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I used to rent a 2 bedroom home. The home had a living room in the front of the house. Walk thru the front door and you would get to a small hallway. The door to the left was the dining room, strait ahead was the bathroom, and to the right were two bedrooms. If you entered the dining room there was another door on another wall that would enter the kitchen. The dining room and kitchen were two separate rooms. You could also enter the kitchen from the living room. Entering the kitchen you could walk to the back wall and another door entered a laundry room with a half bath at the end of the laundry room. The home also had a two car garage with an entrance from the laundry room. Hope that is not too confusing.
We used the dining room as a dining room. On that same street the homes were all about the same, built in the late 40's early 50's almost similar. Back then we only had one son. What I wondered was many families had a lot of people and I wondered to myself where everyone slept. Turns out that most people used the dining room as a third bedroom. I did always think it was strange having the entry to the dining room in the same hallway as the bedrooms. Not that it was much of a hallway.
So here is the comparison. People would advertise these 2 bedroom 1 bath homes as 3 bedroom 2 bath homes, or 3 bedroom 1 and a half bath homes. Even though it did have a half bath it was not much of a bath and in basically the garage area. For example the main house had all the rooms, and the garage part had this extra separate room with the laundry and half bath.
My point is that the 3rd bedroom did not have a closet and had two entrances, one of which was into the kitchen.
It really depends on where you live and what your appraiser counts as a bedroom when you go to sell. Or what the tax assessor counts as a bedroom. There is a definition. Someone can sleep in any room-- that doesn't make it a bedroom. A closet is not a bedroom even if you shove a desk and chair in it and pretend that a bed could fit. In the case of the house we toured because they called the closet a bedroom, the ACTUAL bedroom had no closet. A monkey could have deduced that something was amiss.
There is a post on another forum about a guy who wants to rent a 1bed and put his 12 year old daughter in the living room for "family togetherness." He can, but that doesn't suddenly turn that apartment into a 2BD.
<SNIP>
I get why an agent would advertise a more desirable bedroom number, but this is not based in reality. Any recourse?
Why would you need a recourse? Other than wasting time looking at their offering, were you harmed in any way? You could complain to their broker unless it was the broker who wrote the ad. And, would they care if you complained? There were a lot of folks looking at the '3 bedroom' verses the 2 bedroom so they knew what they were doing if their objective was to get folks in the door looking at it. Karma will come and bite them, though, when they get a reputation for being a shady brokerage.
You could post your experience on social media, which I guess this is somewhat.
"From the Mouth of an Appraiser:
To my great surprise the appraiser stated that in the Charleston SC area a bedroom is not defined by a closet. Why? To his understanding, during colonial times houses were taxed based on the number of bedrooms. The bedrooms were at that time defined by a closet. So, people got around taxation by building houses with bedrooms without closets, and instead used wardrobes and chifferobe. He went on to say that if a bedroom was defined by the presence of a closet, that many of the historic houses in downtown Charleston and the surrounding area would not have any bedrooms. Ultimately, the appraiser stated, a bedroom is defined not by a closet but by use. " What is a Bedroom? The Great Debate!
"From the Mouth of an Appraiser:
To my great surprise the appraiser stated that in the Charleston SC area a bedroom is not defined by a closet. Why? To his understanding, during colonial times houses were taxed based on the number of bedrooms. The bedrooms were at that time defined by a closet. So, people got around taxation by building houses with bedrooms without closets, and instead used wardrobes and chifferobe. He went on to say that if a bedroom was defined by the presence of a closet, that many of the historic houses in downtown Charleston and the surrounding area would not have any bedrooms. Ultimately, the appraiser stated, a bedroom is defined not by a closet but by use. " What is a Bedroom? The Great Debate!
In NC, you don't need a closet to count as a legal bedroom. All you need is at least 2 means of egress (window and door) and be a minimum of 70 square feet with no part of the room shorter than 7' in any direction (so a 7 x 10 room is as small as you can have for a legal bedroom). And it needs heat of course.
I see this in the condo complex where we live. The smallest units here have one bedroom. That is to say a space with a door, window and closet. They also have another space off the living room area that narrows by about one foot on each side. It has no door, window or closet but some people put another bed in it and close it off with a divider screen.
Some people who have these units are on the property tax rolls as a two bedroom and pay additional taxes and never even try to explain to the tax folks that they are strictly speaking living in a one bedroom unit and should have their taxes reduced. This also seems to confuse Zillow who appraise a one bedroom as a two bedroom which adds 100,000 plus on the estimated condo value.
In NC, you don't need a closet to count as a legal bedroom. All you need is at least 2 means of egress (window and door) and be a minimum of 70 square feet with no part of the room shorter than 7' in any direction (so a 7 x 10 room is as small as you can have for a legal bedroom). And it needs heat of course.
That explains why our finished basement area was advertised as a bedroom. It's 700 square feet, has windows and a door and has baseboard heat. It even has a full bathroom AND a super large closet (which apparently isn't needed). It's not very private though, since anyone coming through the garage walks right past it and the stairs have an open area looking right into the living space.
That explains why our finished basement area was advertised as a bedroom. It's 700 square feet, has windows and a door and has baseboard heat. It even has a full bathroom AND a super large closet (which apparently isn't needed). It's not very private though, since anyone coming through the garage walks right past it and the stairs have an open area looking right into the living space.
That does seem like it's pushing it. Around here, when people finish basements, they make private rooms for the bedroom(s) even if they leave an open area as family room/den type set up. And with 700 sq ft, it's not like there wasn't enough space to do that!
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