I want to rent out my flat but I may just sell it if the bank says I have to re-mortgage (I won’t be able to). So, I’ve been trying to get a value for it by looking around for similar flats in the area (Bristol). The prices are lower than I thought but all the flats have tiny rooms.

Two ‘double’ bedroom flats with rooms measuring 12x7ft. How do they get away with saying 7ft wide is a double bedroom? I consider my one bed flat to be generous but at 13x16ft the bedroom is twice the size so I csan’t imagine how they are doubles.

12×7 would be considered positively massive for a “double” in parts of London!

Give up, the Estate Agents have won the war sadly as so many people have bought the bullshit spiel for so long… My sister gets £700 a month for one of her rooms in her house in Islington, it’s rented out as a “double” and it literally fits a double bed in, with about a 2ft gap most of the way around it. The world has gone mad!

The world has gone mad!

Nope, just London.

Get a stud wall up down the middle and you’ve got two doubles at 13×7 3/4 foot 😆

I worked on a site once where the main bedroom had a built in wardrobe – the architect refered to it as “a childs bedroom”. I’m not sure he was joking.

In estate agent parlance a double bedroom is any bedroom in which a double bed will fit. Doesn’t matter about room round the bed.

Or indeed if the bed has to be dismantled and stacked against the wall to fit.

phils top tip of the day, turn any bedroom into a double bedroom by using bunkbeds.

advertise yourself through work etc much more chance of getting good people and a fair price as you can waive the agents fees and monthly cut

unless its 100 sq ft its a cupboard

If you can get a double bed and a wardrobe in its a double-bedroom. Regardless of squeezing round or aesthetic IMO.

unless its 100 sq ft its a cupboard

OH HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVE?!!

phil – thats only 10 ft x 10 ft or 14 ft x 7

TJ, worry not for i jest you posh man you 😀

dont tell darcy this but i own 2, yes 2 whole double beds… for i am a pimp.

my bed is 7 ft x 6 ft

42square feet of pure bed there TJ, remember that next time you see a homeless person.

What do you call a double bedroom?

Anything over 4m x 4m
that would be a minimum for a double for me to allow enough room either side and at the bottom

I’ve no idea how big my bedroom is (or care). I do know that hora juniors is MASSIVE though 😀

To the OP, just call it a triple bedroom. Job done. I should have been an estate agent.

Triple bedroom – I like that!

I wast tempted to put a partition down the middle of the window as it has a 6″ thick centre part between each side. But unfortunately it has just been tanked so I can’t really knock a hole in the wall for a new door.

I might put up a partition of some sort down the other end off an RSJ and make it a double bedroom with a dressing area/study. That is what I was going to do as I hate having a desk in the bedroom – I think if work needs to be done at home then it should be separated off. At least I could say it is a single bed flat with an office then.

I am going to see if they will let me rent it out for 9 months without any re-mortgage or rate rise. I really don’t want to lose my 1.2% above base rate.

The world has gone mad!

Nope, just London.

good place to be selling your property in a recession though – up 20% in 4 years 😉

Relevant to your interests:

“Riba estimates the floor area of the average new three-bedroom home in the UK is 88 sq m (947 sq ft) – some 8 sq m (86 sq ft) short of its recommended space.
..
And houses are getting smaller. The average UK home – including older and new-build properties is 85 sq m and has 5.2 rooms – with an average area of 16.3 sq m per room.

In comparison the average new home in the UK is 76 sq ms and has 4.8 rooms with an average area of 15.8 sq m per room.

— ’Shoebox homes’ become the UK norm (BBC News, 14 Sep 2011)

Why on earth do we advertise and buy houses on the basis of how many rooms & bedrooms they have, rather than how much actual space they have?

We have two small bedrooms at the front of our house which would originally have been one massive master bedroom. I’d love to restore it back to that but I was advised that “losing a bedroom” would cost me tens of thousands, even though the floor space would be identical. Madness.

What do you call a double bedroom?

anything you like, it can’t hear you.

igmc.

Why on earth do we advertise and buy houses on the basis of how many rooms & bedrooms they have, rather than how much actual space they have?

Because we are retarded. Just about the rest of the world uses floor space apart from us, but it’s clearly to difficult for our tiny brains to handle as the whole ‘3 bedroom plus study’ thing has stuck.

Weird, but as you say you have to play the game to get the best return.

I noticed that Ocean estate agents in Bristol only quote room sizes in feet and inches. Obviously quoting the lengths in metres would make the rooms seem smaller due to the lower figures. Surely that is illegal these days?

A polish colleague was asking me about this kind of thing the other day – I work in mm and metres, centigrade etc but when driving I have to do distances in miles and when we deal with human bodies it is feet, stone, Fahrenheit.

Why would it be illegal? They’re not telling porkies, are they? It’s pretty much the same reasoning as was behind the change from gallons to litres at the petrol pumps.

All the EU rubbish about things needing to be clearly in metric (not saying I have a problem with them quoting feet, just be nice to quote both and save me the maths).