Yes! We have 4 kids ages 7-15 and we sold our 5br, 3 1/2 bath, 6000sf home on 45 acres last summer. It was a beautiful 2 story victorian home with a full attic and full finished basement. It also had a large mortgage and property tax bill to match! Not to mention large maintenance costs--the house was so tall and steep we couldn't power wash it or do repairs ourselves and there was so much mowing and cleaning that we hired help more than once in order to try to stay on top of things (and that's with 4 kids helping! We didn't want to think about what it would be like in 10 years when the kids wouldn't be around much to help!) It had a huge wraparound porch with loads of wood railing and trim that needed repainted every few years...living there also required a 4x4 vehicle to get up and down the long, steep driveway in the winter and we had to own a tractor and/or skidsteer in order to maintain the driveway and land. We ran scenario after scenario to figure out how to stay in that beautiful house and still get ahead financially but the numbers always said one thing: "You have to move!"
The house sold 3 days after it was listed, which was great! Problem was, there was nothing available for us to buy that fit our requirements--we wanted a few acres with no restrictions (kids are into horses and 4wheelers and we want space to hang laundry and garden), hubby needs high-speed cable internet for his job, and we wanted to stay in a particular school district that would allow my oldest to go to public school part-time this year. So we ended up buying a bank-owned piece of land building a home. We've lived in a rental house all fall/winter and will be moving into our new home this spring and we can't wait!
The new place is a 3br, 2 1/2 bath cape cod, around 2600sf with an unfinished basement. Boys share one bedroom, girls share the other. We thought about trying to go smaller than 2600sf, but I'm a sahm, hubby mostly works from home and the kids are mostly homeschooled and they all play either the violin or the piano...anyway, we need a little space to spread out for sanity's sake and noise levels! Surprisingly, building a new home has been a much easier process than we'd anticipated.
We have no regrets so far. Our old house was gorgeous and it was hard to leave it but we're really looking forward to the lower maintenance, lower utility bills, lower taxes and lower mortgage of the new place.