If we were to move, for example to Denver or Austin, we would immediately be able to afford something ridiculous. In either place if you're in the suburbs and you're looking to spend, say, $500-600K, you can find a 3700 sf beautiful place.
But... What do we need that for? A portion of it, of course, is that having the kids dictates a certain minimum number of bedrooms and bathrooms... And then having a dedicated office space would be ideal because I expect I'll be working from home for the foreseeable future--even post-COVID. But there's a limit.
We're in 1200 sf now, and that is clearly too small. But do I really want to furnish 3700 sf? Do I really want to clean 3700 sf? Do I really think there will be rooms that won't just sit basically unused (especially since we'll only have the kids 3-4 months of the year)?
Nah... While I'd take 3500+ if the right house at the right price happened along, a much more comfortable number would be 2500-3000... That's big enough to be roomy without being ridiculous. And probably wouldn't blow the budget straight to hell... Saving $100K+ in purchase price would improve our quality of life a hell of a lot more than that extra square footage...
