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I live frugally in a 1000 square foot rowhome near the train into Center City, the Wissahickon park and close to my job.
I'm not trying to start an argument, but as you being a real estate agent I would appreciate your input. 1000 sq ft is like 333 sq m2, which is almost double of what we have at home. My parents have a 3 bedroom house with a kitchen, living room and a extra room which is my dad's office and the guest room at the same time, and it's more of the size of a cubicle. The house feels empty and annoying at the same time even if there's 5 of us and a dog, when everybody is just sitting in their appropriate rooms and shouting things to each other. Add the yard, and my mom is outside planting flowers with the dog, my sister is at her computer, my dad is working, and we are perhaps sitting in the living room with my brother discussing things. And it feels like I'm in a morgue. Maybe this is a genetic built-up disorder we Europeans have, but having a really big empty house doesn't feel comfy at all, only spooky.
So why do you need even more rooms? And for what? What are the benefits?
I thought Sweden had a very high emigration rate to the US.
Yes, Sweden had a very high emigration to the US. Well over 1 million Swedes immigrated to the US in only a few decades from the 1860's to 1920. In this timeframe Sweden had only about 4-5 million people. Sweden was a relatively poor country and much of the populace faced the prospect of starvation in the event of crop failure. Swedes also left to escape overbearing state church and monarchial government, as well as to take advantage of offers for much cheaper but far superior land offered by the Homestead Act.
Does it? From an insider point of view, it sure doesn't. Cities aren't popular among most individuals above, say, 30. One of my friends moved to a 500k city in the Province because she couldn't find a job in Paris, now she want to move back ASAP because "there aren't as much entertainment options". Among couples with children, the reverse is true. The "build a home with a garden" dream is alive and well.
Yes. Most of my European friends (some of whom live in France of course) who have young families live in places like this. Quite a few live in even smaller towns and villages and are even more auto-dependent.
The main difference between their lifestyles and ours is that the bottle of wine they enjoy on their backyard terrasse probably cost half as much as ours did!
Seriously though, in France I find a lot of young people with kids totally skip over the true suburbs and instead want to be "rurbains" (rural urbanites), because the word "banlieue" is tainted for them and evokes poorly-maintained dehumanizing commie blocks.
Where I live the word is not so stigmatized.
Google Images with "banlieue" and "France" gives you these types of images:
Ah, crap. Sorry, my head isn't really that good on conversions. I think our home is like 1600 sq ft then.
That is smaller than a middle-class North American home, isn't it? I admit the noise is a bit annoying when I go home at first, as in my 280 sq ft studio I can control all of it, but after a forthnight I want to hear the noise from the kitchen, the outburts of my sister and my stepdad, the TV, the dog and all the other sounds of just... well, life and living. Now my sister lives in Florida and really miss her vocal input. And when I decide to start a family I definitely want to have some buzz in my home and not a mcmansion where every person has two rooms for theirselves.
I'm not trying to start an argument, but as you being a real estate agent I would appreciate your input. 1000 sq ft is like 333 sq m2, which is almost double of what we have at home. My parents have a 3 bedroom house with a kitchen, living room and a extra room which is my dad's office and the guest room at the same time, and it's more of the size of a cubicle. The house feels empty and annoying at the same time even if there's 5 of us and a dog, when everybody is just sitting in their appropriate rooms and shouting things to each other. Add the yard, and my mom is outside planting flowers with the dog, my sister is at her computer, my dad is working, and we are perhaps sitting in the living room with my brother discussing things. And it feels like I'm in a morgue. Maybe this is a genetic built-up disorder we Europeans have, but having a really big empty house doesn't feel comfy at all, only spooky.
So why do you need even more rooms? And for what? What are the benefits?
I realize homes might be much smaller on average in Europe but 1000 square feet is considered a relatively small house in the US. In Philadelphia and other cities it is common to live in even smaller apartments though. The house in Philly I grew up in was a little over 2000 square feet but I had 5 siblings along with my parents.
Now, I live in an attached house (rowhome) with a front porch, living room, dining room, kitchen and backyard on the first floor, 3 bedrooms and bathroom upstairs along with a basement with laundry and half bath. There are two of us here along with my dog and it doesn't feel too big at all. The utility costs are also pretty reasonable.
Something like this block that is in my neighborhood (although these are probably ~1200-1400 sq ft).
Swedes also left to escape overbearing state church and monarchial government, as well as to take advantage of offers for much cheaper but far superior land offered by the Homestead Act.
US government policy = steal land from the Indians. Then advertise land for farming in Germany and Scandinavia. Good way to get lots of productive farmland. This book set in the western Plains is a good read:
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