We bought our home as a 3 bedroom. But when the appraiser came out it he called it a 2 bed with an office-because the one room did not have a closet. Fortunately it appraised out high enough as a 2 bed that the bank loaned on it. We eventually built a closet so it's a true 3 bed.

I don't know if the legalities are local or state, or if it's a policy by banks. Interesting that you found so many listings with oddities.

I have no idea why this room has a closet over the window area. In any case she would not be using it as a bedroom.It could also be reconfigured so the window opened to the bedroom.

Good if realtors can list rooms like this as bedrooms but in some areas, this one, they cannot.

Maybe because the window is actually in the room, there is a window between the room and the outside and there is the door to the hallway. Two means of egress by technicality.

But you are write, it is not determined by what listing says. They often cheat the number of bedrooms when one is clearly a den.

Our first house was sold to us as a three bedroom, but when we sold it our realtor told us our jurisdiction had really started cracking down and the finished part of the basement couldn’t count as a bedroom because the second exit was a door in the unfinished part. Real estate had gone up so much that it didn’t really matter, we still sold at a profit.

I know it is common in places other than the United States to forego closets in bedrooms, but in my locale, a bedroom can only be a bedroom if it has a closet and egress other than the door.

Here we could not really call the one space with the window in the bedroom a bedroom... the window has to be in the living space. AND, the only access to a bedroom can not be by going through another bedroom.

To be honest, a lot of agents know the formalities of it all, but will list it as a three bedroom just to get the normal amount of buyers to come out, and then the buyers can decide if it is a big deal to them or not.

here, would be called a den..or an office..listing probably mentioning a possibility to redo it into a bedroom if it has a window

There is old historic homes than never had closets in the bedrooms. They are still considered bedrooms and are grandfathered as a bedroom.

I just checked Appraisers Forum to see what definitions came up for a bedroom, there are several and apparently there is no official national standard definition of a bedroom in The Dictionary of Real Estate Appraisal.

One of the definitions by one of the appraisers is as follows:

"Ken B (screen name): The primary requirement for a room to be called a "bedroom" is that there is direct egress from the room to the exterior. An interior room with no window cannot be called a bedroom. A basement room must have a window with a sill not more than 48" from the floor and the window size must be large enough for a firefighter in full gear to enter the window. Rooms without closets may likely require a functional adjustment for the cost to add a closet, but if the neighborhood standard is no closet, than a functional adjustment is probably not necessary. HUD had/has a requirement that the room be no less than (if I remember correctly) 81 sf to be considered a bedroom. "https://appraisersforum.com/forums/threads/what-makes-a-room-a-bedroom.118242/

Also note, according to Florida Building Code the min area of a bedroom is only 70 sf but according to the above it would actually have to be 81 sf, which is very interesting.

When taking a listing I do look at the room size (measure actually), the fact that it has a door and an egress window. If it doesn't have a closet that fact doesn't eliminate it as a bedroom at all, but I list it as having no closet in the MLS so there are no surprises for those that show the property This occurs most frequently on the 3 or 4 bedroom + 'den that looks like a bedroom' type listings. Some buyers don't mind the lack of a closet at all, but the usual location of that bedroom is not ideal as it is more set up to be a den/office area right off the front door in my geographic area. Of course, there are examples where people have added "bedrooms" in wonky setups where you have to walk through a room to get to it. Those aren't bedrooms at all in many instances because they are missing at least one feature of the definition above (usually the window egress).

Edit: If you read the whole link I posted you will see that total sq footage of living area is more important in determining (appraisal) value than bedroom count.

I have lived in two states, and in both cases, the state real estate board did not have a prescribed definition of "bedroom". Zoning laws, however, do. But realtors in these states were not bound by such definitions. Realtors were deemed to be only providing marketing materials -- not a legal representation of the product.

One of those states, in particular, had an extremely hot real estate market AND most of the housing stock was 1850s to 1950s, when it was not unusual to have a bedroom without a closet or appropriately sized window. And houses were small (1500sf or less). In that state, it was not bad form to list a bedroom even if it didn't have a window or closet. In fact, it would have been a disservice to potential buyers, who were usually only using the second or third bedroom as an office or nursery until kids got to kindergarten (schools were terrible in this region). Closets weren't really necessary for those uses, and if the house was otherwise perfect, buyers just wouldn't have cared if the room technically met the definition of bedroom under the zoning code. So it would have been bad advertising to not list the house as a 2 bedroom. (And as an aside, in that state, the zoning definition of "bedroom" only required an egress, but did not require a closet.)

My parents live in a more typical suburban area, and if a non-bedroom was listed as a bedroom, buyers would have been annoyed by the agent doing that -- because it's just bad form in that area. It's not because the agents were legally required to list it as a non-bedroom/den. But simply because that's the etiquette/custom in that market.

I guess appraisers have different rules and are bound to the legal definition of bedroom. But this isn't really in an issue in, say, the hot neighborhood i described above where it is custom to list non-bedrooms as bedrooms, because there is a huge market of comps with similar "non-bedrooms" that were priced similarly as 2-bedroom houses -- even if only a 1 bedroom for legal purposes.

In this area, I dont think a room can be called a bedroom unless it has a closet. A bedroom should also have a point of egress to the outside for safety purposes. A room without a closet would be called an office, study, or whatever you want, for marketing purposes.

I have no real estate experience personally but DD does in her past. In desirable neighborhoods, sometimes it doesn’t matter, and people have used free-standing wardrobes or added small closets, even in tiny rooms to get what they need/want.

It is ruled by the State. Sometimes even the County. We looked at many homes back in the day and over and over in one county we were told the house sale could not go through until the seller updated all the house systems to current code. The price of the house reflected the new systems yet to be installed--but the time lines would be longer due to scheduling etc. One block over in a different county that wasn't true. Here, to be a bedroom it must have a closet. I don't know about windows above grade--never looked at one w/o I guess but in a basement to be a bedroom and to legally have anyone sleeping there, there has to be an egress window in the room. WE have a walk out so when it was built the two bedrooms downstairs were legal. Not by today's standards. When the County steps in and places the burden of the updating to new codes on the seller and does not allow "grand fathering" it is a win from that day forward for all those who would ever live there. The comment about the bank is curious. I would think the realtor and buyer could argue with reason that the home wasn't a three bedroom, the bank won't loan as if it is, and gotten a reduced price.

Appraisals are not as cut and dried here. A two-bedroom could easily appraise for more than a three bedroom on the same block for a variety of reasons.

The house with no closets was built at at time when there would not have been closets, I am just surprised the remodelers chose not to put one in the two larger rooms to be used as bedrooms.

In the house with the room variously labeled 3 bedroom or 2 bedroom den, this is the condition. These bedrooms historically have a little alcove where the window is, and in this house they included it in the closet. You open the door and the window is right there and off to the side is closet space.

I find that you have to take all real estate listings with a grain of salt, no matter the location. I’ve seen “bedrooms” with no windows many times. I’ve also seen the upper area of a 2 storey area included in the total square footage - if you can’t actually walk on it I don’t see how this can be part of the total usable space. The worst real estate description I’ve come across though was a house described as having a “shower in basement”. What would you expect? A small bathroom? No, it was a three sided, 3’ x 3’ acrylic shower stall plunked into the middle of the unfinished basement and hooked up to the water pipes in the overhead joists. Not even a shower curtain for privacy!

I’ve also seen the upper area of a 2 storey area included in the total
square footage - if you can’t actually walk on it I don’t see how this
can be part of the total usable space.

For taxation purposes, Ontario counts that portion of open area as sq. footage. Plus, all measurements are from the exterior walls of the structure. New home sales are similarly calculated.

A small bathroom?

I once bought a home with a 3 pce. basement bath. The first time I used the w.c., I discovered it was just sitting on the concrete. Ugh!

Where I am you have to have a closet and window large enough for egress to call it a bedroom.

A room with a door but no windows is a 'box room', not a 'den' or an 'office'. (A 'box room' is a storage room.) Without a door you have...an 'alcove'?

No room below ground is 'a bedroom' in my area -- although basements must have at least one egress 'window'. A 'bedroom' also must have both window and closet.