Buying a house while on the fence about kids?

[y4m]

Did anyone do this? How did you decide how much space to look for? Did you buy for your current selves and assume that you'd move later if the place you bought no longer fit your needs?

We're 31/32 and solidly on the fence in the child department. We never bought a starter home, but we're financially ready right now to buy a forever home. Ideally, it would actually be forever, or at least 20+ years, since interest rates are so great right now. But when we look at these 4 br places, they just seem gigantic to me.

How did you approach that decision?

[zarapipe]

Well our situation was a little different. We were not really trying, not really avoiding, kinda trying to avoid.. whatever that means haha, but we knew pregnancy was an option.

With that in mind we put an offer in on a 2/2 house because that is what we could afford in our price range. It is a pretty good size, 1400 sq feet and the two bedrooms are exactly the same size, but one has an attached bath.

Our offer was accepted and then about 6 hours later we found out we were pregnant. Our house works for us. If I knew we were going to have 3 kids, 2 years apart we wouldn't have even considered looking at a 2/2, but we knew one was a possibility with another maybe 3-5 years later. We are planning on TTC later this year when DD is 3-3.5. We will stay in our house and make it work.

Kids will work with any house, but you have to decide what you want. You can have two kids in a two bedroom, but is that what you want? Since you are on the fence with children I would look at houses that would work with children but not something that you are not comfortable living in if you decide not to have kids.

[mswax]

We always knew we wanted kids, but we didn't know how much our wants would change once we had kids.

We bought our 1st home in 2004, had DS1 in 2008 and DS2 in 2010. By then, we knew we really wanted something with a larger master bedroom (to fit a king bed when the kids slept with us), and something on a quieter street.

We moved last summer.

[Deleted]

How many kids do you think you'll have at most? If only one or two, would a three bedroom work for you?

eta: If you don't end up having kids, you could easily use the extra bedrooms as an office and a guest room.

[countthestars]

We know we want kids, but either way we probably would have gone with a 3 bedroom house. If we had a 3 bed and no kids, I would be able to "fill" the other rooms - office, guest room, exercise room, craft room etc. 4 would have seemed like too much. At the same time, 3 beds will be enough for us with kids. If we have 2 kids, they can either each have their own room or share one and have one guest room. If we have 3, 2 can share. H and I each grew up sharing a room so we have no problem with it.

If you buy a 3 bed, decide to have kids and then decide you would like at least 4 beds you could reassess. Considering how logn it takes for all of those life events to occur you'd probably still be in this house at least 10 years.

[winnied]

No kids, but why not buy a small but still forever home for you two? If you change your mind to have kids, you could move. I realize that seems like a huge pain to go through just to move but I moved several times growing up and I just never think it's that bad. I think going from an apartment or small condo to a 4 bedroom would be too big of a change, personally. I wouldn't want my home to feel empty.

[hbomdiggity]

I don't know how much we were on the fence about kids vs no kids, but def moreso on the timing.

We realized that we kinda hated suburbia (better schools and larger homes) and decided for a home that works now and when kids come, but may not get them through middle/high school. When that time comes, we my then head for the burbs or upgrade in our current area (which is $$$ so not an option currently).

We are not so concerned with the forever home/paying off the mortgage before we are 60 (32 now).

[niq]

We weren't on the fence, but weren't sure we'd have them so soon after buying. It's "4br" but one of them is really a flex room that's the TV room for now.

Before kids, the 2 other bedrooms are a guest bedroom and an office.

[Deleted]

We did. We thought we would be out of our house before we had a baby though (IF we had one), or at least that we would be out of here by the time we had a toddler. Sadly, we bought in 2007 so we have been in this house much longer than planned... whomp whomp.

We did buy a bigger house at the top of our price range and I am glad we did. When I think about trying to make two kids or even one work at some of the houses we looked at, I shudder. Our income has gone way up too so it's not like our mortgage is remotely a stretch. Honestly I don't think you can go wrong with buying a larger house with an extra bedroom or two. I am jealous of my neighbors in similarly sized houses who don't have kids but do have awesome craft rooms, home gyms, etc.

Before we had DD the current nursery just sat empty and we used it as temp-controlled storage. It was not a big deal. We would have turned it into a hobby room of some sort if we had not decided to have kids.

[Deleted]

BTW we are going to do 2 kids in a 3 bedroom. We will not have a dedicated guest room and that's kind of a bummer for our guests but it's not the end of the world. Our most frequent guests (DH's parents) are not complaining, anyway.

[y4m]

We would definitely never have more than 2, and most likely fewer. I need an office though, and DH probably does too. And guest room(s) obviously, since our family is out of town. I need to go look at the extra room thread for inspiration, because I think financially buying with 2 extra rooms is smart. I probably need to get over the fact that it also feels kind of wasteful.

It would help if anything here were simply 2500-3000 square feet instead of either 1500 or 4500.

[LoveTrains]

We don't really want kids but I suppose one day we would wake up and change our minds. We just bought our "forever" home and its 3 br BUT it has a finished basement that also has an office with a built in desk and shelves. So that take care of the office part. I figure that if we do end up having a kid they can have one room and then we will have a guest room.

But I guess I don't think we will really ever have kids.

[Deleted]

We bought our hope while on the fence. We have a 1200sq ft 3 bedroom/1bath ranch. This will be our forever home even if we decide to have kids. If we do decide to have children we will only have 1-2, so 3 bedrooms is fine. We plan to add a bathroom in the basement within a couple years.

However, the idea of having a big house with or without kids just doesn't appeal to me.

[ijack]

IF you had kids, when would you have them? How on the fence are you?

[jena]

My boss has a huge 4bdrm suburban home for just 2 of them. They have no kids but love suburban life. They have one bedroom set up with gym equipment, and another completely filled with shelving to hold their massive Christmas and Halloween decoration collections. And one as a guest room. You could also use an extra room as an office or media room if the house doesn't have them.

Sent from my HTCEVOV4G using proboards

[kangaroo11]

We were not really planning on having a kid, but bought a 3 bedroom house anyway. We had a master bedroom and then we each had our own room for whatever we wanted. His room was also the guest room as it was larger and thus has a queen bed instead of a single like in mine. It worked well for us.

Now that we're about to have a baby, my room will be doubling as baby's room though. I figure I'll kick DH out of his room someday when the kid is older.

[Susie]

We always planned to have kids, but the number wasn't (isn't) settled at all. We bought a house that we could envision using in a number of ways.

It has 4 bedrooms, but "4 bedrooms" can mean an awful lot of different house sizes. It could be 4 beds, 4 baths, 3500 sf... or it could be 4 beds, 1.5 baths, 1850 sf (which is about what ours is). 4 bedrooms feels way smaller when they all share one full bath!

We anticipate that we'll likely change the layout of the upstairs when we have school age kids, to add a bath. We haven't decided if we'll convert to a 3 bed/2.5 bath, or add on over the garage to make it a 5 bed/2.5 bath. In the meantime, any house with only one full bath is hard to feel excessively large for the two of us.

Jan 8, 2013 14:26:08 GMT -5 y4m said:

It would help if anything here were simply 2500-3000 square feet instead of either 1500 or 4500.

ETA, just saw that. Ugh, that does make it hard.

I'm not sure I'd want 4500 even WITH kids though. I grew up in a ~2000 sf house and have never lived in anything bigger than that. So I guess I'd look for a 1500 sf house that's really well laid out, has a full basement (finished or with possibility of finishing), or had potential for adding on. But that's just because, like I said, I don't aspire to own 4500 sf, good mortgage rates or not.

[limey]

I bought, as a single person, a 4 bedroom, 3 bath home with 1800+ sq ft. I knew that I never wanted kids.

We ended up using one bedroom as a home gym, one as a den for H and one as a guest room.

That was in a MCOL area. We are in a HCOL area now, and would like to buy as little home as possible, maybe just a 2bd/2ba condo.

[Deleted]

We were idiots and bought a 2br, thinking we'd move before we had kids. I would have loved the space even before we had DD.

One room- guest room, one room- gym, one room office. *drool*

4500 is insane, though, I dont want anywhere near that WITH the plan to have 2 kids.

[ssmjlm]

Well for us it was both a "if kids and if yes, when kids" type of thing. But we also knew we were a 1 and done family if we had any.

We bought a 3bd/2.5ba and honestly I wish we either had a bonus room over the garage or a basement. Unfortunately no basement around here and in our price range there were few 2 story homes available.

[h]

I would try to get a 3 or 4 bedroom in the 2000-3000 sq. ft. range, but it sounds like that will be tough. I agree that 4500 sq. ft. is crazy. I am about to have my third kid, and I live in the land of big houses (aka Texas), and I still have no desire for a 4500 sq. ft. house. We are fine in 2900 sq. ft. as a family of five. My DH and I both grew up in 4500+ sq. ft. houses, and we both think there was a lot of wasted space.

[fences]

We found a happy medium. We're lucky to live in a fairly LCOL area, so we were able to afford a 3 bedroom home with basement, which is pretty large for only 2 people. We decided that it would be enough to have a kid or 2 in, and it would only be slightly too big if it was just us. It was much easier than I expected because when we found the right house, we just knew. There was a feeling of, "Yeah, I can see us living and possibly having a family here," vs. a mathematical breakdown of square footage per person.

If we decide to stay childless or have quadruplets in the future, we'll reevaluate then. I think it's kind of crazy to try to obtain a "forever" home at such a young age, even if you can afford it. Life just has too many curve balls to even try.

[y4m]

The 4500s were near EFC metro. That Pine one has been listed since they started building, but I don't think it's done yet.

[liveintheville]

We're in a 2/2 condo. It's 1524 sf. That's measured stud to stud, by the way. Our only issue right now is storage. We have no basement storage area. The kids share a room and I think we'll be ok for quite a while with this setup. Forever? I don't know. But we have no plans to move in the next few years. The layout works for us, in that it's an open dining/kitchen/living room situation, that allows me to keep an eye on the kids no matter what I'm doing.

[kaylie]

We bought "knowing" we'd eventually have kids, but now I'm wavering because I'm just not as baby crazy as I thought I'd be.

We have 3000 sq feet, four bedrooms plus a basement not counted in the sq footage in a highly rated school district. The good news is that even if we don't have kids, four bedroom houses are always in demand here because it's so family oriented. The bad news is that 3000 sq feet is a LOT for two people. In retrospect, we should have gone with something smaller.

If your choices are either less than 2000 or 4500, I'd go with less than 2000.

[kadams767]

We were (are?) in a really similar situation when we were looking to buy. Though the square footages are a bit lower than your examples, everything we looked at was either too small for us to consider having a kid there or way too big in the event that we decided no kids. Heck, most of the larger places were too big for us even if we were planning on 3+ kids.

We settled sort of in the middle, at just over 2000 square feet, with 4 bedrooms and 1.5 baths. I'm not going to lie, now that we are close to hopping onto the "no kids" side of the fence for good, our house seems too big for two people and a dog. There is a lot of unused space. I love my house, but if I had known for sure that it would just be the two of us, I might have looked harder for something smaller.

[kitty]

I'd probably go with a 3BR. I would be worried that a 2BR would affect resale because it would only appeal to a smaller segment of the population.

[livinitup]

We bought our 4 bedroom because we could afford it (LCOL area) and DH would only consider a home with an excellent resale value, and in our neighborhood, that meant 4-bedroom.

[Bob Loblaw]

We're on the fence as well and are looking for 2500-3000 sq ft. We bought a small starter home that we've grown out of even without kids, and I agree with PPs that I could EASILY use 4 bedrooms without kids: master BR, guest bedroom (frequent OOT guests), gym/hobby room and office. So I can see how people with kids could get regular use out of 5+ bedrooms, although I don't personally want to go that large.

I will say that having a garage or basement for storage would make our current house way more tolerable.

[catsarecute]

We got our house in Fall of 2009, 6 months into TTC. At the time, I didn't know we would be dealing with IF issues but we were able to afford what I like to consider a forever home. Plenty of space and bedrooms, good neighborhood, etc. I'm not sure if we will ever have kids now but I don't have any regret. I've seen friends and family grow out of smaller starter homes and I didn't want to move again. HA. Moving sucks!