This Was the Most-Viewed Home Tour of 2025 (You’ll See Why)

This year at Apartment Therapy, we published 241 new house tours, featuring homes like almost 30 studio apartments, 12 lofts, nine historic homes, and many more different types of homes. 

But the most-clicked-on house tour in all of 2025 might surprise you. It wasn’t the biggest home we toured this year, or the most lavish. At 750 square feet, it wasn’t even the tiniest home we toured this year. But there was one chic New York City rental apartment we toured in June of this year that readers couldn’t get enough of: Sarah and Peterson Almodovar’s two-bedroom home they share with their three kids, ages 1, 3, and 5.

It takes a tremendous amount of work to transform an apartment that hasn’t been updated in a long time, but that’s precisely what Sarah Almodovar and her husband (and DIY extraordinaire), Peterson, did with this rent-controlled apartment. Peterson actually grew up in this home, and fortunately, the landlord gave the couple his blessing to renovate to their liking. “Do whatever you want. I don’t need to know about it,” is what Sarah says the landlord told them.

“We’ve transformed every inch of our 750-square-foot space as our family has grown from newlyweds to a family of five,” wrote Sarah, who described the home before she moved in as “peeling tiles, suspicious smells, claustrophobic.”    

I think this home resonates with readers so much because of three things the couple did so brilliantly.

The apartment had originally been a three-bedroom unit, but Peterson and Sarah decided to remove the walls of one of the small bedrooms to open up the living area. “We love cooking and eating together, so having a comfortable dining area was a big priority for us. That made it an easy choice to prioritize an open and light-filled living/dining room instead of a third bedroom,” Sarah wrote at the time of the house tour.

While some real estate experts say reducing the number of bedrooms in your home is something to avoid, Sarah and Peterson weren’t renovating an apartment for future home buyers; they were making a home for themselves and their kids. And they knew that as a family, a bright and open living space would serve them better than an extra bedroom. 

“We felt like we’d be OK with our kids sharing a bedroom, and if we ever felt like they needed two rooms, we’d figure it out (maybe a Murphy bed in the living room),” Sarah wrote.

After tackling the primary bedroom (to give them a sort of oasis during the rest of the renovation process), and after opening up the living area and tackling replacing the floors, one of the next priorities for the couple was adding in lots of storage to the small space. Storage hides in nearly every inch of the home. They hired their super to build a deep closet that fits a full-size washer and dryer and lots of storage space at one end of the living and dining room.

The compact kitchen is filled with smart organizing products for all the kitchen tools. One whole wall of the primary bedroom features an organized closet (merely awaiting custom closet doors — a future renovation project!). And even the entryway has multifunction storage in the form of a DIY bench. 

After the couple finished renovating the living room, dining room, and hallway, they tackled the second bedroom. “We removed a closet (more of a lean-to, really), removed the laminate tiles, refinished the floors, and painted the walls and turned it into a guest bedroom. Eventually this became our kids’ room,” explained Sarah in their house tour.

Once the kids finally came along, the couple got even more creative to eventually fit three kids in just one room. “Probably our triple bunks are the most impressive DIY we’ve done. As our kids started to outgrow cribs, we knew we needed a good long-term solution,” Sarah wrote. “Our ceilings are 9′ high, so I thought triple bunks might be a good idea! But I had a very specific aesthetic in mind, and I didn’t like any of the premade triple bunks. We couldn’t find any great tutorials online, so Peterson had to basically figure everything out himself.”

These are just a few of the ways the couple customized their home for themselves and their three young kids, so be sure to check out the house tour if you’re one of the few who hasn’t read it yet! Ultimately, I believe this house tour was the most popular with the AT audience this year because it represents so much of what we value: real people using clever customizations to make their real spaces (no matter the size!) into beautiful homes that work. As Sarah wrote in the house tour:

“It’s living proof of what we always say: Families don’t need to outgrow their space; they just need to reimagine it.”