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HOMEWISE CONSUMER GUIDE Space: Essential advice for choosing your home Choosing the right home is vital for your quality of life. Having adequate space to do basic activities such as eating, sleeping, washing, relaxing, working, entertaining and storing your possessions is essential. The size of your home is not just about the number of bedrooms even though property continues to be marketed this way in the UK. A far better gauge as to whether a property is right for you and your lifestyle is space – in particular the sizes of the rooms and the total floor area. But this simple measure is not always provided or made easy to understand. This guide provides some straightforward advice that will help you to: • compare homes against one another more easily • make better informed decisions about what you will need from a property • understand what you are getting for your money
1. Determine the floor area Ask the organisation or individual who is selling or renting the home for the floor area of the property. This can also be found on the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), which must be in place before the property is marketed.
HOMEWISE CONSUMER GUIDE
It gives you total floor area in square metres (sqm), circled on the sample EPC below. In addition, it provides a wealth of valuable information to help you assess the property’s performance, such as rating its energy efficiency and carbon emissions and even estimating fuel costs.
1 © Crown copyright, Department for Communities and Local Government
2. Check that the property is big enough for your needs Use the RIBA Nest Test www.behomewise.co.uk to determine whether the property will be big enough for all of the people in your household. The Nest Test uses London space standards, which recommend a floor area based on the number of storeys, bedrooms and people, to assess whether your home is large enough for your needs. It will give you an indication as to what an adequately-sized home means, based on the amount of space needed for everyone in your household to live comfortably.
3. Check the property represents good value for the area Now that you have the floor area you can also check whether the price of the property is good value for the area. To do this, divide the price of the property by the floor area to get a price per square metre. For example, for a property which costs £200,000 and has a total floor area of 50sqm the calculation is £200,000 / 50sqm = £4,000 per sqm. In this way you can compare the price per square metre of different properties, though other factors such as style, location and outside space can affect the property value, so be sure to compare like with like.
4. What space means for your home How do you choose between two properties with similar floor areas? What does space mean in terms of furniture or rooms? The table below outlines what space could mean in your home.
Space (m²)
0.5
Equivalent to in furniture/rooms
Coffee table
1
Writing desk or dressing table
2
Three seat sofa
3
Single bed with bedside table
5
Double bed and two bedside tables
6
Galley kitchen adequate for a household with up to three people
8
Single bedroom adequate for one person
9
Dining kitchen for two people or a dining table with seats for three people
11
Double bedroom adequate for two people or a dining table with seats for six people Living room with dining area for a two person household
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5. What space means for you The floor plans below and on page 4, have been designed by an architect to show how a larger total floor area of a property might translate into additional live-able space. The variations are real sizes taken from the HomeWise Case for Space research, which assessed the average size of homes in a sample of new homes from the top volume housebuilders.
One bedroom home A six square metre[1] difference in total floor space might mean:
43 sqm 1 bedroom flat
Green zones identify the space missing from the smaller flat
6 sqm is just a number. But in lifestyle terms it means… a double bed with two bedside tables, and a dressing table and stool •
a storage cupboard in the living room additional circulation space in the hallway an extra cupboard in the kitchen
or a single bed and bedside table, a three seat sofa, a writing desk and a chair, and a coffee table
•
or even a galley kitchen.
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•
49 sqm 1 bedroom flat
1 The difference between the highest (49sqm) and lowest (43sqm) average area for a one bedroom home achieved by a housebuilder in the top 8, based on our sample.
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Three bedroom home A 14 square metre[2] difference in space might mean:
84 sqm 3 bedroom house
98 sqm 3 bedroom house Green zones identify the space missing from the smaller house
a desk in the living room
three more cupboards in the kitchen Ground Floor
Ground Floor
a desk plus more circulation space in the master bedroom
First Floor
First Floor
14 sqm is just a number. But in lifestyle terms it means… •
a living room with a dining area
•
or a double bedroom with all its contents, and in addition a single bed and bedside table
•
or a dining table for 6 people, a three seat sofa and a writing desk
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a further study area in the twin bedroom
2 The difference between the highest (98sqm) and lowest (84sqm) average area for a three bedroom home achieved by a housebuilder in the top 8, based on our sample.
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Further Information For more information about what the space and design of your home means for you, visit these useful websites: • Be HomeWise: The RIBA’s home buyer and renter guide and Nest Test space calculator behomewise.co.uk • Swing a Cat: Useful advice about property size, storage and layout swingacat.info • Secured by Design: How the design, layout and construction of homes can help promote security and deter crime securedbydesign.com • Directgov: the official UK government website for citizens, which includes pages on buying, selling and renting homes direct.gov.uk
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• Which?: Expert independent advice for consumers which.co.uk
© Royal Institute of British Architects, 2011
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