Bedrooms too small to be called bedrooms, how big a reduction in price?

[MojoJojo71]

DD and I live in a 2 bed flat at the moment and I’m looking to move into a bigger property. We don’t need an extra bedroom as such but do need more storage space so was looking at 3 bedrooms. I’ve just seen a beautiful Victorian house for sale just a couple of streets away which is marketed as a 4 bedroom but 2 of the ‘bedrooms‘ are TINY. Google tells me a bedroom under 70 square feet is suitable only for a child and that under 50 square feet is ‘uninhabitable’. Is that correct? In this house the 2 small rooms are 46 and 55 square feet. Do you think they are taking the mick marketing as 4 beds?

House was bought 5 years ago for £140,000, has had no major work that I can see and are now asking £180,000. My top budget is £170,000.

Would you view and try to get the price down due to the size of the bedrooms?

I don't know why everyone keeps going on about doing work to make a third bedroom seems an awful lot of people haven't read the OP.
It looks idea for you and your dd to me. Put in the offer but at 10000 under there's a good chance they won't accept. Depends on the area and the interest they get I suppose.

id definitely say the smallest one was an office. If it works for your needs then thats the important thing

I think they've swapped the back bedroom and bathroom over. Most houses of that period have the bathroom in the side bit. If you wanted to swap it back the plumbing might still be there!

Having an enormous bathroom and 2 tiny bedrooms would annoy me - not really a very good use of the space. I could cope with one box room but I think 2 is pushing it a bit if you're selling it as 4 bedrooms. I imagine that was originally a 3 bed house, with a washroom where the tiny back bedroom is, and the original large master sliced up to make a fourth bedroom. My guess is that originally the loo would have been an outside one in the back garden. I say this because we bought an unmodernised house with a similar layout about 20 years ago. We made a proper bathroom by adding a loo in the smaller back room, so we had a decent third bedroom (not a simple job as the drainage and soil stack needed to be moved).

I would say this is a standard three bedroom property that the owners have messed about with, swapping the bathroom and third bedroom and partitioning the front bedroom. On that basis, I would offer the going rate for a three bedroom property in the general area, maybe a bit less.

@Iminaglasscaseofemotion

Yes I agree.
I would be wondering if I was paying too much, how much it would cost for it to actually be proper 3-4 bed house as it’s marketed and perhaps reduce by that much or look at price of 3beds in the area.

Millions of children in the U.K. live in bedrooms those sizes. They’re completely standard for period third and fourth bedrooms and the owner will be bemused by your argument.
Why would they be bemused? The point PPs are making is that this is a trad 3 bed house that’s been reorganised and partitioned to make a badly-proportioned 4-bed. The price should reflect what it actually is. OP wants storage, not bedrooms, so maybe this works. But it would potentially be hard to sell for these reasons.

I think the layout could work really well for you if you need storage rather than bedrooms. The bedroom by the bathroom could be a study and you could make a lovely walk in wardrobe of the front bedroom.

Doing the work might reduce the value as you've turned a "4 bed" into a 2 bed but you're buying it to live in, aren't you?

If you like it and the layout works for you, the value is whatever you're prepared to pay/what you need to pay to get them to sell it to you, which I think should be similar to a 3 bed in the area.

Those descriptions of bedrooms sizes are for local authority houses, where the rules are slightly different. On the open market any room that you can fit a bed in can be classed as a bedroom.

A 7x7 ft bedroom is actually perfectly ok as a small single bedroom. It depends on the door and window position slightly but it's perfectly usable.

If you don't like the house or think it's overpriced don't buy it.

They are both box rooms. Single bedrooms. Able to take a bed and a peoce of furniture. Great for kids bedrooms.

Interesting that so many say those sizes are too small to be bedrooms.

Where I live (nice suburb of smallish city) the majority of the housing stock is 1920s-1980s and almost all has one small bedroom of 6-7ft X 7-8ft. Not two, admittedly, but still, huge numbers of kids have ax bedroom that size. Ds1's room in our old house was 6ft x7ft - the hall bedroom in a standard three bed semi.

OP I would view it and offer what you can afford. It would be fine for a family of four - one child gets the smaller bedroom and there is also a study.
.

Can you show us the actual photos of those rooms and how they’ve dressed them?

I would be happy to purchase if they price is similar to other 2 bedrooms properties.

Maybe book with agent to view. I have no idea price wise in that area, but if it’s still on the market then it’s too high. Maybe £150k is more like it.

It would be a good 2 bed with small study ( handy in Covid world), and a walk in storage room.

Everyone wants a home work space these days with Covid

Third bedrooms are always that size

If the layout and size of storage rooms works for you then it could work for you. Would you have potential to do a loft conversion at some point to maximise space/value?

@MojoJojo71

Unfortunately not able to combine the 2 rooms. For our purposes they would do as study/dressing room but they’re not big enough for bedrooms

It looks like they’ve sacrificed a bedroom for a bigger bathroom

Looks as though the en suite has made the room. By the bathroom even smaller.

However I have lived with bedrooms that size and though not ideal, they fit a single bed in and as such.are bedrooms.
You have a choice though in not buying!

I'm trying to work out what could possibly fit in the ensuite!

Look up the other houses on the street on Rightmove. I'm guessing that the bathroom has been swapped with the smaller adjoining bedroom at some point.
It's a fairly standard layout for that period.

They're not cupboards. This country is full of 3 bed semis and terraces with boxrooms like this. There are loads of thread on here about how to make boxrooms work for children and teenagers. when students are sharing houses, someone will often have a boxroom. The difference here is you get two of them, which arguably is great for a post-covid world because it's rooms for 2 kids plus an office. I agree it's difficult to value because lots of families would previously have preferred 3 good sized bedrooms.

Let go of all this stuff about what Google says is a legit bedroom. They are boxrooms, there's nothing illegal about them.

However in terms of value, I would think more broadly and look at 3 bed houses with a separate office elsewhere as comparators, rather than starting with "typical" 4 beds and trying to discount. Look at the whole market round this house's price, not just 4 beds. There are probably some "3 beds plus office" houses that are better comparators.

Over 8.5 foot is easily a standard single. I wouldn't call that one a box room at all. The other one, yes that is more of a box room, but is not that ridiculous - plenty of interwar 3 bed semis have a boxroom like that.

I find the question about whether you can knock money off a bit odd. They've either priced it appropriately or they haven't, and you offer accordingly. If the price was the same as a house with 4 double bedrooms, then you would think it overpriced, but if it's similar to say a 3 bed in the next street over then it doesn't seem overpriced. Without knowing the local market it is impossible for anyone on here to advise whether the price is reasonable or not.

If you didn't want to swap the bathroom and back bedroom (which I'd seriously look at doing, budget allowing) then I think that you could fairly easily squeeze in more space at the front by using the landing for bedroom 3 and changing the angles of the bedroom doors. Something like the attached.

That said, if it were me I'd swap the bathroom and back bedroom and re-instate the front bedroom as one huge room.

@Phphion

I would say this is a standard three bedroom property that the owners have messed about with, swapping the bathroom and third bedroom and partitioning the front bedroom. On that basis, I would offer the going rate for a three bedroom property in the general area, maybe a bit less.

Yes, this is exactly what’s happened. I live in a Victorian terrace and the layout is exactly what @Phphion has described.

The big master bedroom at the front has been partitioned, and they’ve swapped what would have been a tiny bathroom and good sized bedroom 3 around.

Sounds like it could still work for you but if it’s over budget then definitely haggle.