"Bedroom" is not a bedroom

It's an alcove studio at best. It's not only too small, but it doesn't have the requisite closet. I wish people didn't look down on those of us who choose to live in small apartments. Many can be quite charming!!! Especially the prewars.

@davenezia A bedroom is not legally required to have a closet in NY. But yes, the dimensions are too small here to be a legal bedroom. Hate when brokers do this. Agree that there's nothing wrong with a charming studio, especially one with an alcove.

I hate how common this is amongst brokers.
I lived for years in an 80s condo conversion of a 30s building that had been sliced&diced a lot and not originally residential apartments. Plus 30 years of unit combinations.

As a result, even many of the "2 bedrooms" were in fact, legally.. studios!
Combinations of loft bedrooms & windowless "studies" and a few too-small rooms.
Made cross shopping units, and figuring out comparables a much more arduous exercise.

Would be nice if there were some sort of ethical rules for brokers and ways to report unethical conduct. But apparently there aren't, and I understand why brokers wouldn't want them.

If you want to see examples of bedrooms, which aren't bedrooms due to less than legal width, look in Brooklyn 2-3 family townhouses 18 foot wide and under.

These discussions really should be more conspicuous on listing pages.

There are George, simply go to the department of state's website and you can file a complaint through that.

That said, I think it would be nice if we had more choices when listing properties such as the one addressed here. I absolutely agree we should not be misleading people, and personally I don't think it was this broker's intention to do so. However, I know from working with thousands of buyers there are people that have limited resources, and love the idea of having a separate 'bedroom' when their budget allocates them to a studio. Many of these clients don't want a straight studio, so it would be helpful to have a designation so they could find these 'convertible 1 bedrooms'/studios with separate sleeping areas. Just becomes problematic searching for such properties.

I have a question for Keith: In my building, a lovely prewar, what had been a large "murphy bed house" has been enlarged into the living room with French doors and even a side entrance to create a separate "bedroom." Would this be called an alcove studio? My belief is that a "straight" studio, as you called it, is one where there is no additional designated place for a bedroom setup. Is this correct?

It's listed as a studio and the broker calls it a Jr1. The only time bedroom is used is with the floorplan which has probably been around for a while.

@stache. Streeteasy only just updated the listing to read "studio" instead of "one bedroom."

@davenezia hard to say without seeing an actual floor plan or photographs. But it doesn't necessarily sound like an alcove as much as a large studio that's been divided up a bit.

Question for you all, when I log into Streeteasy I have a broker facing dashboard. I don't find a tab for the discussion forum anywhere? I always just log in from the saved browser information. Is the tab there on your homepage? Just curious.

Keith I know what you mean. You really have to dig to find this forum. And INT, thank you.