Americans love their large homes. They are grand and there is room for everyone and everything. The size of the American house has increased steadily over the decades. In 1970, average home size was 1,500 square feet. Today the average home is 2,600 square feet. This is a 73% increase in 45 years.
Many families have seen the benefits of downsizing their homes, to better use their resources for other things. Downsizing your house can mean a lower mortgage, taxes and maintenance costs. Downsizing may be prompted by retirement, children leaving home or other life changes.
When I retired a year ago, my wife and I had a four bedroom house with each room well furnished. We also had a basement full of boxes and exercise equipment. We made the decision to downsize our house (and leave the Ohio winters). One of our goals was to travel more in the RV we had purchased. Another goal was to have less house maintenance. Our experiences will be the basis for this blog.
The first task was to get our house in Ohio ready to sell. Our realtor set to work staging and advertising our home. Some changes were needed after 20 years. We waited until we were ready to sell to replace the worn linoleum in the kitchen area and replace the double pane windows whose seals had broken. It’s possible just to replace the glass, not the entire window, at a much lower cost. We put a new coat of stain on the wood deck. To bring the house style more up-to-date, we changed out the colored carpets with more neutral colored ones. A further update replaced the linoleum in the master bath with tile.
Pictures are important and for some of the interior photos a wide-angle lens was used. I thought it made those parts of the house look roomier. We did get some feedback that visitors didn’t think the house was large enough for their families. The square footage was a roomy 2,460 square foot home built 20 years ago, but was now smaller than today’s average.
The big question was “What are we going to do with our stuff?”. We intended to downsize to smaller living quarters which meant we had rooms full of stuff we had to find another home for. We found there are many options, ranging from donating, to selling and even giving away things.
Packing what we were keeping seemed to take months. Labeling each box was tedious but it proved its value when we had to look for specific things. What to do with our keepers then led to movers and storage places. We have experience with two different storage places and an insurance claim.
I’ll go into more detail on these topics in future blogs. For now, know that the Rentz Team here in Tulsa is ready to provide real estate expertise and guidance to get top dollar for your current house. The Rentz Team and their downsizing specialists can expertly help you through the downsizing process.