchen and livingroom out a little.
We also thought hard about turning our garage into a room but my hubby wants me to keep my vehicle in it.
Our biggest issue around here is it seems like we are always up someones butt lol.Talk about NO privacy.Untill we can do something...saying we ever do..we just deal with it.