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"People are so funny about square footage," muses Austin-based interior designer Shannon Eddings, who was raised in Dallas and works with clients in both cities. Many homeowners, she reflects, always want more, more, more - meanwhile, she lives in a cozy (and we all know what that means) 1970s-era starter home she bought almost two decades ago. Three children and one renovation later, she often wonders if the 1,600-square-foot home has reached max capacity. "It filled up fast," she laughs. Moving has crossed her mind for about a decade, she admits. Space is tight, especially now that the kids are older. Still, "we didn't want to move, because we wanted to stay by our friends and neighbors," says Eddings. "And when we looked at other houses, nothing jumped out to us that was worth sacrificing that."
There are lots of considerations that lead people to remain in homes that may no longer fully meet their needs. And that situation is even more common in the current real estate market: It often makes more financial sense to stay put, even when renting. There's a slew of factors keeping people where they are, such as higher mortgage rates, price increases and low inventory of available homes. This moment in the market has been called "the squeeze" - a term that usually refers to how buyers need to squeeze every drop from their budgets to get a house. But it seems fitting, too, for owners remaining in their starter homes longer than expected, because they're frequently squeezed for space.
Market conditions are certainly challenging the long-held idea that the first home you buy is a starter home, not a forever home. According to research from Texas A&M University's Texas Real Estate Research Center, D-FW homeowners owned their properties for a median of five years and three months back in 2019. That increased to six years and nine months in 2025. And as the median age of the first-time homebuyer reaches an all-time high at 40 years old, many of today's buyers will probably move fewer times in their life than the buyers of generations past. Whatever the reason, many homeowners have to figure out how to stay longer in a space initially intended to be more temporary.
"The main reason we remodeled was that we decided to stay put and build our community over having more square feet," says Eddings of her longtime home. She made a modest addition in 2018, bumping the house from 1,250 square feet to 1,650. "What felt bad to us was just how closed-in the kitchen, dining and living room were."
She knocked down the existing garage and created a secondary living space in its place, connecting it to a reconfigured kitchen that felt more open, airy and spacious. Eddings notes that while open-concept design has fallen a bit out of favor, it's still worthwhile in some contexts and can go a long way toward creating a sense of space, especially in a smaller square footage home.
Designer Ashka Karia found this to be true when working on a home renovation in Richardson. Her clients originally purchased the 2,000-square-foot house with an addition in mind; then they realized the changes would make the house out of line with neighborhood home values. Karia's clients tasked her with making the existing footprint feel more spacious and functional for their family of four.
One big change: opening the kitchen to the living room for better flow between the two spaces. Karia also vaulted the living room ceiling to go along with the vaulted roofline. "It seemed silly not to open that [ceiling] up," she says. And because the client didn't need a true sit-in kitchen, she also repurposed some of that space to make a walk-in pantry.
The need for more storage often drives the desire to upgrade a home or move. Both Eddings and Karia knew that the way to make these homes work was to make every square foot count. "You don't necessarily need bigger," Karia says. "You just need more efficient."
Take that walk-in pantry, for instance. Karia had the clients send the dimensions of every appliance they owned, down to their blender, to make sure there was space for everything. Functional storage was a priority elsewhere in the kitchen as well. Upper cabinetry wasn't in the plan - Karia rarely designs with it and, in this case, she wanted to preserve the view through the kitchen window. So she hid storage beneath the counter where the barstools tuck away, using push-to-open cabinetry so that the storage space isn't obvious, but it's still functional.
The best tip Karia has for families feeling squeezed into a home is to think more critically about what it would mean to feel like you had more space. "What is it that you're wanting to do in the home that you're not able to do now?" she says. This is more helpful information than simply saying "more space," and it can inspire creativity that maximizes square footage and budget simultaneously.
For example, the Richardson family wanted to make sure that they had a functional guest room and didn't want to sacrifice that for use as an office. But with one parent working from home, a workspace was still needed. Karia considered building a desk nook into the open-concept living room, but that was a no-go with the client - children at play are a distracting backdrop for virtual meetings, however adorable those children may be.
By nudging the primary bathroom and closet over a bit (taking space from existing hallway storage), Karia was able to turn the primary suite's closet into a private office. Because storage was sacrificed for workspace, she had custom built-ins made for the primary bedroom to store all of the clients' clothes. The design makes it look like furniture, which contributes to the comfortable feeling of the room, but each inch of the storage space does its part.
When working through her renovation, Eddings similarly focused on storage in places that made the most impact. She did a large wall of cabinetry in the kitchen, with big, deep drawers to store plates, pots and pans. "I love drawers for function." She reworked the bathroom her children shared to fit a large linen cabinet. "If you invest in custom cabinetry [...] I think really working with someone to get the cabinets to be primo storage, that's one area I would say is always worth doing."
Most homeowners are coached to add on a bedroom if adding square footage, to recoup the maximum value. But in Eddings' case, adding an extra living room helped create space for neighbors and friends to gather - supporting the reason her family wanted to stay in the home in the first place. "It helped a lot as the kids were entering elementary school and middle school to just have two living rooms," Eddings says.
That setup also gave the designer room to be creative. Eddings is a big reader, with an ever-growing book collection. "I wanted book storage and a spot to put the record player, so I designed a built-in bookcase that was just right for us," she says. It wasn't a small cost to invest in that very custom design, but it fit her exact needs. "I love my bookcase wall," she says. "Every penny that I spent on that was worth it."
Eddings has, since that first renovation, divorced, remarried and redecorated - and her children turned into teenagers somewhere along the way. Personalizing the home, both in its function and in its style, has played a huge role in the longevity of the house. "I wasn't thinking, ‘This will help with resale.' I wasn't worried about that at the time," she says.
Maybe that's easy for a designer to say, with the wealth of resources and ideas at her disposal. But this is exactly what makes well-designed homes work so well: They're personalized. Perhaps the key to creating a forever home, at virtually any size, is setting aside concerns about resale value. Then, and only then, can you think about how you really live - and what you need to live that way.
Of course, that will change over time. While Eddings' two daughters were happy to share a bedroom when they were younger, they now want their own rooms. And the house gets very full of teenagers these days. (And "teenagers take over," Eddings has learned.) She and her husband often find themselves wanting somewhere to hide out when that happens.
Instead of moving somewhere else - "Why leave when we've made this house so special?" - Eddings is considering another renovation that would add a new primary suite. Then, all the children would have their own rooms, which might mitigate some sibling bickering. Or it might not. Either way, she and her husband could retreat to their own space.
"It's very much a one-story starter home that's stuck around for 17 years," she says.
And that's the charm.
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