Traditionally, our goal as homeowners is to start off small in a college dorm or starter apartment and work hard to get a bigger home in which to settle and raise a family, but what happens when your family is off building lives of their own and you’re stuck with a home that is much too large for one or two people? Is it time to downsize? Well, that depends on you.
For many people, downsizing is about coming to the realization that there is just too much house for the number of people who live in it or the maintenance on the home has become overwhelming. Ask yourself these simple questions to determine if your home preferences have changed:
Does Size Matter?
You’ve worked hard to get where you are and you enjoy the bigger and better things in life to prove it. If this sounds like you, moving into a smaller home may just leave a bad taste in your mouth. The only remedy for this is to find a smaller home that still has the luxury you require for your lifestyle.
For example, the Eloro is one of London Bay Homes’ luxury lakeside villa homes that combines the ease of a 3,380 A/C square foot home with the grand design and architecture of a 6,000+ square foot single family estate home. Did we mention it still has high ceilings for an expansive feel and a two car garage for storage? You get all of the luxury and eliminate the unused space found in your larger home.
Will You Miss the Space?
The biggest difference, literally, is the space. Larger homes have larger rooms, more rooms, or both. Sometimes those rooms host family members and other times they are set up for entertainment, such as the case with game rooms, theatre rooms, etc. If your desired lifestyle doesn’t include the need for this additional space, why bother with the added cleaning and utility costs?
Which brings us to the furniture. By now, you’ve accumulated all of the furniture needed to fill that big house and may have grown attached to all of it. If you are ready to let go of some of that furniture for a smaller home, imagine all of the furniture just disappeared. Which pieces would you replace? The answer to that question is the furniture you should keep when moving to your smaller home. Chances are you’ll find there are a few statement pieces that will make the smaller home just as inviting as your estate home, something like the eye-catching chandelier found in the Dining Room of the Girona model (pictured above) or a special family heirloom that has been handed down from one generation to the next.
Will a Smaller Home Mean Less Maintenance?
Yes. It’s that simple. Larger homes inevitably bring larger maintenance bills, so eradicating half the space will largely impact the home’s maintenance. In addition, there are communities, like Mediterra, that offer maintenance-free neighborhoods to put your mind at ease.
Cabreo and Lucarno, two luxury maintenance-free villa neighborhoods in Mediterra, offer a lock-and-leave lifestyle with landscape maintenance and lawn care provided through the homeowners association. London Bay Homes, the chosen home builder for the two neighborhoods, also offers home watch services to ensure every inch of the inside and outside of your home is well cared for in your absence.
How Small Are You Willing to Go?
Downsizing your luxury home doesn’t mean you have to live in a 700 square foot apartment. Review the dimensions of your current home and figure out how much space you are willing to give up. How many bedrooms have been left unused? Do you only seem to drift to one couch amidst the expansive Great Room? Calculating what space is unnecessary/unused will give you an idea as to how small you can go in your new home.
Evaluating the answers to these questions will reveal whether or not downsizing, or resizing, your home is the right move for you (pun intended). For those ready to trim away the excess space, homes in Cabreo and Lucarno range from 2,800 A/C square feet to about 4,000 A/C square feet, providing plenty of room to be comfortable when downsizing from your much larger home.
View our villa homes in Cabreo and Lucarno to see which one suits you.
