It depends on what you plan on using the space for. I live in a community where all the houses have full basements which are about 1,000 sq. ft. There is a wide variety of uses and amounts of finished and unfinished space in each house. They range from completely unfinished to completely finished. Bedrooms, no bedrooms, bathroom, no bathroom. There is a cost to finishing obviously, so don't finish any more than you need. IMO It's OK if only half of it is finished. If you have a large space and you're not going to use it all I don't see the point in having a beautifully finished largely empty space. The next person who owns the house could finish the rest of it if they want to. I would come back to this question after you've lived there a while and develop an idea of what you want to use it for. Basically you want the finished part to be easily accessible and viewable from the bottom of the stairs.

^^ agree - it helps to know if you have kids in the house, want it for movies or crafts, entertaining etc.

Pretty open ended question for any worthwhile advice. If you know how you might want to use it, then let us know, otherwise I agree you should live there awhile before making any decisions about how to use the space.

Well, at this point, that is the level of specification that we have. We will have some amount of storage, though we are trying to plan more storage into the shed and garage. (I’m done hauling boxes of holiday decor up and down the stairs.)

We live in western new york, so for the winter this year, we are bringing the kids’ (pre-school/elementary age) outdoor toys down so they can run around and ride their bikes in circles. They have a playroom/family room on the first floor, so I don’t know if we are planning to make a TV space down there. Maybe, but not sure.

If the basement turns out to stay dry, I’m going to create a portion of it as craft room/ my own space in the house.

I wish that the support post wasn’t in place in the center of the bump out on the front of the house. It was’t structurally required, but the inspector wanted it there. There’s a large engineered beam that carries the weight of the floor above it, not walls, but its embedded into the footer below the slab. Anything I do in that space needs to accommodate it.

You don't mention whether it is a walk-out or not, but the floor plan doesn't indicate that it is. Egress from bedrooms is a must to be within code. What does the plan mean by "glassblock by others?"

Not a walkout, will not have any bedrooms in the basement. The egress window on the right wall has the required window well. On the back and right walls, there are vented glass block windows above grade. Roughly, 2’ x 3’

I'd keep the yellow areas for utility and storage. Use the rest for anything else you want here.

If you have a new build and have water, you are in trouble. And in New York during the winter, your basement should naturally be in the 35%-50% humidity level without the dehumidifier.

So for a future buildout, you have to determine what your needs are, just like you determined you wanted 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and a 2 car garage upstairs. Basements are no different.

You’re on the right track by waiting to finish your basement. Not only does waiting permit watching for any water issue, it also lets you plan a design for finishing the space.

In our case, we observed neighbors finished basements and were able to correct issues we observed such as people flow and necessary space. We positioned masking tape on the floor to represent walls, doors and lights/outlets then adjusted as desired. This was invaluable because we DIY’d the finishing, The build is faithful to the plan.

Here’s our plan:

Here’s a video of the completed space:

https://youtu.be/3FqMEqaf0-I

Hope this helps.