Bedroom: Does It Need A Closet?
I am going to solve one of the biggest real estate mysteries. I am going to settle whether you need a closet to consider a room, a bedroom. So in Santa Cruz County, my whole career, I have discovered lots of rooms, spaces we have, I’ve actually seen, not far from me, I literally saw a toilet in a closet. Yep, it’s true. It was just a regular old closet and there was a toilet in it. Wild. Housing is expensive here and people try to carve out private spaces away from other people in existing houses. And when they do, they carve out rooms, build shacks that they think are rooms or proper housing.
I have seen it all, an appraiser sent me an email and, in this email, does a bedroom have to have a closet to be a bedroom? I have always been reluctant to talk to a buyer at an open house if a room did not have a closet, was it considered a bedroom. So I’d be holding open a house, and in this house there would be a room without a closet. Because in Santa Cruz you will get every kind of room there, every house has some space and you are always questioning if it’s legal or if it’s a bedroom room. When I’m talking to that person at the open house, I always say, well, you know, it’s considered space. The appraiser will consider it as space. They will, they will add it to the usability of the house and then they will price it accordingly and give the value on it. Really trying to step away from any legal questions or anything because I don’t know. There is an international residential code, the IRC, and I never heard of that.
Definition of a Bedroom:
- The room needs two exits, a window and a door. Now trust me, I’ve seen a lot of houses that have had a lot of doors and no windows. I guess that qualifies because it just needs two exits.
- The room needs 70 feet of floor space.
- Heating or ventilation. And I want to add a little asterisk on the ventilation. Even if you don’t need that space heated, you need a way to vent it, a window or a way to get airflow through there. That’s a super unhealthy living space if you don’t have that. I’m on board with that. Heating or ventilation. And then ventilation of course could be the heating coming through the heater vents.
- Two or more electrical outlets sounds good. And that they work and that they are grounded. That’d be great not required to be grounded but ideal.
- Access from a hallway or a common area, not through another bedroom, which I thought was key because there’s a lot of bonus area off other rooms.
- Ceiling height, at least 50% of it needs to be seven feet. I have a picture of a client with the ceiling literally on top of her head and she’s not quite six feet. In that room, I think that was the tallest part and it didn’t have a closet, but that’s not a requirement to be a bedroom. You don’t need a closet. But it did not have the other things except maybe 70 square feet. What’s the key takeaway? The key takeaway is you don’t need a closet. You need the other elements. And I would say always check if it’s a mobile home, rural area, those regulations are different. Certain cities, county, states where you are might have different definitions, but this definition to me is one that I can confidently quote from the IRC International Residential Code.
As you’re cruising through those Santa Cruz County houses, now you have some criteria to evaluate different rooms. Like, is this a bedroom? It doesn’t have a closet. Wait. Let me go through all those other points.