Shopping For Houses

Hi everybody! Long time listener, first time caller here. My wife and I are looking at buying a new house, and found one that seems nice. I wanted to pick your collective brains as far as a studio space. I'm an solo singer/songwriter, and most of my studio material is full-band acoustic rock. I'm a one-man band, so isolation isn't a concern for me. My production style is fairly dry. I want to have a live room and a dead room to work with, and one should be the primary control room. This house has two large 29x29 garages, but they're not insulated or HVAC-ed. There are no suitable rooms on the main floor or upstairs, but in the basement, there's a spot that might work well. One room, in particular, is 23x16 with an unfinished ceiling (with various pipes and such) topping out around 9-10 feet. I know the 23x16x10 is a magic ratio, so it seems nice. It's in a corner of the house, and the house is built using ICF (concrete) construction. However, there's a very wide archway leading to the rest of the basement on one of the 23' walls, and it's not centered. I don't have the dimensions of the room that it attaches to, but it's carpeted, slightly smaller and has a dropped ceiling that's quite low. I'm planning to put a wall along the end of the second room (at the far end of the pool table in the picture), forming two rectangular rooms connected by the arch. My overall budget for this is flexible, but I'm hoping to keep it within a few thousand dollars if practical. Ok, so my questions. Regarding the archway: No matter which room I use as the main control room, is the open archway good or bad? I'd imagine that it would resolve many of any bass buildup issues I'd have by giving it an escape route (just as opening the door in my current tiny studio helps with). Regarding symmetry: would the off-center archway pretty much make a symmetrical control room in the 23x16 room impossible? I know I could put a wall up or some barriers, but I'd think that'd destroy the beautiful ratio. Would it be better to completely close the room off to give it symmetry? Which room would you use as the main control room? It's where I'd do almost all of my non-drum recording (acoustic guitars and vocals mostly), and all of my mixing. It'd either be the smaller carpeted room with the dropped ceilings torn out (with or without carpet?), or the uncarpeted 23x16 room. And finally: is this worth it? We have a decent amount of flexibility in buying a house, and the studio is fairly important to me. We love the rest of the house, and it's hard to find a house like this in this area. I'm trying to figure out of this is a fundamentally flawed space, or if it's a great space for a studio. Thanks so much for your time!

it looks like a nice place to build a studio although one of the 29x29 garages might be better because it might offer more ceiling space (and acoustic music loves space...) and possible more options for room layout. that said, i'd probably go with the bigger room for the control room and the smaller room for the band since most of your time is spent in the control room.