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Hi Karyn,
Yes I understand your point but never having either we aren't really sure what the pros/cons are and what to look for when we decide to buy. We will decide when we can see the homes and get a feel for the layout, etc.
It's really all going to boil down to moisture, headroom, access and ventilation & in New England that varies incredibly from house to house. Many attics are accessed through a pull down stair set up in the ceiling. Also, a home can have a dry basement for years and then suddenly begin to flood in the spring. We just had to tear down our house at a total loss due to mold, but this is not very common.
If you are moving to New Hampshire from California, you will be getting more extreme weather then you are used to. More freezing temperatures and snow of course. Depending on where you are from, likely more rain. Frankly, California houses are in some ways built in shoddy ways that just wouldn't work in NH.
Attic are unbearably hot in the summer. I've lived in an attic apartment, it was hellish in the summer. Not really safe for small children. Heat rises and black shingles heat up in the sun. Of course, if you have air conditioning it can be quite pleasant...you just have insane electric bills. Finished basements are naturally pleasantly cool in the summer even without air conditioning.
The catch of course is many basements flood. When looking at houses with finished basements, look for signs of water damage. Look at the land around the house and make sure it slopes away from the basement. Ask about drainage, whether it floods, if they have a sump pump or floor drains, what the soil is. (Sand is good.)
Basements often don't have a lot of natural light...but that's a wash because attics typically have few windows as well. (If the attic has lots of gables so it has lots of windows...run. Complex roofs with lots of gables have nooks and crannies where snow, leaves, and water accumulate, so they usually leak like crazy). Fine in an arid environment, bad in NH.
When asking about houses with finished attics ask about insulation, heating costs, and air conditioner bills.
It totally depends on the house and the conditions....I don't see how you can gauge it without looking at the specific property.
In short this is spot on.
Is a finish basement or a finished attic going to be the #1 thing you look at in a house? if anything it will be near the bottom of your priorities (if even a priority). its an added bonus really and either one will suffice.
With that said I think a walk out basement preferably southern facing or with lots of windows is ideal. it will be cooler then an attic in the summer and you will feel more connected to the house and the yard.
Most houses I have seen that have finished attics are 2 story houses, which means your 2 flights of stairs away from the kitchen. Far haul to get some snacks for the big game!
When I was looking, I didn't so much look for a finished basement as for a finish-able basement. A good unfinished walk-out basement is already useful space, much more so than an unfinished attic, IMHO.
Our family has a lot of stuff so when we got our home in Nashua we picked a design with a full basement. As a bonus, we have a steep pitch to our roof so we have a large attic. Like they say, nature abhors a vacuum and soon both were pretty well full. I have to select which stuff goes where because of the temperature extremes inthe attic. I learned not to put Christmas candles with the decorations in the attic (they melted in the Summer) but it is OK for other things. The basement is cool in the Summer and really cold in the winter but we can keep our canned food and vegetables (potatoes, bananas, apples) there all year.
As a project, I spent one early spring painting the inside of my attic white, using the cheapest Wal-Mart paint I could get. It took a while but now it is not as forboding as it was or like any other attic I have seen. Plus the builder put a light in the attic!
If I didn't have an attic and a basement I don't know where I would put my stuff (Or set up my workshop)!
It totally depends on the house and the conditions....I don't see how you can gauge it without looking at the specific property.
Yes, this.
My "dream" is to have a finished attic... meaning a true attic with a full staircase for access, normal headroom, all that. I've spent time in some in older houses which such attics, and loved them. The downside to them is that they have all been hellishly hot in the summer... so the cooling is something to think about. But they feel more like "normal" living space, and you can have exposed rafters if you wish, dormers, a loft feel, whatever.
But my current 10-year-old house has a full unfinished walkout basement, and I think it is very practical and appealing to many. Radon is a complete non-issue (we have had three inspections with the canisters set in place for 48 hours.) Moisture is also a complete non-issue... we have not so much as even slight seepage into the basement. We don't even have a sump pump and cannot envision a time we would need one, in our area. Drainage around the house is very good and only part of the basement is actually under-ground. We have normal-sized windows and a full-size door on one wall. It's really nice to be able to head straight out to the backyard from the basement... the downside is that this means the first floor is elevated at the back of the house, so there's an elevated deck (which I like, but some do not.) This of course could be reconfigured to have a deck at the side, or even front. In any case, as far as connecting inside to outside space, I find the walkout basement more useful than an attic. A normal basement is not appealing to me as anything more than storage space... I wouldn't even bother trying to finish it because living space with all or mostly artificial light would drive me insane. Likewise, the typical low-ceiling-ed new house attic (which we also have) is also not very appealing. It must get at least 120 degrees up there despite ventilation, we'd have to open up a closet to build better access to the attic, etc..
And I agree with nonesuch... despite our walkout basement being unfinished, it's useful space we use just about every day, for storage, for a workshop, for laundry, sometimes even to watch TV. The attic... we're up there every several years. Don't even use it for storage because the trapdoor access is a pain.
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