Brit Reacts to BRITISH vs AMERICAN Homes 

My first apartment is 750 sq feet. My current house is 4400 sq feet. 4 bed, 3 bath, quarter acre lot, 1 office, 1 gaming room, 2 living room, 1 dining room, 1400 sq feet basement that is not built yet. Most people around Colorado house are about 1800 sq feet, 2-3 bedroom, 1 living room, 2 bathroom, 2 car garage.

It depends on where you live, as to where your mailbox is. Some houses have letterboxes just like y'all do, some have mailboxes at the end of the driveway, some neighborhoods and apartment complexes have communal mailboxes in a central location, sometimes in the country there will be a group of mailboxes at the mouth of the holler, and sometimes (like me) your mailbox is attached to the outside wall, just outside of your front door.

The mailbox being in a different location is only due the way their housing community is set up. Single family homes normally have a mailbox outside of the home, but I have relatives that have their mail also at the beginning of their housing community. The en suite with no door thing sounds like an architect made that decision and who needs privacy if you are married...lol.

They are living in a unique place, so some of what they show and say isn't common. Being in Las Vegas, in what appears to be a fairly new housing development, they aren't showing what is typical. You don't put bones, etc. in the garbage disposal. It's meant for small scraps. Large stuff you'd just throw in the garbage. In my entire life, whether it's family, friends or anyone else's home I've been in, NOT once have I seen any bathroom without a door. Some newer housing developments have gone with the community mail area, where all the boxes are, and each house has a key to open their box. But most people have a mail box at their home.

The kitchen sink drain thing is uncommon in the US because around 75% of homes have dishwashers. Most people have the dish drying racks next to the sink.

I was a real estate agent in St. Louis, Missouri for 6 years and don’t remember ever seeing a bathroom without a door. It is possible that there are homes without doors to the bathroom, but I would not call that normal at all. Also, where you get your mail depends on the community you live in. My property at the lake has the mailboxes by the office in the gated community. My dad’s house in the city has the mailbox hanging just outside the front door. My home just outside the city the mailbox is where my front yard meets the street.

You can get that style of sink with drying rack but it’s really outdated most houses in the 50’s up had that style of kitchen sink with the pinkish color tiles etc

In older communities, where houses are both closer together and more near the sidewalk, the mailman CAN walk a normal route. In some areas the houses are both far from the neighbors and from the street. This means that the mailman will have to walk huge distances between houses. In those cases you have a mailbox on a pole at the edge of your property and at the street. In this way the mailman drives a little truck delivering (and picking up mail) into those mailboxes at the street. Now many new housing developments believe that those street mailboxes are unsightly. In some new areas where they have smaller houses, a forest of mailboxes on poles is quite ugly. So now those new communities will have a little oasis of mailboxes (usually under cover and maybe a picnic table). They might look like small high-school book lockers. The mailman comes with a truck and a "master key" to open the individual mail boxes and distribute the mail (and packages) into "locked" boxes. Each "oasis" might have boxes for 20-30 houses or more. Some communities may have several....situated every 2 to 3 streets. In California my sister's each have their community mail boxes just around the corner. My son here in Florida has their's a block away.

My husband was born in England but his family moved to the States when he was a young boy. His father told me their house in Walton could fit in their current 2-car garage! And they had a family of seven!!

They live in a upper middle class house, it is not a mansion, it is in a gated community hence the mailbox situation. That bathroom is in the privacy of their own bedroom and it is not shared by the rest of the house, because they have many other bathrooms people can use. The ensuite toilet is in it's own closed off room it is not open for everyone to see.

I have two full bathrooms in my house for just me! I have a door to my bathroom. She is speaking about her home design. My mailbox in in front of my house, if you live in the city, your mailbox is on the side of your house. So, they are speaking about their home and area.

Texas here. We have 4 bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms. We have 2 primary bedrooms. Our bedroom is 20'X15'. Our bathroom has seperate tub and shower. Our toilet closet has a door. We have 2 acres of property. We have a huge swimming pool. A nice size vegetable garden. A screened in porch off our bedroom. We have a lot of grass and room to run 🥰 I've lived in Spain and Germany. It was soooo hard to get used to the small houses and the washer in the kitchen when we lived in Spain 🥴

I live in Seattle, where most of the new construction is townhouses. Seattle has a lot of hills and ravines, and the best, flattest land has long since been built on, so for the most part the builders are buying patches of land and building tall townhouses with very small footprints. (If you look at the blueprints, the size of one floor is really small.) But when my husband and I were house-hunting back in 2010, *all* the townhouses we looked at were at least 3 stories tall, and one was 4; the builders want to give you a decent amount of floor space, but because of the lack of land, the only way to do that now is to either put only one house on the plot, and try to get millions for it, or put a bunch of townhouses on it crammed together, and build *up.* Our place is 3 stories, with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. On our first floor (ground floor to you) we have a 1-car garage (again, tiny footprint, there's no room for a standard 2-car garage) plus a bedroom and bathroon (in the back) and a hallway from the front door to the back. There's also a staircase leading up to the 2nd floor, which is where the kitchen, dining area, pantry :) and a half bath are. Another staircase and there are 2 bedrooms, the biggest bathroom in between them, and a hallway (the bathroom is behind the hallway; the only doors to the bathroom are on either side, to the 2 bedrooms) and on one side of the hallway, opposite the stair side, is a closet with our washer and dryer. We have a tiny back yard, with a fence, that's about the size of our small living room. Our place is worth about half a million dollars, but note that a lot of the value is because we're in Seattle; the same amount of space/rooms would go for half as much, or even less, in a more rural area, where the cost of living is lower, and the prospects of getting a good job are correspondingly low. And note that the "American houses" they're showing photos of are ridiculously huge even for the US. There are a lot of houses like that, yes, but 1) you have to be at least upper-middle class to afford one, and most houses and townhouses and such are smaller. Unfortunately, it's more profitable for builders to build luxury houses, so they build a lot of them. Which is why we have so many homeless people, because it's just not profitable to build cheaper housing, and when a local government wants to subsidize housing, too many people either scream "Communism!!!!" or gripe that they don't want "those kinds of people" in their neighborhood. Then they turn around and complain about the homeless problem, because they're stupid and selfish. [sigh/shrug] Older houses tend to be smaller, and have fewer bathrooms and smaller garages. And really old houses will often have detached garages, where the garage is a separate building, often at the back of the property, opening onto an alley, back when there were alleys. Mailboxes -- this is another more recent thing. Through most of the 20th century, single-family houses had individual mailboxes. Sometimes they were on a post out at the road (which it sounds like is what you were thinking of; that was originally a rural thing, where the house might be a quarter or half mile back from the road), and sometimes they were attached to the wall right next to the front door. That's the kind we always had when I was growing up. (I'm 60 now, for reference.) Sometimes you even find the kind set into the front door, where the letters get shoved through and land on the floor in front of the door, like in your country, but that's rare in my experience. More recently, though, some people started complaining that the Postal Service was costing too much, that it had to be made more efficient. One of the changes they made for a short time was to have the mailbox-on-a-post right up at the street even for suburban houses, so the letter carrier could just drive down the street, stopping to fill boxes without getting out of their jeep. The house we moved into when I was 13 was just a few years old, and had one of those boxes. That wasn't enough, though, so someone came up with the idea of having (a lot of) newly constructed stand-alone houses built with gang mailboxes in a central location. Apartments had these kinds of mailboxes for ages, but now newer (since the 90s or so) houses have them too. It's more efficient for the Post Office because the letter carrier can just park next to the gang mailbox and fill a whole neighborhood's worth of mailboxes right there, rather than having to drive around and go to each house. It *is* faster for them, but it kind of sucks for the residents, especially if you live someplace where it gets snowy and icy; my mom in Reno (Nevada) can't get her own mail anymore, and only gets mail when my brother goes out to check the box. Central heating and air conditioning is nice, but in all seriousness, everyone (middle class and up) constantly having the heat or the A/C running for decades is a serious contributor to global warming. :/ Here in Seattle, newer construction has small heaters in the walls of each room rather than central heating, so you don't *have* to heat your whole house if you're going to be in the livingroom watching TV for three hours. And I've gotten into the habit of just pulling a blanket over my lap of I'm chilly, or putting on a sweater *and* the blanket if it's really cold, before I turn up the heat. We don't have A/C -- most houses in Seattle don't, although newer houses have it more and more because, again, global warming [sigh] -- but we have fans we run when it gets uncomfortably warm. It's a lot better to run a fan pointed at your face than to cool your whole house. Re: back yards, you can *make* it a proper garden if you want. I really don't see what the issue is there. [shrug] About the size, in the mid-20th century, when the population was booming and the suburbs were exploding and land was cheap, houses tended to have much bigger yards. Land is more expensive now, especially in major metro areas, and it's more profitable for the builders to put a bigger house on a lot of a certain size, and sell it for a million dollars, than to put a small house on and leave a huge yard/garden area but only sell it for half a million or less. You can *get* houses with huge yards -- SF writer John Scalzi bought a huge house in rural Ohio like 20 years ago, and his huge house came with about 5 acres of yard, because rural Ohio -- but you have to be 1) fairly wealthy to afford that, even in rural Ohio, and 2) able to do your work in a rural area far from major metro areas, which most people making that kind of money can't. Carpet vs. flooring, that's just a matter of fads and fashions. [shrug] When I was a kid, houses that were all carpeted except for the bathroom were common. My grandparents' house they bought in like '69 had linoleum in the kitchen/family room, and the 2nd bathroom, but everything else, including the bathroom off their bedroom, had carpet. Fully carpeted bathrooms were "in" for a while, but people figured out the problem with that in a decade or so -- our hall bathroom, which 3 or 4 people were using for a while, had actual mushrooms growing out of the carpet for a while, LOL! Too much humidity. :P My mom pulled out the carpet and got flooring; much better for bathrooms. But it's just about what's trendy. In 10 or 20 years, everyone will want carpet again, and round and round we'll go. It's like the whole "open plan" or "greatroom" thing -- it's popular now, has been for a generation or two, but people are figuring out that it's expensive to heat and cool these huge spaces, plus it's bad for the environment to heat and cool huge spaces. Eventually most of the new construction will have more closed spaces and smaller rooms, I predict.

They live in Vegas where it gets to 120.f....the house stays cooler with hard wood because carpeting holds the heat.and doesn't let the floor. Breathe

I live in a small town in Utah, and my house has a front yard mailbox. The next town which is seven miles away, has communal mailboxes, and those are crap. It also has carper, thankfully. Wood floors only became a thing here, about 20 years ago. Thanks for your video.

u are right about mailbox, but some different areas

Most detached homes have either a personal mailbox at the end of the driveway or attached to the house beside the front door.

The toilet has its own room in the ensuite...

Most mailboxes are at the end of the driveway or at the doorway area

Many of the comments here are also not taking into account the differences of where you live in the US. What is a "middle class" home in California is very different from what is a "middle class" home in central Illinois where I live. I live alone in a middle class home in central Illinois. My house is 1,800 sq ft. plus 1,800 sq ft basement. I have 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms on the main floor, and 1 bedroom with 1 bathroom in the basement. All 3 bedrooms have walk in closets. I could have easily put 3 bedrooms on the main floor, but I went for less but bigger rooms instead knowing I was going to build a bedroom downstairs in the basement. My garage is a 3 car garage with just over 1,000 sq ft. I also have 14 acres of land next to a pond. I built the house in 2003 for approximately $190K. And yes, all of the bathrooms have doors, and all of the houses in the neighborhood have mailboxes at the end of their driveways near the house. 🙂 Oh, I also see some people exclaiming that American garages are not bigger than UK homes. That is not what he said in the video. The graphic he displayed clearly was comparing the size of the average American garage to a UK apartment (flat), not a UK home.

Living in Florida now and our house is 1982 square feet, 3 bed 3 full bathrooms, eat in kitchen, living room/dining room open to the kitchen. Garage doesn’t get included into sq/ft calculations or porches/lanai etc…they aren’t climate controlled living space and therefore not taxable as living space, even though we use them for everyday living space.

We buy a plastic or covered metal drain rack with designated spots for cups, plates, silverware, etc. It comes with a mat underneath that catches the drained water. I live alone in a 2 bedroom townhouse. My 2nd bedroom is my closet. I have a full bathroom upstairs & a half bath downstairs for guests. My empty-nester parents (married 47 years) live in a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath ranch style home in about an acre of land (hard to find in the city) with a full finished basement.

This is not a typical US house. But, then again, I live deep in the northern woods. My shack is a 735 sq. former State Forest Ranger dormitory trailer home. So my place isn't typical either. But I bought my home and land outright after saving for 10 years, and I have my own septic, water well, and battery back-up power. Our country is full of lots of types of homes.

Much like I’m sure it is the UK, in the US house size, layout and design can be very different depending on where you live. In most cities we have a mail slot in the DOOR like the UK. In more suburban or rural areas you’ll find a box at the front of the drive. I believe the cluster mailboxes are more for apt blocks or newer subdivisions.

3 bathroom in my current home, 3 bathrooms previous home, 2 bathrooms first home.

Style, size, price, location of mailbox all differ depending on where you live in the U.S. I live in an area that's still somewhat rural on 7.5 acres. My trailer house is around 1/2 a mile from the road so my mailbox is on a post out by the road just like all of the homes in my area..unless it's one of the 2 apartment buildings or a trailer park and even a small subdivision. Those have an area where all of the small mailboxes are grouped together and you need a key to open your individual box. Cleaning a rug is easier than properly cleaning wall to wall carpet. My trailer originally had carpet in the living room. Vacuumed religiously and even steam cleaned it every couple of months. When we pulled it out you know what we found? A thick layer of dirt that neither the vacuum nor steam cleaner had touched through the layers of carpet and padding. It's ridiculous..especially if you have children or pets who are always bound to have an accident sooner or later.

An on-suite is already behind the bedroom door so it doesn’t need an additional door. Only the person/ people who live in the bedroom that has the on-suite use that bathroom.

We have 4 bathrooms (all with doors, I have never seen a bathroom without a door and maybe 2 or 3 en suites without a door)... In pennsylvania the only time you would have a mailbox at a common area would be if it was a gated development or something like that, maybe... ive only seen it once in another state

These people are throwing hardcore shade 😆 they got jokes

That house is 1.2-1.5Mil in Northern California

No because those.homes have two drawer dishwasher and usually another in the butlers pantry

These 2 Brits threw y'all under the bus! Shame on them. Don't let them back in 🤣

They live.in a complex in an area of many complexes. It's faster.to stop at.one wall of.mailboxes then drive.house to.house

We know that people in the UK don't live in little houses like the one that they showed. Their information is about their area and home. In America, we have some of everything. I have two sinks, not sure what she is talking about.

They live in a sub division, that's why the mail is a tad wacked. Also where am now in Ohio. Whe west is worse about that, really. Here in Ohio mail came to the door when I lived in Columbus, Ohio. And it comes to the mailbox next to the street Not everything, in the disposal. But anything soft to firm but shy of hard. So, no nut shells, a semi-petrified burrito remnant you forgot in the back of the fridge? NP. No bones, but egg shells are ok, not advisable to do habitually (besides, they make great compost for the garden). We are all across the board here w/ flooring. Many rentals these days tend toward tile/linoleum, hardwood floors etc.... because in many states landlords are required to clean the carpets and paint the walls between tenants.

4 Beds 3 Baths 2800sq ft California!!!My mailbox is at the end of our driveway. Right in front of house ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The UK drainage platform is outdated in American kitchens. We have more kitchen space in the US and most US kitchens have large double sinks , a dishwasher, and an area to drain dishes. The video is misleading, of course we have bathroom doors. I don't know what the woman is talking about.

There's no reason to bulk buy if it's only 1 or 2 people in the house that other is for families, so you can save quiet a bit of money.

Technical true about Costco but if you are having a big party and you have a lot of people Costco is usually the best place to go 😊

It depends when the house was built where the mailbox is. Mine is on the house.

I have to lap my block at least 5 times for a spot. You don't pay for parking only if you are in a luxary building. Otherwise its every man for themselves

The mail box information is not correct. Most homes have the letterbox in the door. In rural or some suburban areas in the US have external mailboxes because the homes are spread out. It all depends where in the US you live.

I think we're a very eclectic country, not much here looked familiar, I'm typical suburban upper Midwest and I don't think that house was typical, enjoyed the video and commentary, thank you

Never put a banana in a garbage disposal!!

2164 is just the house size it doesn't include the property

They really did the UK wrong with some of the pics they chose..lol...I am American and let me tell you this is a bigger upper middle class home. My home is nowhere near this big but kind of has a similar open plan layout. This house is just gorgeous though....but for me its to big...more space ...more to have to clean!

I’m positive UK homes are bigger than our garages. That’s silly

I gave you a follow just for the “tree house” comment. 😂

Older American here. I live in southern New Mexico, in what is often called the high desert. We have a house with a climate controlled system similar to what was shown in your video. You don't turn the system off when you aren't in the house, you just raise or lower your temperature setting on your thermostat when you aren't going to be home. It isn't efficient to have to drastically raise or lower the temperature. You want to let the system keep the house at a constant temperature. Last summer it reached 132°F [55°C] in our back yard. We had well over 44 days of consecutive 100°F [38°C] days last year. It was a very comfortable 74°F / 23°C inside the house. At times, even on extremely hot days, a setting of 74°F was just a bit too cold. The cooling or heating system doesn't run constantly, it turns itself on & off occasionally, throughout the day, to maintain the selected temperature. You shouldn't have to come in & heat up or cool down the house. You simply set the thermostat to heat or cool, set your desired temperature & forget about. It is pretty efficient & isn't really very expensive to run on either setting because it isn't always blowing hot or cold air. You can also set the thermostat to always be circulating air throughout the house. The house shown, in my opinion, isn't close to an "average" American home. It looks to be fairly new & well above the average middle income home.

3000 sq ft here in Texas!

Most of the home blueprints they are showing are still not typical of most American homes. They don't always have garages but just driveways. We don't have a garage but a driveway long enough to park 2 cars. Otherwise, you park on the street or in the yard beside the driveway. Some have detached garages that are several feet away from their house but are still large enough for two cars. Some build a room over their garage for storage or to make into a small apartment to rent out or it acts as space for when you have company stay over. They have their privacy but are still on your property. Our home is about 1500 sq ft with 3 bedrooms/1 bathroom. We have space to add an additional bathroom but just never did. The mail for them is in a community location that is not typical of mail delivery and more in line with apartment compartments. That's a feature of their specific neighborhood and maybe others around the country but the norm. Most neighborhoods have mail carriers that go door to door. Apartments/condos might have that central location for mail pickup so you would have a key but packages would still be delivered to your door. If that's a security issue, then you'd have to actually go to the post office to retrieve them. We don't have dish drainers built into the sink construction. We have drainers that sit on the counter beside the sink so you can get a larger single sink or double sinks. The en suite will not have a door necessarily because you're in the privacy of your bedroom so you're not worried about anyone just walking in on you. In those situations, the toilet is in it's own room which we call a water closet which will have a door for more privacy.

My house has 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. It is 5,300 sq ft.

3 bathroons

It's joke in US it's outhouse or shed

Parking? I have parking for 5 p9ickup trucks 25 ft long and 4 motorcycles

You always have a bathroom door. They don't know what there talking about.

my mobile home is 15 years old and i have over 2000 Sqft.

That video is not a very good representation of us/uk home differences. Their choices of stock videos needs work. It would have been better to show real examples of their home (like they did with their pantry vid). I liked your reaction, though.

Bunch of crap. This couple is very rich and that is NOT, NOT a common home !!!!

2 bathrooms,

Open plan is not the majority. 1.5-2 baths is the common, not 3+. They were looking at mansions. My house has two because it was an upper/lower apt house from the 50's until 2018, but the upstairs one isn't even connected. Street parking is in the cities, often they don't have a driveway in the city. And many houses do not have a garage and even fewer have built in garages. And their mail situation is bizarre, I have NEVER heard of that anywhere except in a trailer park. Most large communities the mail box is attached to the house, rural areas they have the mailbox at the road. Where I live we don't have house to house mail delivery so we get our mail out of the post office box at the post office. Photo of my sink sent on ig.

If you want it to look like a garden she will have.to get her hands dirty, she doesn't look the type

This is a beautiful house at the lower end of the upper class price range. No middle class family could afford this house in the US.