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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’m actually looking for a house with four bedrooms and an office but I wouldn’t tend to simply search for five bedroom houses as some pp have suggested is the normal thing to do. A home office could be upstairs, downstairs, or at the bottom of the garden (in my humble opinion!) so only searching for five bed houses wouldn’t be appropriate.

I’m probably going to check out here as I have to tidy my downstairs bedroom (dining room).

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.

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 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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

It all depends on your priorities. I am happy to sacrifice dining room space for a bedroom as long as the living room is big enough to accommodate a dining table.
I don't think it's an insincere thing to do, there are floor plans to check attached to nearly all properly sales notifications.

Our previous house had a largish downstairs study next to the downstairs washroom that also had a shower in it. When we sold we marketed it with the correct number of bedrooms but the particulars stated that the study could alternatively be used as a bedroom for someone unable to get up stairs.

In the US a bedroom has to have certain number of square feet. It also has to have a closet and a operable window. Most states also require separate doors for each bedroom.

😂
Was going to say you could do your kiting through the sunroof!

Surely it doesn't matter too much these days when you can look on Rightmove or whatnot and see floorplans and photos. You can see what people are claiming to be a 4th bedroom with having to go and see the house