Now if you’re not Mother Goose who could live in a shoe, it is unlikely that you could live in a shoebox – which is bigger than a shoe. But unfortunately many of the new developments being brought to capital city markets have properties in them that can only be described as shoeboxes. In fact we often see people referring to properties that are small and poorly planned as dog boxes.
In an article which appeared in The Age in Melbourne and was published on 18th December 2016 the commentary referred to new planning laws which are to come into effect in March of 2017. A copy of that article is below.
At Specific Property we have always said that there is no point in buying residential property if it is not a good property. Now there are many things that make a property a good property and these things include of course, location, aspect and general amenities near to the property. Whilst a better location and a view are always desirable the one thing that will destroy the long term performance of any residential property is its floor plan. This means that for a property to be lived in long term it MUST be able to accommodate real size furniture.
Now in the article above the new laws which are to come into effect simply do not address this most critical aspect of a residential property. Of course one bedroom, two bedroom and three bedroom properties and even larger properties all require differing spaces to accommodate a smaller or larger number of people who are going to live in those properties. In the article attached the President of the Victorian Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects said the new laws had not gone far enough to ensure quality apartments.
Developers often overrule the advice they get from their architects so that they can fit more properties into a development and to make the project financially viable. We have no concern, in fact, we should all want the developers to produce quality projects and be financially viable so that they are around to come back and fix any problems that may occur after a development is complete. But we also agree with Ms Bird when she says in the article that “The city we build today is the city our children and grandchildren have to live with.” That is particularly difficult if the apartments are not well designed and not large enough to accommodate the long term lifestyle requirements of the residents who are expected to live in those properties.
Here are some basic guidelines that you need to think about when buying a property either for your home or an investment.
Bedrooms
Bedroom sizes need to fit either two single beds or a queen size bed, most people don’t like or buy double beds any more. In terms of the width of a room you could actually have a bedroom that was 2.7m wide which is below the standard 3m x 3m size, but would work because a queen size bed has a width of 1.5metres and if you were to have bed side tables on either side of the bed of say 0.5m wide each, that would give you 2.5m and that would fit comfortably into a width of 2.7metres. The length of the bedroom however needs to be at least 3m long, and a little bit longer would be better. That is because the length of a single/queen size bed is about 2.1m plus any bedhead that you might like and then you need to allow a space between the bottom of the bed and wall to walk through (typically 0.5m or more), and perhaps even more for a chest of drawers at the foot of the bed (0.45m). Which means that you need at least 3m in length to fit all of that into the room. Bigger is always better of course, but it costs more money.
Living room
As far as living and dining spaces are concerned, from our long experience, we can tell you that the living room area alone needs to be a minimum of 3.6m in width and perhaps the same for the length. Broadly 4m x 4m is a generous and appropriate space for furnishing a lounge room. This sized space will allow for what we call a conversation square or circle, where people can sit on 4 sides of the room, or where the seating furniture can be on 3 sides of the room and an entertainment unit on the fourth side, Sometimes spaces slightly smaller than this if designed well can work, but we would need to look at the design of the floor plan for you and advise.
Dining room
Clearly the dining room is likely to have the same width as the lounge room and if you want a table and say 6 chairs for your dining room furniture, you will need a space that is a minimum of 2.4m by the width of the room, perhaps 3.6 – 4 metres.
So what is really required for a living/dining room area that will work for furnishing correctly is approximately 6m plus in length and a room width of say 3.6m. Once again we like more space and clearly bigger will always be better. When you get the floor plan right you can live in the property long term. If your property is an investment your tenants will stay longer, because it is hard for them to find anything that is better and in addition they will likely pay a higher rent.
An example of what spaces would look like with similar square metres but workable furnishing layouts and spaces that just don’t work is below. The slightly smaller 6m x 4m layout provides adequate circulation space around the lounge and dining furniture, as well as easy access to the balcony/terrace. The slightly larger 5m x 5m square living area is actually too wide and too short meaning there will be no circulation space around the dining furniture. Whilst this might look good on plan there is probably only as little as 2ocm or 8 inches in the old language of space around the dining room table and that is without the dining room chairs pulled out or in use which would require them to be further out from the edge of the table. Of course you can use smaller furniture to make any space work. But that would accommodate fewer people and certainly would not work if you would like to entertain. You must be able to do this if you want to live long term in any residence, and that applies equally for tenants or if it is your own home.
In “The Age” article attached they suggest a living space of a minimum of 10m2 or 12m2 depending on apartment size. We think that this area is totally inadequate and will not work to accommodate real size lounge and dining room furniture. We say that space needs to be a minimum of just under 22m2 and we would like 24-25m2 for the combined living/dining space. One bedroom apartments can have slightly smaller living spaces, but not that much smaller if they are to work well.
I think you would agree that many properties that you look at appear to be poorly planned especially from a room size and layout point of view. At Specific Property we only recommend properties that meet the criteria that we set for safer residential investing. Notwithstanding that we need to point out that the measurements we are recommending are meant as a general guide only to help you in your search. We often find that something smaller, well designed will out perform a larger poorly designed property. Why not let us help you select your next property in Melbourne or Brisbane the two markets that we are active in.
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