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While the kids are young, I wouldn't do it. I really like that our bedrooms are close together right now and it only takes me 10 seconds to get to the baby in the middle of the night. Once they are older, sure!

When the kids are older it would be great! If it were us I would sleep upstairs with the kids until you're comfortable moving downstairs.

We moved into our house when our older son was 9 months, and put him upstairs right away. He was STTN, and it was not problem. We did lock him in his bedroom until we were comfortable with him managing the stairs on his own, but at 4 he rarely leaves his bedroom before we get him. We did put the baby in our room for 7 months, at which point he was STTN, which was what we did with our older one. If there is a big walk-in closet, you could consider that for the newborn, so he is not in your room but nearby.

This is our house's layout! Master downstairs and kids' bedrooms are upstairs. It hasn't been an issue for us AT ALL.

When they were babies, we kept them in our room for 3-6 months, until they were sleeping through the night (7+ hours). Then they moved upstairs.

If someone is sick and waking up a lot, I'll sleep on the futon in the office, which is also upstairs, but that's been really rare for us. I have video monitors in both kids' rooms, so we can hear them and check on them if we need to.

We rented a house for a year that had master on the 3rd floor and kids' bedrooms on the 1st. It wasn't my ideal, but really not that bad either....and that was while we potty-trained DD1 and DD2 was born-8m old (moved to her crib at 7ish weeks).

We then moved to a house where master was upstairs and kids' rooms were on the main floor. I actually disliked that more because I felt like you had a lot of the headaches of separate floors, but none of the advantages (main floor was noisy once kids were in bed, etc).

It wouldn't be a deal breaker for me!

I am not a fan of 2 story homes, but that is a very common layout where we live. Master downstairs, and all the kids are upstairs. Everyone I know with this layout just uses a monitor.

Our house has this layout, and while shopping I thought it would be a deal breaker for me, but literally every two story home we looked at has this layout, so I got over it. We started off sleeping in the guest room upstairs to be closer to the kids as we transitioned into the new house. It's been totally fine. We have baby gates on the stairs and good sleepers, so we don't have to go up and down too much.

Where I live it’s very common for two story houses to have this layout. I have friends with houses with master downstairs and all other bedrooms upstairs and they don’t seem to have an issue with it. I prefer one story houses and when we move we’ll avoid two story houses for this reason.

Our room is a floor above the kids rooms and it hasn't been a problem at all. To me, it's just a flight of stairs - no big deal.

We have this layout. Right now with a 3 year old, I don't mind it at all. It's actually really nice that we never feel like we have to be quiet in our bedroom, worry about watching tv, etc. There are two things I think are annoying with kids.

1) If you're putting the baby in its own room right away, that will suck. We kept kiddo in our room for 6 months, and sleep trained when we moved her to her own room. I was still up there maybe 2-3 times/night which was fine but doing the newborn/4mo regression shuffle every hour or two? Yikes...

2) We can't hear LO from her room hardly at all. I mean, if she's outright YELLING we can. But a normal cry? Cannot hear at all from our bedroom. So that makes me a bit nervous with monitors. We have both a video monitor and a back up audio monitor we leave on all the time because she can't yet get out of her room by herself and I don't ever want to think she could be crying for me and I wouldn't hear it. With both monitors, I feel comfortable with it. (Also, the guest room is right next to hers so if we have a power outage I can sleep next door to be sure I'd hear her sans monitor).

I feel like this is a really common layout especially for Cape style houses. We definitely considered them when house hunting but planned to stay upstairs with baby in our room and then the kids sharing until they were older. But if you don't like that option, I would either put a bed in the nursery or more likely keep the baby in the master for the first few months so the crying doesn't wake up your older child.
I think in the long run it is a great layout. My house growing up was like that and my parents preferred having their privacy. But I do think it was a challenge when we were young. I remember sleeping on a cot in my parent's room for a long time because I was afraid to be upstairs so far away from them (but my room was in an addition so I was not near the other upstairs bedrooms either). I definitely wouldn't rule it out but think you might need to be open to short term compromises.

I think it would be a great layout when they're older, but I wouldn't like it when they're young. It also depends upon how your kids sleep though. Our oldest wasn't sleeping through the night consistently until nearly 3, so that would have been awful for us. Our youngest is only two months, but she sleeps through the night, so it would be fine with her.

This is not uncommon where I live (Michigan) - its definitely a newer house thing. But I'd say in the plotted subs half of the models offer "First Floor Master" and its a rather big selling feature I'd say.

We are on the same floor but it really isnt much different in terms of how long it would take me to get to the kids in the MOTN. So I dont think it would bother me or prevent me from buying a home I otherwise loved.

As others have mentioned, if there is a spare bedroom perhaps you could have a bed there for when they are sick or when you new one is little?

@Meowkers: I'm curious where you live that this is o unheard of?

This is what our house is and I much prefer it to or previous two houses where our bedroom/living area were near the kids rooms. We always felt like we had to hide or be super quiet so as not to wake the kids since they went to bed so much earlier than us. It also takes me <30 seconds to get up the stairs to them - that being said they stayed in our room until 4-6 months. We don't feel comfortable no matter the floor plan not having a monitor so not hearing them isn't an issue because we always have a monitor. Also, in my crazy safety scenarios, it's less likely someone will scale to the second story and break into one of their windows and kidnap them. FWIW, this is a super commons layout where we live and a selling point - we always see "master on main" advertised.

I really wanted a master on the main but I'm glad we ended up with all bedrooms upstairs with little kids. I can reach them quickly, my 3 year old can come to our bedroom if needed without worrying about stairs, and the biggest one to me is my bedroom is a getaway area for me. When we have family stay over I realized fast how loud and chaotic it would be for me to even try to retreat on the main floor.

That being said, we don't hang out in our rooms. We go upstairs to read or go to bed. Once the kid is asleep we hang out downstairs or in the backyard and no worries about noise.