Bedrooms, multiple kids, large spacious bathrooms, an office, a gym, a combined living room/kitchen/dining room open space for hosting parties, and most importantly of all, storage space. That can become 3000 sqft fairly quickly, of which you only use 1000 sqft frequently as a family :D
We have a 1500 sq ft house with 2 kids. We have 3 bedrooms so each kid has their own room. We also have 2 added sunrooms off each end of the house, one of which I use for my office. Part of our garage has also been converted into a gaming area for my son and his friends. We don't want anything bigger. It really is the perfect size for our family. We all have our own space when we need it but still close enough so we aren't totally alienated from each other.
Could mean a house big enough to support the family.. a studio wont do the job and to support the average family of 4 you'd need at least 3 bedrooms, maybe 2 of they are both large but that gets into other issues..
Thanks for the reference. It will be easiest to give people what they want instead of convincing them they need to share a floor with 4 other families.
A lot of the open concept houses around here use enough space for four rooms for one big one. Usually kitchen + dining area + a single living room easily large enough to be two. If you're lucky you have one other room in the public area, designated by design as a dining room (distinct from the merely-yards-away dining area!), and if you're super lucky it's at least got three walls rather than just being designated by flooring and maybe like one pillar.
More rooms is nice if you don't like being on top of every single other person in the house all the time, without having to go to your bedroom (aren't we supposed to only go there for sleep, for sleep-hygiene reasons?) to escape. In recent houses this means using ~3x the space you actually need to accomplish that, mostly by adding a room or two in a finished basement, because the main public area's gigantic, yes, but also entirely open.
It's also very nice to be able to contain messes. So nice. One large shared living space plus kids means no part of your house ever doesn't look like shit without heroic efforts or paid help.
Where I'm from, most people I know live in smaller apartments than these houses, often with two kids. The trick is to have the minimum number of rooms (only bedrooms + bathroom + kitchen + living room - or fewer), and to allocate a good portion to the living room, which can be adjusted according to the needs of the moment. Many households have extendable dining tables, foldable chairs (either hollywood-style or fully wooden), etc.
Having a couple stay for three months would be troublesome, but dinner for eight or ten is perfectly doable.
I don't disagree that it's possible to stuff a large family into a house that isn't designed to give more than a couple of people privacy and personal space.
However, during my time living in Europe, I got to see several friends' family houses, and the ones in Germany and Spain especially were well-suited for multigenerational families in a way that the houses here are not.
There are certainly times I regret having so much space for our kids to clutter, but we ultimately bought it as a place for us to grow into. My wife is expecting our 6th child later this year, and our house has 6 bedrooms. So in that sense, it isn't insanely lavish, but a comfortable place to raise a large family.
Also, as the commenter below mentioned, we do enjoy hosting people for parties and family get-togethers. We spend a good amount of energy and time and money on these activities that are for the enjoyment of other people.
Wealthy people often build massive palaces to honor their own greatness and inflate their egos, I can assure you this is not one of those homes :).
I'm sure the OP purchased such a large house for efficiency... as their children mature they can just start their own families in various parts of the vast, cavernous manor.
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