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obviously if you didnt care about looks from the outside, and you had an endless budget, you can make a 10,000 sq foot ranch that has tons of seperation of living and sleeping space and still never have to walk up stairs.
right now we are in 2,000 sq feet, but its not layed out perfectly. hard for someone to be up in the house and not wake everyone up.
With a better layout and 500 more sq feet, i think we would be able to make it a much more livable ranch, but we are leaning towards and will likely get the 2nd floor much bigger investment.
Wow. It did not ever occur to me that someone would voluntarily choose to live in a ranch, other than people seen on House Hunters.
This such a shortsighted mentality. Our house is a ranch (expanded). We love it. We searched high and low for one, and turned down a colonial in Oceanside for our home. The big plus is not dealing with stairs (although we do have a finished basement but its only 12 steps).
May have been addressed before...but I grew up in the NE US and multi-story row houses and twins were the norm. I moved down south about three years ago and single story ranch styles with or without garages are the norm. I never want to be in a multi-story home again. At 63 years of age, I'm thinking of the future ability of climbing stairs and the current peace and quiet not allowed in row homes.
I use to love love love colonials (still kind of do). When my husband and I were looking for a house he wanted a ranch, i wanted a colonial. Our realtor took us to both and I realized that I actually loved the wide line ranches. After the first few houses we saw then we stuck to looking for a ranch. We finally bought a wide L shaped ranch and i LOVE it! I dont have to worry about stairs (makes moving furniture easier too). We use to live in a split and the temperature regulation in that house was terrible. So far our even with running the ac our electric bills have been pretty reasonable compared to the split and the colonial we had before that. We turn on the one wall AC in our family room and it actually cools down the whole house. Now that ive lived in a colonial, split, and wide ranch I have to say ranch wins by a mile.
^ electric bill for a colonial doesn't have to be high either. You're basically only living on 1 floor at a time. We only have 1 zone on at a time - morning vs. night. We pay $100/mo. avg over a year for electric.
Ding dongs.
People just need to be big shots.
Some really do NEED large homes because they have large families.
But really, is a 10000 square foot monstrosity necessary for an average family of 4?
I use to love love love colonials (still kind of do). When my husband and I were looking for a house he wanted a ranch, i wanted a colonial. Our realtor took us to both and I realized that I actually loved the wide line ranches. After the first few houses we saw then we stuck to looking for a ranch. We finally bought a wide L shaped ranch and i LOVE it! I dont have to worry about stairs (makes moving furniture easier too). We use to live in a split and the temperature regulation in that house was terrible. So far our even with running the ac our electric bills have been pretty reasonable compared to the split and the colonial we had before that. We turn on the one wall AC in our family room and it actually cools down the whole house. Now that ive lived in a colonial, split, and wide ranch I have to say ranch wins by a mile.
Colonials should have 2 separate zones each with there own unit for comfort and cost control.
Ding dongs.
People just need to be big shots.
Some really do NEED large homes because they have large families.
But really, is a 10000 square foot monstrosity necessary for an average family of 4?
Don't you have a large truck that you only make full use of less than 10% of the time?
The NEED argument is only for 3rd world countries. Around here, we work to earn money so we can enjoy our lives. Who wants to be in a 1300sf when we can do 3000sf - we earned it, right?
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