Why do estate agents keep listing any spare room as a bedroom?

[Kisbsikf]

We’ve had our eye on this house lately, but it’s listed as a 4-bed… the thing is, one of those “bedrooms” is actually downstairs! To me it feels way more like a playroom or office than an actual bedroom.

Maybe I’m being a bit fussy, but it really feels more like a 3-bed that’s been dressed up as a 4-bed to get a few extra quid.

4 bedroom detached house for sale in High Street, Bristol, BS39 6HU, BS39

The estate agent's job is to act on behalf of the seller. Some people would consider using it as bedroom, so they have listed it as such in order to reach widest possible audience and sell at the highest price they can get. As a buyer, there is work involved in a home search - just move on if this one isn't for you.

Yes I really wish we could normalise listings with actual square footage. And so many other things.
Rightmove etc don’t seem to be keeping up with the times. I can filter a search for a top with neckline and sleeve length and material etc but for a far more important purchase the search is so basic!
Would love to see a filter for;
Garage
Annexe
Water view
Distance from a station

The bedroom thing. Yes I want to know what the maximum number of bedrooms please. That is a 4 bed house.

I would love houses to be valued by square metres.

I've found that many estate agents don't even add what the overall area of the house is.

When we were searching for. 5 bed this drove me nuts. I don’t think a downstairs room is a bedroom, they do it to maximise return but I’d never buy a house where one of the bedrooms I needed was downstairs!! I am sure there is a slim market for people who do want this but I agree estate agents shouldn’t talk it up!

So according to you, bungalows, caravans, chalets, ground floor flats don't have any bedrooms at all? If you don't think a downstairs room can be a bedroom?

I wouldn’t view any of these types of houses because they wouldn’t work for me and how I like to live. I would view a house and so if that is advertised incorrectly it would piss me off!

There is no rule that bedrooms can’t be downstairs, where do you think people who live in bungalows sleep? If the house doesn’t suit your needs don’t buy it.

Yes that’s kinda what the point of this thread is … estate agents making houses something they aren’t so people who wouldn’t want to buy it waste their time looking at it..

But some people would want it. Some families want a downstairs bedroom, some families need the extra rooms but budget doesn't stretch to having them all upstairs. It isn't wasting anyone's time just because you don't like those houses. Takes seconds to look at a floorplan.

I’ve just drawn a plan of the down stairs of my house for the electrician. Our 4th bedroom is in the converted garage.

We have a separate sitting room, a huge lounge diner with a 12ftx14ft family room coming off the back of it.

We bought the house specifically for that downstairs bedroom for then 18 year old ds. He can come come and go from the back utility door, he has a loo down there.

I don’t know what you’d need to use that room for if it wasn’t a bedroom, we already have two sitting areas.

I suppose it could make a lovely big office, but Dh works from home two days a week, and he’s built an hidden office in one of the alcoves in the sitting room. There’s more than enough room for everyone else in the kitchen diner and the family room while he’s working.

(Upstairs it’s the bog standard 1930s two double bedroom and a box room).

We bought it as a 4 bed. We’d be mad not to list it as one if we ever sold it.

But they are saying what the house is, this has to be one of the most bizarre threads I remember

Estate agents market a property as it is but MN say its illegal

I don’t think it’s illegal I just think it’s annoying!!!

But you realise not every listing is tailored to your specific requirements right? To you it's annoying, to someone else it is exactly what they're looking for.

I’m agreeing with the OP.

I’d be more concerned that there is no natural light in the ‘dining room’, (and no means of airing it when you have had a highly seasoned meal) than what someone calls another room.

My house is technically a five bedroom, three reception. But really it's four beds plus a box room and two receptions and an office.

How is it annoying it has the amount of bedrooms it states, i could call a kitchen a balcony doesn't make it one, a bedroom is a bedroom

Do people need to go back to school to learn what a bedroom is?

Many people on here refuse to accept that a downstairs room could ever be a bedroom.

They are expecting a listing to read "3 upstairs bedrooms and one downstairs room currently used as a bedroom but which could equally be a dining room, office or playroom" instead of the listing saying "4 bedrooms".

Ordinarily I'd agree with you OP, but the example you linked has an en suite and there is already a study, so it's convicingly a downstairs 4th bedroom to me. Shame they haven't put a photo in though.

Our house was listed as a 4/5 bedroom, the '5th bedroom' is downstairs and is pretty clearly a study, although you could just about fit a double bed in. I tihnk it was a way of the EA justifying pricing the house higher than an average 4 bed in the area but less than a 5 bed.

Where I live there a lot of bungalows where people have extended up into the roof, so it's very normal for 4+ bed homes to have 1-2 of the bedrooms downstairs and the rest upstairs.

In the houses in soaps, every room seems to be a potential bedroom, as more and more family members move in. Maybe EEs should move to advertising 'a 6 room house' or whatever? That could be three up three down (plus kitchen and bathroom(s) taken as read) or it could be two or four upstairs and studies/playrooms etc downstairs. That way people could find the number of rooms they need then look at the listing for more information about the layout.

In most cases YANBU but that is clearly a 3 bedroom house that has been extended to create an extra reception room and an obvious purpose-built downstairs en-suite bedroom, appropriate for if a family member or guest can't manage the stairs. There is already a "reception 3/study" room separate from that bedroom

I am infuriated by houses that are advertised with one more bedroom than they really have because the downstairs reception room has been relabelled as a "bedroom" and there is no non-bedroom space apart from the kitchen and bathrooms, but I don't think this house is guilty of that.

In general, for any house the floor area of non-bedroom rooms should be roughly equal to the floor area of bedrooms. The house you linked fulfils that.

This floorplan is the kind that really infuriates me - it is described as "5 Bed" but it's actually a 3-bed where the living room has been split into 2 small bedrooms leaving the kitchen-diner as the only communal space.

What a layout. Never seen anything like that. Presumably it's a HMO?

Money. And a room with an en suite seems to say ‘bedroom’ to me! If you had relatives who can’t cope with stairs etc. In the US the master suite is often on the ground floor, though this does just look like a guest room (teenage room)?
In my house the fourth bedroom is 6’x7’. If you put an actual bed in there you wouldn’t be able to open the door. Yet it doesn’t meet minimum requirements even for an older building. But that’s how they are all listed in my street.

They also call it High Street, Bristol! Its miles away from Bristol.

The set up would be very useful for us and a lady I was speaking to yesterday. Our fathers are in hospital together and soon to be released back into the wild to live with us. So, there is definitely a need for that set up for some people.