Marketing 3 bed house as a 4 bed…

This is so strange...so does that mean only upstairs rooms count as bedrooms?

We got an extension which specifically included a downstairs bedroom to make four bedrooms. Fits a king-size bed and has a proper window. Should we not include that in the number of bedrooms when selling?

Surely if we listed it as a 3 bed then we'd be missing out on loads of buyers who would love the downstairs bedroom.

downs bedroom is a boon for some , anyone with mobility issues etc
just read the agents blurb
can’t see any issues tbh

You must be fun at parties! I'm sure people are able to determine this by having a quick look at the floor plan. I find a downstairs room desirable as I have a mobility condition.

I don't think this is a big deal - the particulars should be available to anyone considering coming round to view, and if they accurately show layout and room sizes, people will draw their own conclusions about how they might want to use the available space and view or not, and offer accordingly what they're willing to pay.

It's not the vendors fault you bought the house. If you wanted a four bedroom home, why did you buy the house?

Yes hate it. Waste of everyone's time and not good marketing imo. Means house can be priced as 4 bed when it can be 3 bed and dining room used as bedroom. Invariabky those houses sit on market dont sell and are reduced a few times before they do. Where do people eat? Looked at one house few years ago thay was advertised in this way. Small living room and agent said " most people don't eat around a table now they tend to eat on sofa watching TV. Oooh no love, not in my world they don't.

We once went to see a house (private rental, no floor plan provided at that time) that was marketed as having a dining room. When we looked.around and saw no dining room, we questioned it with the EA.

She gesticulated to the small bit of floor at the bottom of the stairs and said "it's right there!" like we were fucking daft.

She got rather huffy when I responded "are you seriously trying to sell the bottom of the stairs as a dining room?!!...we can't fit a table and chairs there!...well, not unless we were well trained in parkour and could leap, stunt roll and limbo under and over the dining furniture to go from room to room or up to bed!"

She had the right face on with me.

Yeah, I really hate properties being marketed as having something that they don't just to claw as much money out of people of possible.

Totally understand your point after having taken my dad to view a two bed retirement flat where “the second bedroom is being used as a dining room”.
It was; the wall had been knocked down and it was a very attractive dining room.
On querying the description with the estate agent he merely said that the wall could be rebuilt.

I'm about to turn one of my downstairs reception rooms into a bedroom, but when I come to sell it I would class it as a reception room. Though I really don't know how some upstairs rooms can be classed as a bedroom when you clearly can't get more than a desk in them.

Our house was marketed as “3/4 bedrooms” but on the land registry it’s officially four. It has four upstairs rooms- two large and two small, and one downstairs room in addition to the kitchen. We use that as a study and the large first floor room as the living room. I do think it’s a bit odd to describe a ground floor, front of house room as a bedroom unless it’s a student shared house, but the land register people allowed the developer to do that. And obviously nobody selling is going to voluntarily knock £50k or whatever it would be off the value of their house on a point of semantics. As PP said, it’s not as though the floor plans aren’t right there when you first look.

I would say any downstair bedroom behind kitchen was servant room, if the house was old. But in modern home, its probably additional contruction work from extra kitchen space.
I agree if there's no place for adult bed and cupboard the owner are stretching by calling it bedroom, but in many places, all it takes to be a bedroom is four walls and a windows and that's legal definition.

I believe that estate agents encourage this as it pushes a property into a higher price bracket.
Before I moved, I viewed a property described as 3 bedrooms, the third was the dining room currently used as the owners treatment room as a massage therapist. It opened into the kitchen, I couldn't see any way it could work as a permanent bedroom, for a numbrr of other reasons, sad, as the house was stunning otherwise .
Having sold a house and viewed others my view of estate agents isn't good, but they are selling and will do anything to secure a buyer.

I mean, it would be better if they advertised it as a 3 bed with a bonus room that could be used as a bedroom. But, keeping it listed in search as a 4 bed allows those who don't mind odd bedrooms to still be able to find these houses. I mean, it is annoying when looking for a traditional 4 bed and keep getting listings like this, but for the person who doesn't mind it is a blessing.
TL, DR. I think they should keep them as 4 bed in the search, but add that one of the rooms is not a traditional bedroom in the listing text.

So annoying. Don't get me started on loft conversions which don't have doors, so aren't proper bedrooms; and bedrooms you can only access through other bedrooms. Both of which get fudged on floor plans- so you waste everyone's time viewing them.

I dislike houses which include downstairs rooms as bedrooms when they are clearly reception rooms.
What does the insurance think?

this site says legally if you use it as a bedroom it is. (Although HMO might have different regulations)
https://www.ricsfirms.com/glossary/what-is-a-bedroom/

A room next to a kitchen would be a horrible bedroom.

Its click bait really.

We moved into an ex old peoples home 25 years ago.

Sold as a 7 bedroom house. (and previously occupied as as a 6 + 1 bedroom they slept in the +1 which is really a basement room. They crammed old folks in - even one in the utility room.

In reality its a 4 bedroom house with a study, utility room, and a basement room.

The sellers were stretching the truth somewhat.

You can never suit everyone. We need 2 bedrooms and 5 reception rooms; that can turn up as a lot of configurations. Sq ft doesn't really work either, because spaces need to all be big enough for their various purposes - 4 tiny rooms and 3 huge ones wouldn't work either.

What really winds me up is manufactured square footage. Measuring "floor space" that drifts off under the eaves with a 1 inch height by the end of it, including a garage and 2 sheds without declaring them separately, multiplying out a circular bullnose corner as though it's a rectangle, measuing into the bay and multiplyjng as the full room, including the porch as houae sq ft etc etc.

We need proper regulation of estate agents. A system of house sale and purchase that is either the same as in Scotland or better, not the current chancers and spivs charter in England and Wales currently.

This could include what qualifies as a bedroom.

If it’s a multiple storey house then the only way I’d consider anything downstairs a bedroom is if it has an ensuite, and even then I would probably avoid because it’s probably a poorly thought out garage conversion.

My grandmother's housing estate is pretty much all semi detached houses built as two bedrooms upstairs, one bedroom downstairs. Sitting room and small dining room (dgm's now open plan) so the downstairs bedroom was never intended as a dining room, they were built as family homes.

The worst example of this I have seen is one 'three bedroom' house where the third 'bedroom' was actually a conservatory: at least two walls and most of the roof were glass, no way to put curtains up, no privacy and probably either boiling hot or freezing cold! Even the picture showed it with bikes stored in it...

That’s a corridor , isn’t it?

(See also’ landing bedroom ‘ , that is, the landing on or at the top of the stairs).

I can remember house hunting before the internet, when all you had to go on were the ( highly imaginative ) ‘particulars’. Now that was Tales of the Unexpected.

It pisses me off and I avoid agents that I see doing this, on principle. If it’s a multiple storey house then the only way I’d consider anything downstairs a bedroom is if it has an ensuite, and even then I would probably avoid because it’s probably a poorly thought out garage conversion.

I also think showing the compass orientation should be a standard part of the floorplan, it’s so annoying when it doesn’t have it and Google street view drops outside the wrong house and you have to work out where it is and which way it faces. Just tell me up front, I’m going to figure it out at the viewing anyway!

The problem is that some people will want 4 beds plus an office. If you only market your house as a 4 bed then you will miss out on buyers because they will not know that there is another room that can be used as an office.

If someone wants a 5 bed house which has 5 large bedrooms then they can just dismiss your house.

It isn't just about money, it is making sure that people know that there are 5 bedrooms, one of which is only the size of an office but the house advertised as a 5 bed is more likely to sell because it will attract people who want 4 beds and an office.

I don't mind downstairs bedrooms, it's when the fourth bedroom barely has space for a single bed it's annoying.

Also if people are searching for a specific number of bedrooms on a property website it's annoying.

Saw the opposite recently - a house that was a 4 bed was listed as a 3 bed because one of the bedrooms had to be accessed from the outside. Bet they've missed out on loads of viewings.