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July 18, 2008
Value for an extra bedroom?
We recently bought a two bedroom apartment in Park Slope and while renovating, were thinking of converting it into a 3 bedroom. My question is whether the cost of creating an extra bedroom would likely be recovered on resale. Thoughts?
Comments
You would have to change the C of O for the building, not a minor or cheap undertaking. Also, each resulting room would have to be a real compliant bedroom according to code. There are laws about whether you can call a room a bedroom or not.
If you try to represent it during a sale, in writing, as a three bedroom without the above two steps, and it turns out to be incorrect, you are setting yourself up for some serious blowback.
Posted by: Smokychimp at July 18, 2008 2:42 PM
I understand, though I would imagine whether we can legally call it a 3 bdrm or not, purchasers would see the increased value, and the reality that there are 3 bdrms there. I'm just wondering how much more two small extra bedrooms are worth, than one bigger one (even if it can't be marketed that way), and whether that makes up for the likely cost to redo all the molding, floor borders, demo and recontruction of walls in all 3 rooms.
Posted by: godel at July 18, 2008 3:29 PM
you don't have to chage the Cof O if you are just restructuring to add a room. If you are buying the apartment next door and making it into one big apartment then you do.
it will add to the value if the rooms are decent sixe and meet the criteria of a bedroom (window and a decent size, say 100sq ftish)
Posted by: just me at July 18, 2008 3:38 PM
I've always heard that there's a huge shortage of 3 bedroom apartments in NYC and that they generally sell for as significant premium over 2 bedrooms. Also, creating a bedroom is much less expensive than creating/renovating a kitchen or bathroom so you should be able to recover your costs and -- one would hope -- even make a profit. Btw, this is probably an easy question for a broker to answer.
Posted by: NeoGrec at July 18, 2008 7:28 PM
Respectfully the 3:38 post is not correct. A C of O change is not necessary for combining apartments together (or combining rooms to make fewer rooms, in other words making a building less densely occupied). A C of O is definitely required for legally subdividing rooms (making a building more densely occupied).
The square footage of a bedroom is code minimum 80 square feet with a minimum dimension of 8'-0" in either direction, along with a light and air requirement of a 10% minimum ratio between plan square footage and window square footage. In other words if the new resultant bedroom is 95 square feet, it needs 9.5 square feet minimum of window area. By code, both subdivided rooms must meet the light and air requirement.
Posted by: Smokychimp at July 20, 2008 5:22 PM
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