New House Build - No Formal Living Room? (Mansfield, Howe: established neighborhood, buyers)

[Metcalf101]

Need some advise. We are in the early stages of our new house build and have debated back and forth on having a formal dining room or not. We will not use it, but some have told us for resale value (being 15-20 years down the road) we probably want to consider having one.

Any realitors advise on resale value would be appreciated!

Anyone's personal opinion would also be appreciated! Thoughts?

[racehorse]

I would have one put in, even if you use it as an office. At our old house, we used our formal living room as an office. People are going to expect you to have a formal dining room.

[TurtleCreek80]

I would also consider what is "normal" in the neighborhood you're building in. Is it an established neighborhood where most homes have formals and the new builds tend to follow suit? Or is it a new development where most homes don't have formals. As with master up / master down, it's always best - for resale, at least- to follow the neighborhood "norm." It keeps more buyers in play for your home.

[hal2814]

How big is the house you're looking at building? We built a 1800 sq ft + basement house in Georgia without a formal dining room. It didn't hurt our resale at all. Our main living area was very open with the dining, living, and kitchen all being in one big L shape. However, if I were looking at building a larger (like 3000sq ft+) house, I personally wouldn't build without one. On a larger house, it's enough of a turn off that you'll lose a lot of prospective buyers.

EDIT: And good response above about keeping with neighborhood norms. It's good for a house to have some individuality, but if it strays too far from the norm, it's a tough sell.

[mSooner]

Same...I'd look at the price range/norms for your neighborhood. I'd have a second living area of some sort, but you could make it an open study or a less-formal den.

[loves2read]

your heading was for formal living room--but the question was about formal dining

Most people who shop for homes are looking for what they know--they don't have lot of imagination and if you show them something they are not familiar with when you go to resell
they are likely to see it as negative vs a positive--

they know formal dining rooms--many of them have furniture for that room even if they only use it two times a year--Christmas and Thanksgiving

I have seen and see many new construction homes where the design has been amended from ones in the 80 and 90s basically and the formal LIVING room --especially if it is off the front foyer, across from the dining room--has had glass doors added and set up as an office space--sometimes there are bookshelves or a closet added and the room might have been made smaller because of changing to office space...

I have seen homes remodeled like that as well--
so I think that while most people would consider a formal living room something that could be given up and adapted to other uses--a formal dining room is something they are willing to assign space to even if it won't see daily use...

In remodeling/design magazines I have seen people turn a dining room into a library type of space and add bookshelves to walls and use banquet type seating between them and use the dining table as sort of desk between times it would be used for dining
so a dining space can be multipurpose but it takes careful consideration to make it look "right" in both versions...

many people are wanting the combined open space of kitchen / family / breakfast but I think most people still want to have the option of a more formal type dining space for something "special" vs everyday
especially for larger parties where you want to seat adults and children separately

you don't have to use it for that function in YOUR house--just make sure that it can be used by someone else for that if they want that option in future--
as such if you are designing the house from the get-go==there are ways to arrange rooms so that a dining area could be in location that might be used by you as tv lounge/den area yet be close/open enough to kitchen to be formal dining

We saw one house designed by builder in Mansfield that had the dining room more across the hall from the kitchen vs in front of it like in most homes--and if you had wanted to use that area for office or kids playroom you could have done it and translated it into dining area at different time...

our current house has dining area in front off foyer--and we have to carry food into it from the kitchen--not that far but not adjacent--our RE agent said that was one of the negatives to the floor plan--but the dining room is larger than most homes we saw...we have room for our buffet, dining hutch, table and can seat 10 easily--with room to get in/out w/o bumping furniture
and we can use electric buffet servers if we wanted to keep the food hot...
so we thought that was OK trade off--

[5stones]

Formal living? no. we convereted our to an office. (you can put one in with french doors so it will have dual purpose for re-sale...ie doors open living area, office or even a piano room. his is what we did)

Formal dining? yes. esp if you entertian, kitchen dining is small etc...

[ggolf]

I've seen many DFW homes that have a formal dining, but not a formal living room, just a great room/family room. At the least you should have a formal dining room. That seems to be the preferred layout in newer housing.

[SVTRay]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

I would also consider what is "normal" in the neighborhood you're building in. Is it an established neighborhood where most homes have formals and the new builds tend to follow suit? Or is it a new development where most homes don't have formals. As with master up / master down, it's always best - for resale, at least- to follow the neighborhood "norm." It keeps more buyers in play for your home.

This.

[Squirl]

Personal opinion: I like open floor plans w/casual livingroom that is actually used for daily life. If I were designing a new build, I'd have a room w/french doors that I'd use as an office but could also function as a formal livingroom.