Do Bedrooms Need to Have Closets?
Posted Mar 3, 2008 @ 9:30 pm, Viewed by 719 Visitors, Read 784 Times.An interesting question came up from one of my listings a few days ago. There is a bedroom in the lower level of the home, which is below grade. There is an egress window in the room.
The owner of the home built a cubby approximately 10 feet wide by 5 feet deep in this bedroom with the intention of putting up doors and making that area the closet. However, the doors were never installed.
I listed the home as a three bedroom; I did not include the fourth bedroom downstairs because it did not have the closet doors. I assumed it was not an official bedroom.
The owner called me up and said he would prefer to have the home listed as a 4-bedroom. He also said he would install the closet doors if that was the only holdup to having his home listed as a 4 bedroom.
I checked my handy Realtor’s Association of Northwestern Wisconsin square footage guidelines, but found nothing about bedrooms needing to have a closet. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought there was some regulation stating all bedrooms had to have a window of sufficient size and a closet to be called a bedroom.
I then called up the folks at the board office, and they could not immediately tell me if bedrooms need to have closets.
The next day, though, I got an email stating the following:
Good morning Mike,
We’ve attempted to do some research regarding your question on whether or not a bedroom has to have a closet before it can be considered a bedroom. Several appraisers we chatted with stated that both the FHA and VA require that rooms have closets before they can be considered as bedrooms, but they don’t know if any conventional mortgage companies have that requirement. The consensus of opinion among them is that, while a room without a closet may certainly be used as a bedroom by the owner, the room should not be advertised as such.
Since the owner is willing to put up the doors if need be, I changed the listing to a 4 bedroom.
The moral of the story is that this is still a gray area. Rooms without closets shouldn’t be advertised as bedrooms, but there does not appear to be a rule against it.
Rate this Post!
Share this Post
Print
Social Bookmarking5 Responses to “Do Bedrooms Need to Have Closets?”
Yes no doubt the exact rules will vary from one MLS to the other. Thanks for your comment, Ken!
Ken beat me to it regarding our MLS rules - basement bedrooms can be listed but they will not show up in the total "count" of bedrooms when performing a search on the MLS. I have been told that having an armoire for clothes can be considered a closet but now I'm not sure if that would fly with an appraiser.
Great responses from Ken and Judy but what does the tax records say? Every time I have had a seller tell me that they had more rooms or squarefootage then what is listed in the tax records my response was that the tax record information is public knowledge. If you advertise your home as something different then what the tax records say there are three things that can happen.
You could create doubts in the buyers mind as to anything else you tell them (the buyer or buyers agent sees x bedrooms and looks up the tax records and it says y 
.
You could get a call from the county tax accessor.
Or you could get a knock on your door from the building inspector.
Those are 3 excellent points Bob, thanks!
REW Blogs User Stats
Currently Online Users:
1
Total Users:
1,742
Entries:
5,153
Unique Views:
2,565,808
Total Views:
2,659,713
Total Comments:
5,153
I believe that real estate consumers do not have enough choices, and I am on a mission to solve that problem in my town of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Read More
Contact Me
RSS Feed- This User's Stats
-
Blog Entries: 24Average Blog Rating: 0Unique Views: 8,862Total Views: 9,236Comments Posted: 10Comments Received: 21
Top Rated
REW Blogs RSS Feed
A room must have 3 things to be a legal bedroom. First is needs a closet, then an excape window, and then a heat source. Without anyone of these items it can't be used as a bedroom for appraisal purpose. Our MLS takes it one step further and we can't list any bedrooms in a basement even if they do meet all of the requirements of an appraiser.