Most buyers rule out townhomes before they ever set foot in one.
It happens early in the search — sometimes before the search even starts. The assumption gets made, the box gets unchecked, and an entire category of home disappears from the list. Too small. Not enough room for the way we actually live. Not the forever home we had in mind.
On the surface it can be a reasonable assumption. But our team at Empire Homes is here to change that narrative. A prime example is our Bocilla townhome floor plan.
What 1,931 Square Feet Actually Feels Like
The average townhome in the United States runs somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 square feet. That's the mental image most buyers are working with when they cross townhomes off the list — something functional, something modest, something that works for now but maybe not forever.
The Bocilla is 1,931 square feet. For context, the average new single-family home in America is approximately 2,200 square feet. The gap between a Bocilla townhome and a single-family home is smaller than most buyers ever expect to find — and the way that square footage lives is what makes it genuinely surprising.
Walk through the front door, and the first thing you notice is the ceiling. At 18 feet, the main living space doesn't feel like a townhome. It feels like something you'd find in a custom build — open, airy, and lit by large windows that pull natural light deep into the home. The open-concept kitchen and living room flow together, making the space feel even larger than the numbers suggest.
Then there's the loft.
A generous flex loft overlooking the main floor is one of those features that photographs well but lives even better. Home office. Playroom. Reading nook. Second living space for when the house is full of people, and everyone needs their own corner. The loft in the Bocilla isn't an afterthought — it's one of the most talked about features of the floor plan for a reason.
Built For The Way People Actually Live
Four bedrooms split between floors gives the Bocilla a flexibility that most homes at this price point simply can't match.
For the buyer who has been searching for a single-family home and keeps hitting walls — on price, on availability, on finding the right fit — the Bocilla answers almost every question on the list. The square footage is there. The bedroom count is there. The primary suite with a dual vanity is there. The only thing that isn't there is the exterior maintenance that comes with a single-family home. And for most buyers, that turns out to be a feature rather than a drawback.
For the move-up buyer who assumed a townhome meant trading down, the Bocilla reframes that assumption entirely. This isn't a home you move into because you had to compromise. It's a home you move into because it genuinely fits your life better than what you were looking at before.
And for the buyer who is thinking about right-sizing — who still needs space for the kids or grandkids who visit, a dedicated guest room, a home office that doesn't double as a dining table — the four bedroom layout with a flex loft gives you options that most downsizer-friendly homes never offer. You're not giving up space. You're just spending it more intentionally.
The Part Most Buyers Never Factor In
Here's something worth understanding before you rule out new construction townhomes in Sioux Falls entirely: the total cost of ownership tells a different story than the purchase price alone.
A single-family home comes with a yard to maintain, an exterior to upkeep, a roof, and systems that are entirely your responsibility to monitor and repair. None of that is insurmountable — but it adds up in time, money, and mental energy in ways that are easy to underestimate when you're standing in a model home on a Saturday afternoon.
A new construction townhome from Empire Homes comes with an HOA that handles lawn care, snow removal, and exterior maintenance. Your weekends stay yours. Your budget stays more predictable. And because it's new construction — the systems, the roof, the finishes — everything is starting fresh with a builder warranty behind it.
That combination of space, flexibility, and reduced maintenance burden is exactly what makes the Bocilla floor plan genuinely hard to find anywhere else in the Sioux Falls market.
The Home That Makes You Reconsider
The buyers who end up in a Bocilla almost always say the same thing: they didn't expect to fall in love with a townhome.
They came in with their checklist — square footage, bedroom count, flexibility for how their life actually works — and the Bocilla checked every box. The 18 foot ceilings didn't hurt. Neither did the loft, the split bedroom layout, or the primary suite that finally felt like a primary suite.
If townhomes weren't on your list — the Bocilla floor plan from Empire Homes in Harvest Creek, Sioux Falls is worth putting back on it.
Some homes have a way of changing the conversation. This is one of them.