Marketing 3 bed house as a 4 bed…

[ViaRia01]

… or any number of bedroom…. when the “4th bedroom” is in fact downstairs and would ordinarily be a dining room or additional reception room.

Does this annoy anyone else? Have you ever done this? Why do people do it?

OK, I know people do it to try to make their house seem more desirable. But it’s just a really slimey thing to do in my opinion. Buyers are not stupid, they can see just how many actual bedrooms the place has. But what it does do is waste everyone’s time when you filter the website for 4 bed or more and keep finding 3 bedroom houses with a separate dining room.

I’m not including bungalows in this obviously, nor chalet bungalows, bungalows with loft converted to a second storey. Barn conversions are also off the hook.

My own house was sold to me as a four bedroom (the fourth bedroom is downstairs and has a small skylight but not windows, it is very small, more like the size of a utility room and it is situated right next to the kitchen, exactly where one would expect to find a utility room). When we sell it, we will market it as a 3 bed with a downstairs office.

That’s why the thing the OP works for me though, because if I want a three bed and study, and it’s marketed as a four bed, then that’s right. If I search for a three bed then 90% are not right.

I think it depends on how many people are looking for a study! Maybe in an ideal world you’d have options for both on RM.

It doesn't annoy me. It helps me find what I need. I need four spaces beyond the core living space and kitchen. I may want a downstairs bedroom for an elderly relative. Or the option of converting something to an office etc.... 4 bedrooms tell me how many rooms are available, to configure however I like.

I actually get frustrated by the opposite. I'm house searching at the moment, and need a standalone office space plus three bedrooms. The fourth space could be a convertible garage or a fourth bedroom' on ground floor, or a substantial summerhouse in a garden..... I wish I could search for 'number of useable spaces' versus bedrooms.

But with the bedroom system, I miss three bed places which actually do have a fourth space.... and I have to filter through lots of four bed places, which don't fit the need for a ground floor space.

And this is really worth complaining about? Clicking on a property online and looking at the floor plan? 30 seconds of your time? 🙄

I think it's a perfectly reasonable way of advertising a property. As a PP has said, buyers may be looking for 2 beds plus study, so might use 3 bed filter rather than 2 and miss properties that suit. What's wrong with a bedroom downstairs? Depends on how the potential buyer wants to use the house.

Our house was marketed as a five bed because it has four upstairs bedrooms and a downstairs bedroom with it's own ensuite. Which would be completely reasonable if it wasn't for the fact that the listing explicitly said it had three reception rooms - which turned out to be the sitting room, the dining room and, you guessed it, the downstairs bedroom! It was obvious from the floor plan and so no ones time was wasted, but I remember thinking it was pretty disingenuous of the EA, who was a particularly sleezy bastard.

When I was trying to buy my house, we were looking at 3 beds. Found one which seemed absolutely perfect, except for the third bedroom was up a pull down ladder in the middle of the second bedroom.
That's a loft conversion, not a bedroom.

It's not really slimy I guess it's just what a market you're willing to aim from really .So you can say you have a three B/room house rather than a genuine four/room house .If you really care focus layout .

Ah yes the clever marketing of properties. We looked at a three bed and the third bed as a MURPHY BED. I ignore estate agents they are only there to sell and many are very silly in trying to convince you about the listing price and value because they represent the seller. A Murphy bed.

Yeah it pisses me off too. We have a 4 bed, 3 reception room house. Many on our street are marketing as a 5 bed, with one of the bedrooms downstairs. I have 3 kids and another downstairs reception room is more valuable to me than a 5th bedroom that isn’t a bedroom.

yabu/yanbu

I find the obsession with bedrooms in the uk weird. as long as a room has a window and door and can fit a bed it's a room to be used for whatever...

Downstairs rooms weren't a bother - you look at floor plans or consider if it works for you.

One I hated were rooms to small to get a single bed in marketed as a three bed. Wasn't always clear from the pictures.

Complained to estate agent once as there was an entire estate full of them and it wasn't always clear from photos - 3rd one that morning I did say what's the point - she said oh you could use it as a dressing room - I said I'm stood here with two kids of opposite sex I clearly need three bedrooms - she shrugged. DH and I canceled rest of viewing for those style of housing that day and only did the remaining appointments with different style houses - estate agent did get a bit miffed with us.

I have 3 kids and another downstairs reception room is more valuable to me than a 5th bedroom that isn’t a bedroom.

We currently have same a 4 bed with 3 reception rooms and first thing male estate agent said was oh you can knock two of them though - last thing we wanted but kept bloody pushing it - till DH said room we can close door sperate the kids and/or use as a home office why would we want to knock it though.

Why on earth does it piss you off? It makes absolutely no difference to you.
Nor does it matter to potential buyers. As long as there's a floor plan and the viewer can see where each of the rooms are in the house they can decide whether or not the layout suits them.
What a bizzare thing to get pissed off about!

I’m sure things piss you off that I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about 🤷🏻‍♀️

The waste of time I’m talking about is the opening up a floor plan to a three bed house then having to go back and continue the search. Ok it’s not a lot of time haha, but it keeps on happening and it’s irritating.

The thing is that a 4 bedroom house is generally going to be occupied by at least 5 people assuming 2 parents sharing one room and a child/teenager in each bedroom. In some families there could be 8 or more if there's a lot of kids sharing or grandparents in a multi-generation household.

If a downstairs bedroom is in addition to adequate sitting room and dining room space for 5-8 people plus occasional guests then that's fine. The issue is advertising it as "4 bedroom" when that means the only non-bedroom space is a single public room that cannot possibly accommodate the whole family as a combined kitchen-dining-living room (e.g. you can just about fit in a 2-seater sofa and a 4-person dining table but you could never have the whole family watching TV or eating a meal together.

Good point!

I advertised my old house as having 4 bedrooms one of which was downstairs. It had an en-suite bathroom with it and was used for accessibility purposes. It was a big selling point of the house.

My friend did this. 4th "bedroom" is a room which runs between the landing and the bathroom so not usable at all. They use it as a study, but did plan to put a sofa bed in it for guests.

@Wolfpa you see that makes complete sense to me and I’m not really referring to that kind of arrangement in my OP.

I don’t have a problem with downstairs bedrooms at all. But if it is in place of where one would typically expect to see a dining room, for example, then I think that’s misleading.

in your case though I would have listed that as a bedroom too.

hope that makes sense

I don't think an ensuite is necessary to make a downstairs room a bedroom.

I think a bedroom is any room with a window and room for a standard single bed, with some exceptions. Only accessible from another bedroom- not a bedroom. It should be accessible from a common area. Used as a throughfare- not a bedroom. There may be others, but simply downstairs is not one of them.

You have to be clear - otherwise, those viewing will definitely not making an offer as no one likes that kind of stuff or having their time down the toilet pan

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.

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.

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!

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.

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...