Survey: "Must haves" for a granny flat

Hello everyone,

we want to build a house with a separate ground-floor apartment, which will initially be occupied by my parents and rented out later. Exactly for this reason, besides personal preferences, we also want to keep the criteria for good rental potential in mind. Since we probably cannot fit everything in terms of space, I would be interested to know what your priorities are. What is most important to you, what would you absolutely not want to do without?

I look forward to you participating in my survey.

Best regards, Jim

My parents also have a secondary apartment that we lived in for a short time. Unfortunately, both they themselves and the architect paid little attention to the apartment, so it is somewhat awkwardly laid out. It has a separate entrance, which I think is great; however, it is located on the side of the house, and there is no direct entrance area, so you practically stand right in the living/dining area. Not to mention the heat loss in winter, this is uncomfortable. If you are planning as if, for example, you wanted to move in there in 20 years, then it should turn out to be a nice apartment. Some questions are also more like "Glaubenskriege," such as whether an open kitchen or shower/bathtub, and are difficult to answer uniformly. How big should the apartment be? I personally would find a guest WC nice if space allows it. A small storage area near the kitchen would be good, also to store a vacuum cleaner and so on, water container, and some food. A cellar would also be important, since depending on the location, bicycles, car tires, and such might also be present. We currently have no storage room, and I miss this possibility very much. A guest WC is nice to have but not a must.

Maybe you should also mention whether multiple answers are desired or if only the favorite should be named.

Yes, multiple answers are possible. However, it doesn't help if all 5 options are selected :rolleyes:.

The apartment is about 80sqm in size, possible floor plans have already been discussed here:

Since the stairwell probably has a similar temperature to the rest of the house, an entrance area in the ground floor apartment would be rather secondary from an energy perspective.

By the way, we are not planning the apartment as if we would live in it later. The idea is indeed that we might move into it ourselves in old age, if the upper two floors become too large for us.

Thanks for voting!

In the spacious entrance area, I would mention that in your case it is more a question of wardrobe yes or no.

Otherwise, I would never move into an apartment where the owner lives in the same house.

That's true. Our current landlords live just next door and are one of the reasons why we are building ourselves.

A storage room would be important to me, a guest toilet, at least if you have child(ren). A utility room is nice to have, but I can also do laundry in the basement.