When Julia and Gregg Malakoff were looking for a home, it wasn’t so much a particular style of layout they needed for their growing family. What was most important to them was the neighborhood. The rest of the house was just details that could be worked with, adjusted or remodeled.
The home the Malakoffs, who have four children now ranging in age from 2 to 11, purchased three years ago was a 20-year-old, four-bedroom colonial in the Franklin Farm section of Fairfax County.
“Franklin Farm is pretty much all colonials,” said Julia Malakoff. “We knew we wanted a big, finished basement. We knew we wanted to be on a cul-de-sac. A busy street would have been a deal-breaker. The down side is, we still don’t have enough bedrooms for everyone — two of the kids share — and we have a small garage and no mudroom. And there is a pond in our back yard, but we had it fenced off after we moved in.”
In this era of great rooms, media rooms and custom-designed floor plans for family living, there are still a few house features that universally appeal to families with young children. Traditional layouts with bedrooms all on one floor and dedicated “kid” space such as a basement playroom usually top a family’s must-have list, says Justine Van Engen, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker in Northern Virginia.
“Families tend to want certain rooms, and they have a checklist of them whether or not they need them,” says Van Engen. “A center hall is going to be appealing because it has this standard appeal of ‘that’s what a family lives in,’ plus it provides safety and noise control. They also tend to want live in a neighborhood with sidewalks, because they associate that with safety and community, even if they don’t end up walking that many places.”
The things that can kill a deal? Kids’ rooms that are far from parents’ rooms and perceived hazards such as open risers on stairs, decks and pools, says Van Engen.
Meanwhile, Van Engen and her husband are parents of three children ages 3 to 12. They have moved several times in the last dozen years. They have lived in everything from a condo and a town house to a center-hall colonial and a house on six acres with a pool, and now, a contemporary with an unusual floor plan.
“People often think of putting up gates to childproof a house, but it is very hard to childproof your deck,” said Van Engen. “And a pool may be lovely to look at, but for a family with young children, you might as well tell them there is an open sewer in the yard.”
Alicia and Jonathan Leonard, Reston residents who have two sons, ages 6 and 8, bought a compact ranch house with a pool before their children were born. They are still there, and have learned to work with what they have, hazards included.
“When we bought this house, we were going to live here for five years,” said Alicia Leonard. “If I had to do it again, I probably wouldn’t have bought a house with a pool, but kids weren’t in the picture then. We just had to teach them and watch them carefully; the younger one fell in pretty much once a season.”
