Misleading listings on rightmove

[Upsidedownsides]

There seems to be a new estate agent trick when listing properties, to take dining rooms and extra living space and list them as bedrooms to try and improve a properties chances against the filters. So as long as the property has a living room and kitchen every thing else is listed as a bedroom, even when it quite obviously isn’t.

I dont know why RM allows it. It’s such a waste of time, you click on a property and it is just so unsuitable. This one for example is listed as 4 beds, it’s barely 3!! You could only get a single bed in the third bedroom and wouldn’t be able to get any storage in.

Yes this annoys me as well, plus there’s a legal requirement on the size of a room to be called a bedroom and I’m pretty sure the 3rd bedroom on the house you showed is under that size.

It could be the other way round though. You might be able to tell from the photos? Current owner is using that downstairs room as a bedroom but wants to market it showing what it could be used for or was used for originally?

That’s an old trick but it’s very obvious it’s a 3 bed house.

Yes it's an oldie but still annoying. I was looking through houses yesterday and two identical-fronted houses one street away from each other were both listed as 5-bed at the same price, so I clicked on both. I was on the floor plans when I realised one was a genuine 5-bed as it had a loft conversion and one was a 3 bed with notions. Both had 2 downstairs receptions (living and dining room) but on the 3 bed with notions, both downstairs receptions were marked as bedrooms. Such nonsense! Since I want a 4/5 bed house, surely I clearly want enough downstairs living space to accommodate everyone! Or at least a living room!

That third bedroom is substantially larger than mine...

Every 3 bed house on this estate has a third bedroom which is 2.8 x 1.78m. And it's above the stairs so we have the box cut out by the door as well. It's a PITA, but we all have bespoke made beds / built in cabinets to fit the space. The rooms are used as WFH offices, or housing strapping teenagers and everyone in between.

I'd agree about bedroom 4, however in this case it's adjacent to a full bathroom which at least makes sense that it can be used as a proper bedroom!

The legal bedroom size is 6.5m2. Thats 7.8m2.

The "legal" bedroom size isn't that simple though - it applies in different ways to new builds, HMOs, council calculations for overcrowding and is frankly optional for compliance in many circumstances.

It does sound like they're being a bit cunning in not spelling it out properly; but those rooms could still be used as bedrooms.

They could be absolutely perfect if you have a disabled or frail person in the family for whom stairs are not a possible/safe option - so they can have their own accessible bedroom whilst the able-bodied family members can use the upstairs bedrooms - if there's also a bathroom (or potential for one) downstairs.

Are they marketing them as student lets?

Of the point here but I once viewed a house with a very small third bedroom upstairs. Before I went I compared the size to my mums box room and realised because of the box from the stairs jutting into the room, there was no way a single bed would fit in. However, it had a huge L shaped open plan living/ kitchen with another separate room downstairs which I thought I could use as a study/spare bedroom so I arranged a viewing.

All was going well until the agent showed me the small bedroom and I saw there was a bed in it. I was curious about the make of the bed that had to be shorted than a normal bed so moved the duvet aside. I then found out that the owner had created a fake bed using cardboard boxes and plastic bags filled with newspapers then put bedding over it! I lost interest at that point as I wondered what other tricks he had used in other areas!

Amusingly, a year or so later, I was chatting to a work colleague about my new house and mentioned this story to highlight how challenging viewings can be. Turned out the house belonged to an uncle of hers and she knew about the fake bed!

Yes we found the same when moving a few years back and it’s very annoying but not new. Means you have to filter them all out manually. Plus by adding this extra bedroom it seems they think they can up the price to the next level, even though it’s taken out valuable downstairs living space which is often needed with children.

There are a few 3 bed houses around here advertised as 4 bedroom, with a downstrairs room listed as a 4th bedroom.. They are priced a lot higher than 3 bedroom houses, even though that is what they really are. It obviously doesn’t fool anyone, as they’ve been on the market for months without selling.

I think that if there's a bathroom adjacent and a second reception, as in your example, then it's legitimate to describe it as a bedroom. It might be less valuable to most people than having all the bedrooms upstairs but personally I don't think it's wrong to describe it as a bedroom.

I don’t think this is a new thing? We bought our first house around 22 years ago and it was happening even then.

If the reception/bedroom was a loft conversion (and the room on the ground floor didn't exist) would you consider it a 4 bed house?

the problem is that people strongly filter their search by the number of bedrooms. and I could certainly imagine a family with a toddler (going in box room) and a teenage step-kid (in downstairs room) and parents and two primary age kids would search for a 4 bed house and might find that configuration works perfectly.

it just means you always have to look at the floor plans.

houses should also be advertised according to the number of square meters of space you actually buy - that distinguishes 4 tiny bedrooms from 3 generous ones.

Ha! That's clearly a 2 bed with an office!

In my area they’ve started including external detached garages in the total square area of the house.

Last week there was a house with no garage being listed as a house with garage subject to planning permission which may or may not be granted 😂 what a waste of time!

I wish RM would do more to stop this though.

My third bedroom is smaller than that and it just about fits a single and some drawers! Agree it’s definitely not a 4-bed though

it’s just frustrating, they do it to get the property in front of more people, but I’m searching for a 4 bedroom house because I want 4 bedrooms! Not a dining room where I can stick a bed….

Yanbu around here they include the garages in the square footage. So annoying.

See, for us that downstairs layout would be great as we need a downstairs bedroom & bath/shower room. The upstairs not so much. When we do the work we want to do here, one room will be listed as a living/bedroom if & when we come to sell.

Not everyone has your living preference though. My house has an extra reception room which when I bought it was sold as a potential extra bedroom. There are some families with elderly parents for whom that would be perfect or people wfh and have newborns and deck that out as a temporary play/bedroom so they can nap close by downstairs while they’re working. It’s not wrong that people want to capture the maximum audience for their house sale. Sensible really. Also not a huge inconvenience to you surely. There’s only so many new properties that come on the market every week tailored to you.

No issue with it at all, I know plenty of people that use the second reception as a bedroom. Also, I prefer it this way as I need 4 bedrooms plus an office, so this way I can look for 5 beds and get what I need 🤷‍♀️

I wish EA would come up with a way to search by number of reception rooms, or by rooms that could be either bedroom or reception. That would help the people needing bedrooms for elderly or disabled relatives or office space.

We didn’t need many bedrooms but did want a living room, dining room and 2 home offices. That meant setting up searches for minimum three bedrooms and then trawling through the vast numbers of results that came up, the vast majority of which weren’t at all what we wanted. Ended up buying a six bedroom house!