About 8% of US homeowners wish they had bought a bigger home, versus roughly 5% who regret buying too much space, according to Bankrate’s 2024 survey of homeowners with purchase regrets. The gap is narrow — 3 percentage points — and the finding cuts against the popular “don’t buy too much house” advice. Among homeowners who have any regret at all (47% of the total), “too small” ranks second at 18%, while “too big” comes in at 10%, behind maintenance costs, location, overpaying, and mortgage rates. The pattern extends beyond housing: vehicle buyers who chose a compact car and later needed a larger one face modest upgrade costs, while those who bought an oversized SUV absorb years of higher fuel, insurance, and depreciation on capacity they never use.
The small gap masks an asymmetry in how the two regrets feel. Right-sizers who outgrow their space experience a concrete, daily friction: the cramped home office, the bedroom that doubled as a nursery. Oversizers, by contrast, often absorb their regret into adjacent financial complaints. Bankrate’s survey found 40% of regretful owners citing maintenance and hidden costs as their top grievance, and 13% citing an unaffordable mortgage — both categories that disproportionately affect those who bought more home than they needed. Genesove and Mayer’s study of Boston condominiums showed that owners anchored to their purchase price set asking prices 25–35% above market when facing a loss, creating a psychological lock-in that makes downsizing from an oversized home especially painful. Hedonic adaptation compounds the problem: the pleasure of extra square footage fades within months, but the mortgage payment never adapts.
Neither side of this decision carries catastrophic regret rates. Both land under 10%, well below the 45% of renters who wish they had bought at all. The honest read is that most homeowners, whether they sized up or sized down, would do the same thing again. For buyers weighing the tradeoff today, the financial math favors right-sizing: transaction costs for a future upgrade ($1,000–$5,000 for a local move) are modest compared to years of carrying costs on unused space. But the data does not support a strong directional claim. Individual variables — market trajectory, family plans, remote-work permanence — swamp the aggregate signal.