It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly extra bathrooms became such a status symbol on the London property market.
Ever since the Victorians made indoor plumbing the hot commodity (or should that be commode-ity?), having lavatories to spare has been a sign of property prestige.
A new report from Savills has highlighted just how much of a premium London househunters place on bathrooms.
Forget debates on under-versus-over for toilet roll, the new loo etiquette requires having as many bathrooms as there are bedrooms.
In London a typical three-bedroom house with two reception rooms will command an average asking price of £3,877,533 on a price-per-square-foot basis if it has three bathrooms — compared to a mere £2,653,573 if there are just two loos.
That’s more than £1.2 million for a bathroom, representing a 55 per cent uplift in the asking price.
The same trend plays out with one-bedroom flats in the capital, Savills found.
A one-bedroom home can command an average asking price-per-square-foot of £437,378 if it has just the one bathroom, versus £598,752 if there are two.
That’s £161,374 extra for having more bathrooms than bedrooms.
“Today buyers are paying a premium to not even have to share a bathroom with their household at all.”
“The relationship between bathrooms and the home have evolved over the years — but have always been an indicator of luxury,” says Frances McDonald, director of residential research at Savills.
“While once those most fortunate were able to have their own loo inside the home, today buyers are paying a premium to not even have to share a bathroom with their household at all.”
It’s definitely the bonus plumbing that does it. When Savills crunched the numbers they found that an extra reception room commands no premium on a price-per-square-foot basis.
“Flats tend to carry a higher premium than houses,” added McDonald. “Space is likely to be more restricted [in an apartment] and opportunities to extend are usually limited, so the prevalence of bathrooms from the offset is more important.”
This trend towards bathroom-maxing is apparent in the priciest homes currently on the London property market.
London’s most expensive listing, a five-bedroom apartment in One Hyde Park on the market for £60 million with The Cloisters, has five bathrooms.
No. 6 Buckingham Gate, with an asking price of £45 million via JLL, has eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms — including two entirely separate bathrooms serving the principal bedroom suite occupying the entire second floor.
A six-bedroom lateral apartment in Belgravia Gate on the market for £43.7 million with Knight Frank, has six bathrooms with an opportunity to add another to make it lucky number seven.
Heathfield House, one of London’s largest unsold mega-mansions, has 10 bedrooms and nine bathrooms, and is still on the market for £32 million
For those of us who are still renting, we’ll just have to stick with Katherine Ormerod’s neat trick with stick-on tiles to transform our bathroom, singular.
