Estate agents - what makes a bedroom?

[FebruaryWhining]

Our house is a 4 bed, and downstairs we have a playroom and a dining room (as well as usual living room, kitchen, downstairs toilet etc)

Next door is 5 bed but much smaller than ours - it's a two storey so where we have a loft they have a master suite. We have about 200 sq ft more. (New builds so all published - I'm not obsessing!)

They have no playroom or dining room downstairs.

Technically with the spare rooms, we could be a 6-bed house but I never see this advertised.

Do bedrooms have to be upstairs to be advertised as such?

Purely academic as we're not moving but interested if upstairs bedrooms add more to the value of the property.

They just have to have a window. But most viewers will discount something as having an extra bedroom if it’s downstairs.

Rooms that could, and would usually, be used as a bedroom? HMOs often turn every possible room into a bedroom, doesn't turn a 4 bed house into a 7 bed house from a sales point of view does it?

The problem with a lot of new builds is that they have far too many bedrooms for the communal living space. So while you could designate one room as a bedroom, it will change the proportion of bedrooms to living space and that might put people off.

I see this all the time... House advertised as 4 bed then you look at the floor plan and one of the bedrooms is downstairs.
Personally find it really annoying.... but I get people selling what to max out their options as much as possible.

Sorry when I said neighbour is a two storey I meant three storey.

I've just looked at a 6 bed. It's actually a 4 bed with a room downstairs and an annex. Really misleading.

I have a bedroom which you can't fit a bed into. It's still considered a bedroom for insurance purposes, so agents market these houses as a four bed when really it's a three bed and office /box room.
But people aren't idiots. They look at floor plans and not at labels.

We chose an 1960s 3 bed over a new build 4 bed as it was bigger... the smallest bedroom actually just fits a double bed rather than a toddler bed!

We also have a Victorian terrace... its officially a 2 bed. This is because the attic conversion is no longer considered a bedroom due to the skylights being too high up. Everyone uses them as bedrooms!

Honestly you can market it any way you wish, it’s fine to class reception rooms as bedrooms if you please. Of course bedrooms can be downstairs. But yes unless someone who cannot do stairs generally upstairs bedrooms are preferred. Folks want to be close to their kids.

not Many folks want a six bed though. Plus many new builds have small footprints, so with so many bedrooms and limited living space, there’s a potential you’d limit your market.

sounds like you’re competing with your neighbours though.

Ha! Not at all. We had the choice between them when purchasing. Our chosen house was (slightly) more expensive when purchased as it has a bigger square footage.

I just wondered if we were to sell one day our bigger 4 bed with two extra rooms would be less attractive than a 5 bed with no extra rooms.

Purely idle Tuesday evening wondering.

I find it weird when a house says 5 bed then you realise it's clearly a garage conversion, dining room or man cave that a sofa bed is shoved in. Fair enough if they've converted the garage in to a type of annex but plonking a sofa bed in the room doesn't make it a bedroom in my opinion.

In the UK where the majority of our houses are at least two storey there’s an expectation that bedrooms are on the upper floors and reception rooms on the ground floor. Unless it’s a guest suite/annex, If you market what would traditionally be seen as a reception room as a bedroom then it turns a lot of people off- especially when the people who want a 4 or 5 bedroom house are probably families who won’t want a child on their own on the ground floor overnight. Yes there will always be people who look more flexibly at the overall accomodation (eg people with mobility issues who wouldn’t think twice about swapping a bedroom with a reception room) but that’s the convention here.

I saw a house advertised this evening near my parents, it looked like my childhood home which was a traditional 1950s three bed semi. House in question was advertised as a four bed so I assumed they’d done an extension and was nosy enough to look. Flicking through the photos I could only see the original galley kitchen, living room, dining room and three bedrooms- saw the floor plan and they’d just marketed the dining room as a “second reception/4th bedroom”. In reality that’s far too many bedrooms vs living space. It looks grabby and sends a message that the vendors are unrealistic and looking top dollar, which would put me right off taking it further. There was an interesting “why is my house not selling” thread a few months back and they had done the same, and the advice was overwhelmingly to remove that “bedroom” and relist.

Surely it is what the estate agent markets it as? If only we properly regulated estate agents and the whole process in England?

Minimum size would be a simple thing to have, as part of moving away from the spivs charter which the current England house purchase/sale process is.

The UK is funny about bedrooms. You get tiny houses being marketed as 4 or 5 bedrooms.

In much of continental Europe, you cannot market a room as a bedroom if it is less than 9 sqm, which means the vast majority of box rooms in the UK would not count as bedrooms at all. Houses on the continent are valued on their sqm rather than the number of bedrooms.

When we were looking they often said 5 bedrooms when it was 4 bedrooms upstairs and extra room downstairs. They would then say 5th bedroom downstairs or can be used as an extra living space.

My dh wouldn't view those houses because he said it's too big we don't need 5 bedrooms. They were obvs more expensive too. It was just us then but we knew we wanted a family soon. Funnily enough we bought a 4 bed and then converted the garage after a few years. So basically the house that he wouldn't view round the corner is the same as ours now 😆

The property you describe is exactly what me and my partner will be looking for! It’s different when you have elderly mums with joint problems to house!

A good sized downstairs room that could be used as a bedroom actually suits some people, our neighbours have what would be classed as a 2 bed semi but its 1700 sq ft as it has a massively extended downstairs due to one of the couple now needing to use a wheelchair , and what was a lounge is now a bedroom plus an extra downstairs bathroom

We've got a 4 bed with a converted garage downstairs. The previous owners had it as a bedroom because they had loads of kids. We originally used it as a study but as it's bigger than the 4th bedroom we've since swapped and DS has it as a bedroom. I think we'd market it as 4/5 beds and if we were selling I'd have to think carefully about if it was better to present as a bedroom or not.

A family member of mine lives in what was marketed as a "2 bed flat"... Yeah if you don't use a room as a living room! It has a kitchen, bathroom & 2 other rooms.

Our house was marketed as a 4 bed but the bedrooms are not all on the same level. I didn't really think about it at the time but may be one of the reasons we got a lot of sqm for the price as it seems it's not very popular.

Ours was 3/4 bed, 4th bedroom is on the ground floor, we use as an office

My parents old house was a 5 bed but bedroom 5 was downstairs off the entrance hall and had an en suite.

So a clear guest room. You'd be unlikely to use it as a dining room (it had that anyway).

We used to own a (very old) house that had two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs but on the ground floor it had five reception rooms as well as a kitchen, conservatory and two shower rooms. The previous owners had used a section of the ground floor as an annex for their parents.

We were downsizing from a six bed house and had quite a few sofas, bookcases, sideboards etc and as just the two of us would be living there (and working from home) most of the time, only needed two bedrooms.

When we sold it the EA suggested marketing as having five bedrooms, but we preferred to just put in the listing that it had a flexible layout with two bedrooms upstairs and a further three potential bedrooms on the ground floor.

Our buyers who had three DC (and went on to have a further three in quick succession) intended using at least two of the receptions as bedrooms.

Just been researching this today for a client

Adding a bedroom requires conforming with several UK building regulations. All rooms classified as bedrooms, from 2015, have to have a minimum floor space of 6.5sq m (70sq ft) for a single room, and 11sqm for a double (120sq ft). At least 50% of the ceiling has to be a minimum of 7ft tall.

You will also need to include a window to the outside of the property, that opens widely enough to provide escape access in case of a fire. The window should be 55cm and 110cm from the floor, it needs at least 5.7 square feet for the opening, and it must measure no less than 60cm high and 50cm wide.

The room will need to contain another form of access/escape but the door will count. You will also need adequate ventilation ducting if the opening measurement of the window is less than 4% of the room’s floor area.

The creation of a new habitable basement will require Building Regulations approval regardless of whether it involves a change of use of an existing cellar or the creation of a new or larger basement through excavation. The Building Regulations are statutory minimum construction standards that ensure buildings are safe, hygienic and energy efficient.

For me a downstairs bedroom counts in a bungalow converted into a chalet bungalow. Or a proper converted annexe, barn conversion etc. Not just a reception room repurposed as an extra bedroom.

No problem with a large downstairs study that includes a sofa bed as an additional guest sleeping area on an occasional basis, but occasional being key here.

The balance of a house is all wrong if it’s top heavy with bedrooms scattered everywhere without sufficient living areas as well. Potential buyers just don’t buy it so to speak.

Depends where you are as rules differ by nation, country and/or state.
For example, some places have a minimum size or require a window or a closet