Is this house layout unhinged?

[DevilsKitchen]

Or is it just me?

A “four bedroom” house that is actually a generous 2 bed with storage, a study and a dining room.

The person in bedroom 3 doesn’t have a toilet on their floor, and bedroom 4 is only accessed via the utility room. Meanwhile you have a bog each on the top floor!

£380k - actual normal 3 bed house with conventional kitchen/diner, living room and utility in same area going for £375k!

I like it, the downstairs could be almost a self contained studio if you turned the utility into a kitchen.

It is unusual, and I wouldn't buy a house with that layout unless I wanted a 2 bedroom house and the price was comparable with that of 2 bed houses. I would be concerned about resale as most people looking at 4 bed houses would be using the bedrooms for children, and that layout wouldn't suit young ones at all. Even now my eldest is 14 and I wouldn't want her on the ground floor 2 floors away from me at night.

@Comff that’s an interesting point. I suppose it would work for some people, perhaps if you had an elderly relative.

@emsyj37 yes that’s the thing, it’s not a 4 bed, it’s barely a 3 bed…and it’s a good £100-£120k more than the 2 beds in the area.

Pretty much all modern townhouses have a layout something like that. Is it mad as a box of frogs? Sure. But evidently developers find they can sell them; they certainly keep building them!

I've seen (and, to be fair, nearly bought) a variation where the ground and first floors back onto earth, and access to the garden was via the second floor where most of the bedrooms were!

I looked at a new build 10ish years ago with a similar layout except the garage was a full garage with no downstairs bedroom. We thought it was a crazy layout then. Who would actively choose for the entrance to their home to be via garage and utility?

Unconventional yes but unhinged is a bit OTT. Hard to comment on the price without knowing the area and seeing details of other houses with a similar price tag.

Probably wouldn't suit a family with young children but a teenager or young adult might like the downstairs room.

Our obsession with needing a bathroom on every floor is a relatively recent idea. I spent first 18 years of my life in a house (dormer bungalow) which had no toilet or bathroom on first floor where mine and my brother's bedrooms were. It was not an issue.

It is a bit weird-why does the utility room have double doors to the garden, presumably used to be the kitchen?

@Persipan i agree townhouses can be odd but my brother has one that’s nowhere near as bad.

Ground floor - kitchen, dining room and small utility cupboard
First floor - living room, bedroom 3 and WC
Second floor - master bedroom with en suite, family bathroom and bedroom 2

@UltramarineViolet it’s £5k more than a conventional 2 storey detached 3 bedroom house with a garage, kitchen diner, living room and utility

This is one that baffled me recently- I can’t understand why the developers would design a house with such awkwardly shaped rooms, when they could have put a normal square house in the same space?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/147209276#/?channel=RES_BUY

Hardly what I'd call unhinged. It's a fairly standard townhouse layout.

At least unlike some all your living areas are together.

A few in the street I used to live in converted the 'garage' into a sitting room so the ground floor was like a self contained flat

@Fudgetheparrot yeah that’s weird. It’s quite a nice house but you would have to get so much bespoke furniture 😫

I'm with you, OP. I wouldn't find accessing a bedroom via a utility room standard at all.

Townhouses are never practical. The "not deep enough for car" description of the garage has killed me though.

it’s £5k more than a conventional 2 storey detached 3 bedroom house with a garage, kitchen diner, living room and utility

But it's presumably quite a bit cheaper than a conventional 4 bed house so may appeal to a family who need 4 bedrooms but have a tight budget.

I think it depends what you need and for some families it could work. Eg. Elderly relative could live fairly independently in bedroom 4 without using stairs and the utility could be their little kitchen with a halogen hob or air fryer. Upstairs for a couple with or without a dc and bedroom 3 could be a study.

To be honest, I rarely get up for the loo at night and if I do, I sneak downstairs so I can flush and not wake dh so that really isn’t a big deal for me. I guess we all have things that are important but we differ. I’ve never understood the issue of a downstairs bathroom in old Victorian terraced houses yet my mum is horrified by the thought.

Aside from a weird AF layout, check out the actual sq ft of the floor. Some of those rooms must be tiny! That’s about the same footprint as a 2 bed terrace.

Other than accessing the bedroom through the utility room I think it’s fine.

Grew up in a ( old, 4 bed) house with a downstairs loo/bathroom only. Wasn't a big deal whatsoever.

Saw a townhouse quite like this a while ago - not a conventional layout, certainly, but could see how it would have worked. The footprint and room sizes were bigger, though.

Tbh it’s a pretty standard new build town house lay out

These are the standard townhouses near me so fairly similar but no bedroom on the middle floor

Townhouses are like that though and not everyone lives in a house where there is a loo on the same floor as every bedroom!!!!

The downstairs bedroom arrnagement could work well for an elderly relative or a young adult not left home yet, stick a kettle and fridge in the utility and they've got a kitchen, electric hot plate and air fryer

Means you lose out on the utility though

It’s a house for a woman who’s fed up of DH. He gets a little kitchen, bedroom and living room (pointless garage) to keep his collectables/mess/work/unappealing habits and she gets a nice house upstairs

It looks to me like they’ve converted the garage and relabelled the study. I’d say it’s a nice 2 bed with owners who have delusions of grandeur.

It would be better to have a bigger kitchen and a toilet in the space for bedroom 3 in my opinion - it’s a tiny bedroom only suitable for a small child and you wouldn’t put a child that age on a separate floor. I suppose that would mean it would have to be sold for less, though.