To think flats without a living room should be banned?

[rampacious]

I am helping DD look at flats in central London. The amount of times a flat looks promising, but then it turns out that the sitting room is one of the bedrooms. Some of these flats have tiny kitchens, with no table et cetera. So the only place that people have to eat would be at their desk, on the loo, or sat on their beds.

Does anyone else think that flats should be banned from being advertised as a two bed flat, when really it is a one bed with the living room 'converted' into a bedroom. Quite a few of these are not even significantly cheaper either.

Ahahahahahaha! Flats in London. Yeah. That’s gonna happen.

In my 20s I used to share a three storey house with the kitchen, bathroom and living room on the ground floor and then the bedrooms on the first and second floors.

There were five of us.

Not once in the two years I lived there did any of us ever use the living room. Yet we would stand - yes stand (no chairs or table) - round chatting in the kitchen until all hours. There's no accounting for young folk

Where I come from (not UK) , flats are advertised as Studio or 2/3/4 rooms with overall m2 - so you know one is sitting room and rest can be bedrooms... kitchen/ bathrooms obviously don't count.

I fid the UK system by just listing the bedrooms a bit confusing especially when house hunting!

My flat was rented as 3 bedrooms - now its 2 bedrooms and a living room. And this is quite good as all the rooms are fairly big (smallest, which is quiet and at the back so I use it as the main bedroom, is still big enough for a double bed - about 3mx3m). There was even a breakfast bar in the kitchen.

Its in inner London (NW5), and just makes me feel incredibly sorry for anyone renting.

But rents around here are falling rapidly as are prices. A nicer and slightly larger flat than mine in our block is on the market for £400k, and I paid £423k nearly 4 years ago.

I agree OP, its the description.

When we were looking at houses you would get the estate agent saying "oh actually one has come up in Naice Area that you thought you couldnt afford...." we would go to look and find they were describing a 3 bed house as 4 bed by considering the living room a bedroom.

It's the optics. It should be made clear that the second reception room is being counted in the bedrooms.

Yanbu
I lived in a 3 bedroom flatshare where it was actually a 2 bedroom flat and the living room had been converted into another bedroom. We had a kitchen table but it was shit and there was nowhere to socialise and no sofa.

I also got really annoyed later when I was looking for a 1 bedroom flat to rent with DP that I would tick minimum 1 bedroom on Zoopla or whatever and it would still bring up studios... not really a 1 bedroom is it! Same as how even houses for sale seem to advertise extra “bedrooms” now but they’re downstairs 🤔

Yes, it's really annoying. It's also not permitted in some boroughs so dodgy letting agents get around that by advertising a 2 bedroom flat as 3 rooms and have photos of the "furnished" flat unfurnished. Then you get there and find it has 3 bedrooms and no sitting room and the photos of the beautiful refurbishment are from last century.

Do you mean flat-shares which lack a living room? Often in a flat or house share the living room becomes a bedroom and everyone essentially has a bed sit, with shared kitchen and possibly bathroom facilities.

Actual flats that’s aren’t shared usually have a bedroom and a bathroom and then possibly 1 room that houses kitchen and sitting and dini area, or possibly separate kitchen and living area.

I think you mean flat share.

Very very normal for London flat shares now unfortunately. Costs are astronomical. Unfortunately so is tiny studio living for those lucky enough to afford a place of their own.

I agree it should be clear in the advert. I lived in zone 2 in a houseshare and we had a living room, although I think it's because of where the kitchen was; everyone would have had to walk through a bedroom if it had been converted and it wasn't wide enough to add a corridor. I'm sure other places have the same, but knowing before viewing would probably be tricky, although could specifically ask I suppose. It was nice to have a space that wasn't a bedroom to relax in sometimes and socialize though, many fond memories or watching TV together or having meals together some nights.

They need to build up. And up and up.

I saw something on facebook the other day that made me pause for thought. It was a studio in Dublin, 1,000 euro a month and a prison cell in Norway and you had to guess which was which.

A studio is not a property without a living room. It is a property without a separate bedroom.

What Op is describing isn’t a studio or a flat. It sounds like a flat share....having bedrooms and a communal kitchen.

I cannot think if any sole occupier property (ie not shared) which lacks living space. The very smallest with fewest rooms is a small studio where the kitchen and living and sleeping area is all one room and then there’s a tiny shower room. But here you’d say there is no separate bedroom, not it lacks a living space.

HMOs which are shared houses often don’t have a living space as it has been made a bedroom.

I don't think that you can get them banned but what should be banned is advertising them as something that they are not.

I know where you’re coming from, OP. What’s actually needed is standardised building requirements, where, for example, minimum requirements have to be fulfilled before a property can be advertised as a Studio, a One-bed Etc. It would be even better if property was fixed within different areas as price of purchase or rent per square metre, depending on condition, as some EU countries (E.g. Germany) do...

The thing is, this is extremely usual and has been for decades in student houses.

In both those in the private rental sector and those that are uni owned and purpose built, the only shared space is kitchen and bathroom. Purpose built self catering uni flats were often built with spdecent sized kitchen diner but no living room and students would socialite in the kitchen at the table. In private rented student homes a downstairs living room often was a bedroom to boost rental income. Often they had no other living space and not always a decent sized kitchen either.

But you don’t get this with properties for single occupancy. Even if there is only 1 room for eating, preparing food, sitting and sleeping, there is room for sofa, even if it is a sofa bed.

Perhaps Op was never a student and isn’t aware of how many people livied in shared accommodation without living areas. It’s not new at all.

Two ex-College friends had one of these. It was 1982. Old as the hills, it' called a bedsitter.

When I lived in London in house shares in the 1990s, there was always a living room. Feel for this generation.

London is over crowded and over priced. And in other news, something about bears and woods...

let us hope that the last year may actually make it possible for people to get decently paid jobs without all having to live in the bottom right hand corner of the country. Although our fuckwit government (the one we elected) seems determined to go back to the old normal as fast as possible.

I second the poster who mentioned this being very common in Edinburgh. So many of the traditional tenement flats there are converted into HMOs which often means you have a few normal-sized bedrooms, one enormous bedroom (which should have been the living room) and one tiny one (probably converted from a bathroom and then the owner has crammed a replacement bathroom into a cupboard or something.

I remember going to see a flat with some uni friends which was advertised as four double bedrooms and a living room... the ‘living room’ was basically a box room and the ‘double bedrooms’ each had a small double wedged against a wall and then just enough space for a child-sized dressing table and stool, which was supposed to pass as ‘desk space’ (since the flat was aimed at students). People have no shame and sadly there will always be someone desperate enough to take it!

It’s often what renters actually want, though. A friend of mine rented out her 2-bed house, and the renters asked if they could use the living room as a bedroom and have three of them live there instead of two.

Studio flats are open spaced rooms that contain a bed, dining area and kitchen with a separate bathroom. House shares are one room (sometimes with an en-suite) and shared kitchen and living area. Do any of these describe the types of flat that you’re viewing?

Really annoying but unsurprising for central London where a cupboard under the stairs can be rented out for a bedroom.

WombatChocolate I completely agree, I lived in student houses in Liverpool in the 80s with no living room. People just socialised in the kitchen (when they weren't in the pub), we even had resident rats.

@starbrightstarlight8888

I've never heard of this! Where do you sit, where do you eat?

I lived in a bedsit for years while I saved for a flat. I slept and ate in the only room I had. It was the only way I could afford to live away from home. It was my private space and I loved it. I even had parties there!

In normal times it's absolutely fine. I was out at work or out socialising most of the time. It must be really hard now when so many people are WFH and there is no socialising.

I've been scouring air bnb for 3 bed flats in London and most of them are actually 1 beds but use the living room as a bedroom and in the case of one a toddler bed was set up in the hall!