AIBU that calling a Dining Room a Bedroom does not make a house worth more?

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I think we need to stop considering the value of houses on the basis of the number of bedrooms, and marketing descriptions should be regulated to prevent houses from being marketed with misleading descriptions like this.

The two houses with the floor plans in this pic are in the same road, just 3 doors apart. They are both in a broadly similar state of repair.

One is correctly described as a 3 bedroom house. The floor area is 95m2

The other is actually slightly smaller at 90m2, but having put a bed into the Dining Room, and dividing that smaller floor area slightly differently, they somehow think it is worth £80,000 more than the house that is actually larger, and are marketing it as a FIVE BEDROOM house!

This is giving me the rage. AIBU?

I agree that our system of focusing on number of bedrooms is ridiculous. The German system is much better, as pp have said. Plus they also focus more on square metres - the overall size of the property features prominently in the ad. For most of our property listings, the sqm is often only listed in small print at the bottom of the floor plan, and sometimes not at all.

What makes me cross is that this over-emphasis on number of bedrooms means that new 4 bed homes are being built, which again are tiny and not really 4 bed. It seems such a waste, knowing they aren't going to stand the test of time. So short-sighted by planners.

In continental Europe they market the houses on floor size with a proper plan. Much more sensible.

A house on our road did something similar and marketed the extra bedroom down in the uncovered cellar .
When buying, I initially wanted a four bed because I wanted a house of a certain size. However, our three bed is more than enough on on par with houses that are four/five bed.

I don't understand why we don't sell house based on their square footage, rather that the number of "bedrooms".

But we don't sell houses based simply on either of those things.

Houses are sold for the price someone is willing to pay. The factors are many: location, layout, potential to extend, size of garden, off road parking, aesthetics and period features etc. etc.

In the area I live, houses are valued generally on price per square foot. They may go up more if they are absolutely incredible in some way but generally the price is stable. Its space that counts so this type of thing is immaterial.
Realistically any family looming for a 5 bed house wouldn't consider a property such as the one pictured as there is insufficient living space, where would all those people spend their time, eating, relaxing and generally being a family, it would only be considered as a house where rooms are separately let out.

Why are you so angry about it - people go and look at houses before they buy them and decide whether (whatever the rooms are called) they want to spend that amount of money on it.

I honestly dont see what the problem is with the floorplans we currently have. As long as they are drawn to scale and show all measurements

But we don't sell houses based simply on either of those things.

yes and no.
I am South East and the price is based on the number of bedrooms, if you look at sold prices in 1 street, the size of the rooms etc is pretty irrelevant.

More importantly, have you seen the number of threads from people desperate to squeeze children in completely unsuitable "rooms" which are just glorified cupboards?

If the price was clearly about the square footage, it would stop developers trying to squeeze fake bedrooms to boost the prices. On the same estate, 4 bed house , even with 3 box room, will be worth a lot more than a 2 bed house of the same size.

Who wants a 3 to 4 or 5 bed house with downstairs bathroom only? However marketed.

People who can't afford a more expensive house with an upstairs bathroom.

I don't understand why we don't sell house based on their square footage, rather that the number of "bedrooms".

This is how houses are marketed in the U.S. and it takes a bit of getting used to but once you have a rough idea of what 1500 sq feet is it gives you a much more accurate idea of the space. I think the reason it's shunned over here is that the floorspace in a lot of new builds is absolutely tiny so "4 bedrooms sounds better than "same floorspace as your granny's 1950s bungalow.

I agree with you about this. Estate agent nonsense I think and it gets in the way of us easily seeing what is actually on offer. People can work around it but it's silly that we have to. Above a certain size people pretty much do always want a dining table somewhere so turning the only dining space into a bedroom is not a common desire.

We sold our 2 bedroom semi last year.

2 doors down someone sold a mid terrace the same size as a 6 bedroom house suitable for student occupation at twice the price ours went for. Some of those bedrooms were cupboard sized. But someone was willing to pay as they could make ££$£££ on the rents.

Missing the point here completely but using the phrase “gives me the rage”, in my mind invalidates any post I read on here.

If a room is described as a dining room, I just class it as another room as I’d never use a dining room. It’s a wasted space.

You have to open up every house and find a floorplan to find out whether it's a genuine option and it's tedious to run through doing this with a list of apparently 75 possible houses to find that actually only 8 of them are genuine. Dear me!what an impossible burden! So different from when we moved 200 miles, had to telephone every estate agent in the area to get on their books, to be sent details with a single photo of the outside and no floor plan, and used a combination of A-Z and an OS map to work out how big the "huge" garden actually was.

Yes, I know time has moved on and it's silly to compare househunting then with househunting now, when brochures are full of plans and pictures, Google maps and Streetview will show you the size of the plot and what the surrounding area is like. Even so, clicking on each house and each floorplan is not a huge burden - especially as Rightmove has all the houses for sale in an area and you're not even having to visit individual Agent's websites.

When we were house hunting recently I got really pissed off with an estate agent who phoned me up to say he had a new to the market 3 bed house that wasn't even on rightmove yet (or I would have been able to see that it was only a 2 bed!). When we got there it was 2 bed with a dining room, there wasn't even room for a dining table in the kitchen. I was such a waste to time for us, the sellers and the estate agent, why even bother to lie.

Feeling a little bit excited that my little rant has made a Trending Topic

I agree OP, but I suspect they’re doing themselves no favours. If buyers are genuinely looking for a 5 bed this won’t meet their requirements. In the meantime buyers looking for a 3/4 bed see this as out of scope and budget.

People pull some dumb arse moves when selling houses, for sure.

I wish the UK system was like the French one and used square metreage. At least then you could compare like with like, and stop nonsense like the Op describes, and also housebuilders getting away with marketing 5 bedroom houses where each room is in fact no bigger than a shoebox. If we refused to buy into their game they would have to do better, but apparently most people buying new builds in the UK are total mugs and will pay over the odds for shit quality shoeboxes!

Some people are looking for downstairs rooms that can be used as bedrooms though. When my grandparents bought their current house nearly twenty years ago now, they said they wouldn't want to move any more. They bought a house that has a living room, big kitchen and conservatory that they use as a day to day dining space, and a separate formal dining room, the house also has a downstairs shower room with toilet, as well as the main bathroom upstairs. Their thinking is that if they get less mobile and are unable to easily get up and down the stairs they change the formal dining room to a bedroom and use the downstairs bathroom, without having to move again, possibly outside of the village they now live in and the community they are a part of. Whether it's worth extra money is only up to the people buying it.

The 5 bed is obviously a HMO! I wonder if it has the correct licenses and protections done? But even in my town I don't think it's worth more than the other one - but are the Estate Agents the same? Some EA's massively over value and then the vendors have to accept big cuts in price.

No one has explained how marketing property by floor area would actually benefit anyone?

Surely the dimensions of the actual rooms matter more when purchasing a house?

If you need to have 4 separate rooms for your family to sleep in, you need to see that the house has 4 rooms available, each of a size suitable for your needs. If the box room is so small you cant fit a bed in it, you don't buy the house ...It wouldn't matter if it was advertised by number of bedrooms or by overall floor space.

I viewed a house that was a reasonable size, although not big and discovered that not one of the bedrooms was big enough for a 5 ft bed, no way to get it into any of the rooms. Someone had made extra rooms and reconfigured it so badly it was beyond hope, too much work to put it right. I kind of understand what you mean OP.

I do think the term 'link detached' should be modified in some way because if a house is linked to the next one it is not bloody detached at all. That bothers me more. It is not link detached it is link attached and nothing on earth would persuade me to buy it.

My current house was marketed as 3 beds plus detached garage. It had 2 beds, the main bedroom had a spiral staircase to the loft which was set up as a bedroom. The garage was in a council owned plot with no guarantee that the new house owners would be able to rent the plot themselves. House was priced way too high! We ended up buying it at just below market value as other potential buyers couldn’t get a mortgage on it as a 3 bed + garage. We were cash buyers. (And only wanted 2 beds anyway)
On viewing the EA kept pointing out the usefulness of the ‘3rd bedroom’ which we kept saying that it wasn’t as it didn’t comply with building regs. We eventually paid £35k below the original asking price,

YABU. I think you're wrong because the dining room/bedroom can actually be used as a bedroom. So whats wrong with calling it a bedroom? A lot of people don't want a dining room but do want an extra bedroom. As for it being marketed at £80,000 more - there might be other reasons for that and its an arbitrary price. It doesn't mean people have to pay that. The market will decide what its worth.

More problematic is when a room is described as a bedroom when its too small to be used as such. I have an investment property for sale on a development which had 25% of the properties built with a very small second room upstairs, which has a window but is too small to get a bed into. Using my permitted development rights, I moved walls and wiring to enlarge the room so that it became a legitimate bedroom. Only to see that two other properties which had not carried out this change were advertised as being "two bedrooms" when I put it up for sale. I complained to Trading Standards, who took a massive amount of persuasion to send an email to the selling agents, who did eventually change their listings. It took months. The "authorities" were spectacularly unconcerned.

Rooms which can fit beds in, have windows, are accessible correctly under building regulations and are separate rooms concern me not one bit.