Summary: Most people fail to escape social norms and expectations that adversely affect their quality of life and wealth-building capacity. This is certainly the case with housing norms and there is a particularly damaging one that applies to both owners and renters: the desire to possess as much housing space and amenity as you can afford.
This translates into: more bedrooms, more bathrooms, extra rooms, larger rooms, larger outdoor areas, off-street parking, storage facilities, and expensive space and features for activities like watching movies, playing games and entertaining friends. Consequently, also moving to less dense areas (whether suburban or regional) that require more car ownership and have much less amenity that is walkable and bikeable. And don't forget that owning more space and stuff typically leads to paying for its upkeep: cleaners, gardeners and maintenance.
But each person in a family doesn't actually need their own bedroom from age zero to adulthood. Indeed younger siblings benefit from sharing a room. Bedrooms only used for sleeping are wasted most of the day, and large ones are needlessly pricey. In general, the idea of single-use rooms (or spaces) is a costly relic from last century. Spare rooms are much more expensive that paying for Airbnb when needed. Big outdoor areas are understandably desireable but it's much better to live close to, and use regularly, public parks and nature. Overall, the benefits of minimising the private home space you need in urban areas with ridiculously-expensive land prices (like Australia) are enormous; you simply need to locate yourself nearby to your most valued amenities and adjust your lifestyle to make the most of what's outside your home rather than establish your own private version. And even if you just do this when it most makes sense (young, not as settled, don't spend much of the week at home, social life mostly outside home) you'll save a lot of money which can ultimately be used to obtain home amenity when it's most worthwhile.
Our Situation: We live in a 22m x 4.5m two bedroom terrace in Fitzroy North with an 8m x 4.5m courtyard. Two bedrooms are ample for two adults and 1 child. Our living room is flexibly used with a futon mattress for an extra bed when family visit. Airbnb is also used when needed. No home of ours will ever have dedicated rooms for things like entertainment or dining. Indeed we likely won't ever have a second bathroom. We don't intend to ever own a car and paying extra for off-street parking is anathema. We deliberately live close to one of the best parks in Australia - Edinburgh Gardens - and typically visit twice a day. We regularly walk or bike to amenities and activities near our home like libraries, playgrounds, community gardens, swimming pools, Melbourne Museum children's gallery, the zoo, etc. Social activities we arrange are typically in public space and our car-free life means we've never driven to suburban activities like backyard BBQ's, shopping malls, or indoor play centres.
Gain: I estimate we save $10,000 to $20,000 a year on housing and home-related amenity (including transport costs) compared to a similar family that takes a more conventional path to acquiring these benefits.
Details:
1. The differential cost of homes with extra bedrooms is the clearest evidence of the adverse impact of conforming to current norms about housing space and home lifestyle
Whether buying or renting a house or apartment in any desireable part of Australia, the cost of obtaining extra bedrooms rises enormously. This is especially the case in the most walkable and bikeable areas - inner-city suburbs with smaller house footprints - where the predominant housing is typically two bedroom and there is a premium for additional bedrooms.
In many cases, 3 bedroom properties don't offer any extra advantages (more outdoor space, better amenity) over 2 bedroom properties other than an extra room for someone to sleep. Hence, the cost comparison (whether buying or renting) is especially revealing as to the financial benefits of escaping deleterious social norms.
In the below map, you can see how rental affordability dramatically worsens when you switch from 2 bedroom to 3 bedroom properties:
The current norms around bedrooms and privacy in affluent Western societies have few compelling justifications, have morally-questionable origins, and even where consciously-chosen (rather than mindlessly conformed to) often reflect desires driven by status rather than quality of life.
See:
> L.A. Times - Why do we make children sleep alone?
2. Examples of opportunities to minimise home-related costs
Examples include:
- Minimising the number of bedrooms needed by sharing rooms where feasible. Using partitions and screens for flexible privacy when needed. In particular, young children should share rooms. As demonstrated above, minimising bedrooms provides the greatest opportunity to save a fortune on housing costs throughout your lifetime.
- Minimising the number of bathrooms. While some proportionality is beneficial as household size increases, it is practical to share and being able to do with less than equivalent households offers substantial housing savings.
- Having temporary visitors sleep in other rooms on futons or fold-out couches or similar flexible beds. And using Airbnb when space is too limited.
- Not paying for unused spare rooms given that the market price (whether buying or renting) for that unused room is set by a household that will utilise it (e.g. as a small bedroom, work space).
- Not paying extra for unnecessary rooms and space like extra bathrooms/toilets, dining rooms, entertainment rooms, off-street parking.
- Minimising the amount of rarely-used stuff you own so that you don't need large amounts of storage in garages, sheds or in bigger houses that have large storage areas.
- Living in a dense area with convenient access to necessary amenities by walking or cycling. Eliminating, or at least reducing car ownership, enables much less costs for off-street parking, garages, driveways, permits and vehicle access.
- Reducing outdoor space that is rarely utilised or could be substituted with convenient access to high-amenity parks, sports and kid's facilities, places to picnic and BBQ, etc. The cost of privately possessing a leisure facility (e.g. big backyard with kid's play equipment and space for a dog to run around, swimming pool) is always higher than utilising free and paid public facilities (parks, recreation centre pass).
3. Combining smaller private space with access to more shared spaces ("co-living")
For the types of amenities that are best suited to being indoors, as close to home as possible, and privately provided, "co-living" arrangements offer one type of solution.
A recent large-scale example is 'The Collective' in north London "which has 550 small bedrooms and communal areas that include a spa, restaurant, games room, library and roof-top with plastic igloos - with most bills included in the rental price."
See:
> Co-living solution for 'Generation Rent'?
Further Info:
realestate.com.au
> Swimming pools & bedrooms top Aussie property wish-list
domain.com.au
> International students being exploited in Sydney as they fork out big bucks to live in overcrowded apartments
L.A. Times
> Why do we make children sleep alone?
NY Times
> Living With Less. A Lot Less
The Age
> Melbourne’s slumlords find new ways to profiteer
Shrink That Footprint
> How big is a house? Average house size by country
UBank
> All I Need Project
The Conversation
> Size does matter: Australia’s addiction to big houses is blowing the energy budget
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