I am so happy to have come across this post! I purchased a condo 4 years ago and am now selling it. I live on the 3rd floor (1 bedroom) however the unit below me is considered one unit and is a 2 floor unit (2 bedrooms). My downstairs neighbor and I started off rocky and since then she's been constantly complaining about excessive noise from my unit. Stomping, slamming doors, using appliances etc in the late hours of the night. It's come to the point where she's escalating to the HOA BOD- however i'm also now selling my unit because I purchased a single family home in a new development and in order to save and put myself out of the misery of living with my neighbor will just live elsewhere while waiting for the new house to be built. If I had known what I know now I would not have opted to purchase a condo on the 3rd floor (in a 4 floor building). 1) Living on the 3rd floor I received noise complaints from my neighbor below me while I also had to endure noise from the person above me. (Being the understanding neighbor that I was I never once complained to the person above me since they have children so I opted for earplugs instead). Mind you I live in a one bedroom and so I never purposely tried to create noise but some things are inevitable like having to walk to my bathroom. I refuse to tiptoe in my own house but I assure you i'm not stomping i'm walking regularly! 2) As many people mentioned you cannot pick your neighbors! I'm going to be honest my community is filled with some downright nasty neighbors. If it's not me dealing with my crazy neighbor there's constantly complaints and random letters on our community corkboard. People complaining about how people park, how people throw away trash, how long the water is shut off for construction. People literally use a notice as a form of communication and will write on it and form conversations on that one piece of paper. 3) Your condo might look/seem nice now but you never know what it'll look like 20-30 years from now. Although i've only lived in my place for 4 years I have to say that I was shocked at the lack of care for the building. My boyfriend got stuck in the elevator once for an hour with a cancer patient in our building on a very hot day and there is barely any ventilation in the elevator and no air conditioning! I later learned from a neighbor that our elevator is the wrong type of elevator for our building. Additionally I think the materials used for our building are just downright poor. I can hear the person in the unit above me snoring. I can't tell the person above me to stop snoring, but that's just to show how it could be a mix of bad materials. At least with an apartment you know it's a somewhat temporary situation.. if you hate it you could potentially move elsewhere with not much risk. Honestly before purchasing my single family home I even considered a townhouse as an upgrade to my condo. I figured that sharing sidewalls with individuals is a lot less worse than sharing floors/ceilings which I think are just terrible and usually amplify noise. At the end of the day i'm happy to be moving away from this situation and moving to a place where I can run the dishwasher and use the overnight cycle at night without someone berating me! It came to the point where my neighbor's requests were aggressive and rude and made me feel uncomfortable living in my own condo.

I like Bungalow #2. - I would add a full bath upstairs. -I would add a "Laundry shoot" upstairs. -the upstairs can be used now by your Husband and later by a teenager. My guess is that this setup would be the most expensive to build. I've had a few homes built and I can tell you that no house is perfect. You always find something missing or wrong AFTER you move in. Your wants/needs change over the years. The way you function in your daily life is a very important consideration when you are building. Getting hurt or getting a disease is almost a guarantee in life. When fifty hits, "Mother Nature" takes over, and body parts start giving out, no matter how thin, athletic, and healthy you are/were.... Random thoughts: -split stairs with a landing in between are a smart idea, no matter which plan you choose. -A bedroom with a full bath downstairs is ALWAYS a good idea, no matter what age your are. -Think of how you function in a house. Do you spend MOST of your time downstairs? Are you and/or your DH just daydreaming that you will be upstairs all the time, because you/he likes the idea of a two-story house? -If you go with a two story with all the bedrooms upstairs, do you want your laundry room up or down?...because once I bring the laundry down, I have to check, add softener, dry etc usually several times. If I had a large family living with me I would still have the laundry downstairs, but with a laundry shoot from the upstairs. When you're building you have that custom option. Over the years, I've learned that I don't always live or function like others. Example: I've read a lot of forums when I designed my kitchen. After living in this house for 2 years, I just hated my double oven setup. I had to split the ovens, leaving a counter above each one.... When building, you have to consider your needs and wants, but also re-sale value. Rarely people want to live in a BIG house when they get much older. We will be downsizing in a few years, even though I love this house, and it has a MB on the first floor. It's great that you are asking for advice and hopefully will take your time to examine what is important to YOU in your new home.

I'm taking a different point of view. I was one of seven children--five boys, two girls. There are very few eight bedroom houses out there. We all shared rooms until the older kids started going off to college. When we were little, I shared a room with my older brothers. Once I got a baby sister--eight years younger--I shared a room with her. True, it was a pain in the neck sometimes, having to go to bed and get undressed in my room without turning the lights on because she went to bed earlier than I did, but it did not scar me for life. My take would be that in a few years, your daughter should get her own room. That could happen when your older son goes off to college, or the two boys could share a room, if there's someplace else for the older boy to do his homework, etc., after the little one goes to bed. But I would also look around the house and see if there was any other space that could be used for your office. Maybe 1/3 of the garage, leaving a two car garage? (I think a one car garage just wouldn't fly today.) Or the dining room, or your bedroom? And talk to your kids and see what they say. My cousin had three kids in five years and for a while they all slept in the same room. When she wanted to move the two girls into their own room, they were upset--they didn't want to leave their baby brother all alone at night. So the parents had to work out a schedule to transition them all to the new sleeping arrangement.

I appreciate all the input. There are so many pros and cons to consider. It's helpful to hear all your experiences. I would much prefer a house and get a lawn/yard/snow service, but the costs would be significantly higher. HOA fees are very inexpensive in my area, but there are only a few condo developments to choose from. Most are in a townhouse style, with at least one shared wall, but no upstairs or downstairs neighbors, and they usually have a little bit of a patio area. I am very tired of losing 1.5-2 hours each day to my commute, and especially driving in very bad weather. My DS attends school in the city we commute to (for various reasons, it was a really hard decision) and that factors in as well. When he starts middle school, they start the school day at 7:30 am! I think it would be ridiculous to get him up at 5:30 every day. His social and sports activities are increasing too, so having this place will make all of that significantly easier. I am hoping that eventually my DH will see that it just makes more sense for us to be closer to where the majority of our life activities happen. He is very attached to our property for the privacy/wildlife/hunting/fishing, but there is much more to life.