Choosing which home each household takes

Stairs, and thinking ten years ahead

This is the question that decides most family allocations, and the mistake is to answer it for today rather than for the years you will be there.

A parent who manages a flight of stairs comfortably at 68 may not at 78. If the family's plan is that everybody stays put, the household with the oldest members should take the home with the fewest steps between the street and the bed. That means checking the whole path: the kerb, the path to the door, the threshold, and the stairs inside the home as well as those leading up to it.

Look for a bedroom and a full bathroom on the entry level, wide doorways, and a shower that can be entered without a step. These features are much easier to have from the start than to add later, and in a strata building some changes involve the strata rather than just you.

How sound actually behaves

Two homes stacked one above the other share a floor. Footsteps, dropped objects and furniture being moved travel downward, and children upstairs are audible in a way that conversation is not. Two homes side by side share a wall, which carries voices and televisions but not footsteps.

Which arrangement suits depends on the households. A young family above a grandparent who wakes easily is the combination we would think hardest about. The same family beside that grandparent, with a wall between, is usually a calmer arrangement.

Ask which rooms in each home sit against the shared wall or above the shared floor. A layout that puts two living rooms back to back is easier to live with than one that puts a living room above a bedroom, and in a small building the layouts are usually mirrored rather than identical, so the answer differs from home to home.

Visit at a realistic time. A viewing at eleven on a Tuesday morning tells you very little about a building at seven on a weekday evening. If the building is finished and occupied, ask to come back in the evening. If it is not finished, go and stand on the street at that hour anyway, because the traffic and the neighbourhood noise are the same either way.

• Stacked homes: footsteps and impact sound travel downward
• Side by side homes: voices and televisions travel through the shared wall
• Visit in the evening, not only at a quiet time of day
• Ask which rooms sit above and below the bedrooms
• Check where the parking area and the bin store sit relative to each home

Outdoor space, parking and storage

In a multiplex, outdoor space is usually attached to particular homes rather than shared equally. One home gets the garden, another gets a rooftop terrace, a third gets a balcony. If both households care about outdoor space, find out what is attached to which home before you have an emotional conversation about who deserves the garden.

Parking and storage need the same care, and there is a trap here. A parking space can be owned as part of your home, or allocated to you by the strata, and the two are not the same. An allocated space can be reallocated. If parking matters to your household, ask specifically which arrangement applies and get the answer in writing.

Think about the practical geometry as well. Which door do you carry shopping through, and how far is it from where the car sits? Where do bicycles and a pram live? For a household with small children or a family member who moves slowly, twenty extra metres between the car and the door is a bigger factor than the size of the second bedroom.

Deciding, and writing it down

Settle the allocation before offers go in. Once one household has emotionally moved into a particular home, changing the plan feels like a loss rather than an adjustment.

We suggest a short written note between the households covering four things: which home each takes, why, what happens if that home is no longer available, and what happens if one household later wants to swap. It does not need a lawyer. It needs to exist, because families remember these conversations differently and the written version stops a small misunderstanding growing.

One more piece of advice, offered from watching a number of these purchases: let the constraint decide rather than the preference. If somebody needs the ground floor, that settles the ground floor and everybody else chooses from what is left. Families who allocate by need first and preference second tend to be content with the outcome. Families who negotiate preference first usually end up relitigating it.

The things buyers notice only after they move in

Some features of a home are invisible at a viewing and obvious within a fortnight of living there. They are worth checking deliberately, because in a family purchase you are choosing for two households at once.

Light, at the hours you are actually home. A home that is bright at a Saturday viewing can be dim at six on a weekday in November, and that matters more to a household that is home all day than to one that is not. Ask which direction the main windows face and think about who lives there.

The route in, with your hands full. Where the car sits, how many steps to the door, whether there is anywhere to put shopping down while you find keys. This is the single most repeated action in a home and almost nobody tests it at a viewing.

Where noise comes from inside the building: which room sits above each bedroom, where the shared entry is, and whether a bin store or a parking area sits under a bedroom window. And storage, which every household underestimates. A home with nowhere to put a pram, a set of winter tyres and a vacuum cleaner is a home with those things in the hallway.

Think about visitors too, because in a family purchase the two households will have people arriving constantly. Where does a visitor park, and is there anywhere for them to stand out of the rain while they wait for someone to answer the door? A building where guests block the shared entry is a building where the two households irritate each other by accident.

Finally, look at the home in the season you like least. A garden that is lovely in July can be permanently wet in January, and a west facing living room that is bright in spring can be uncomfortably hot in August. Neither of those is a reason not to buy. Both are reasons to know in advance which home in the building carries which trade-off.

Take photographs of both homes while you are there, from the same positions, and look at them a week later away from the sales material. Families comparing two homes in the same building often find that the one they remember as brighter was simply the one they saw second, after their eyes had adjusted to the first.

• Light at the hours you are actually home, not at viewing time
• The route from the car to the door with your hands full
• Which room sits directly above each bedroom
• Where the bins and the parking area sit relative to the windows
• Somewhere to put a pram, a bicycle and a vacuum cleaner

Questions buyers ask

More in Buying With Family

• Splitting the costsWho pays what each month, and how to keep it fair over years
• Two homes or oneThe structural decision that everything else follows from
• How title is heldTenants in common, joint tenancy, unequal shares and survivorship

Also worth reading

• Multi-generational living
• Living in a multiplex