Half-baths can be worth more than full bathrooms, WSJ finds
When is half worth as much as — or even more than — a whole?
When it's a bathroom.
That's the surprising conclusion that the Wall Street Journal reached after reviewing Realtor.com data: Single-family homes with a single bathroom were listed at a median $85 a square foot; a half bath (no shower or tub) boosted the median to $93, whereas two full baths brought the median to $107.
And for luxury homes with numerous bathrooms, the chart stops showing any such steady climb in price. In fact, homes with 4.5 bathrooms and homes with five bathrooms are nearly the same price. Homes with 6.5 bathrooms list for more than homes with seven (or even eight) bathrooms.
Why? The Journal floats a couple of possibilities:
• Half-baths may signal luxury amenities like staff areas and poolhouses. A $39 million listing in Los Angeles' Bel-Air neighborhood, for instance, has eight half-baths, including one off the tennis court, one off the wine cellar and one off the bar. Those are in addition to its nine full bathrooms, one of which is pictured here at the top.
• In a big house, a ground-floor half-bath might be the most trafficked bathroom, a National Association of Home Builders official says.
• "You get to the point of diminishing returns with the full bath," the official says.
Click here to read the full report at the Wall Street Journal's website.
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