Why Are There So Many Bathrooms in the Houses on Selling Sunset?

last year

Interesting article from New York Magazine on the reasons why new builds (both multifamily condos and single family homes) have so many bathrooms.

https://www.curbed.com/2023/05/selling-sunset-luxury-home-market-bathroom-bedroom-ratio.html

Why Are There So Many Bathrooms in the Houses on Selling Sunset?

Kim Velsey, who is Curbed’s real-estate reporter.8:00 A.M.

Early in season six of Selling Sunset, one of the brokers holds an open house for a $22 million oceanfront property, a monstrously sized cedar-shake house in Manhattan Beach. Sadly, the showing does nothing to sell the place (and the cast members in attendance get into a huge fight), but the house, with its four bedrooms and nine bathrooms, remains a perfect example of one of the show’s more quietly deranged elements: Every listing, without fail, has a nearly two-to-one bathroom-to-bedroom ratio. Many features of the ultra-high-end homes seem obvious in their appeal — saunas, kitchens swathed in marble, Barbra Streisand’s basement mall — but what is up with all the bathrooms?

Toilet inflation is endemic to the Los Angeles luxury market — Meghan and Harry’s Montecito home has nine bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, while the Spelling estate has 14 bedrooms for its 27 bathrooms — but a slightly more restrained form is common in New York City. In Manhattan, as a minimum luxury standard, new developments will have a one-to-one bedroom-to-bathroom ratio, plus an extra powder room, says Dan Parker, a managing director at Compass Development Marketing Group. The really top-tier penthouses, he adds, include double bathrooms off the primary suite. (It’s considered déclassé to plunk down two toilets within the sight lines of the bed, so you need to build what is essentially a bathroom-and-closet wing adjacent to the bedroom — but buyers love it.) Parker, who gets notes from the showings at new developments, says one from the Bellemont, a Naftali condo on the Upper East Side, read, “You had me at the double bathrooms.”

Americans have been wanting, and getting, more bathrooms for at least the past 50 years, says Alison K. Hoagland, an architectural historian who wrote The Bathroom: A Social History of Cleanliness and the Body. As early as 1964, focus groups had determined a second bathroom was indispensable. A decade later, 20 percent of Americans had two or more bathrooms. By 2013, the number had increased to 51 percent. In new construction, second bathrooms are now standard. “We love our bathrooms,” says Hoagland. “It’s about a lot more than cleanliness — it’s also about luxury and isolation. That’s where you go to get away from your family.”

“All of our houses have at least a one-to-one bedroom-to-bathroom ratio,” says Roger Seifter, a partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects, a firm known for its work on the ultraluxury condos 15 Central Park West and 220 Central Park South. “Some of it is territorial; some of it is people have different habits. In these high-end houses, they don’t share closets, either.” The primary bedroom will typically have two bathrooms, and the guest suite may as well. It’s not uncommon, Seifter adds, for a bathroom to be off a dressing room, rather than directly off a bedroom, and to provide a pit stop — a half bathroom right off the bedroom — so people don’t have to go stumbling through their closet to get to a toilet in the middle of the night. And if there’s a gym, a pool, or any other place people will be getting sweaty, you’ll need a full bath off each of those. “The count just goes up,” he says. “We do have clients who, after the fact, total up the number of bathrooms and are like, ‘I can’t believe we did this.’”

Unsurprisingly, having so many bathrooms can raise some issues — and not just of the plumbing variety. Parker says that in apartments with four or five bedrooms, even with a one-to-one bed-to-bath ratio, hallways can end up feeling like, We’re just warehousing bathrooms. In which case, it’s necessary to change things up with different tile patterns and such, “so we’re not just creating the same secondary bathroom over and over.”

Some of the blame in cities falls on zoning codes that lead developers to build blocky buildings with lots of windowless interior space — what else are you going to do with all that space except fill it with bathrooms and closets? Conveniently, that dovetails with what buyers want anyway. People are influenced by what they see at the best hotels, says Seifter: “They visit and think that’s what they should have for their bathroom at home — the kind of amenities they find at an Aman or Four Seasons. Very spalike, with five or six fixtures and space for furniture, like a chair, so you feel like it’s not just a room to do your ablutions.” At bottom, it’s a flex. Why not have a bathroom for all occasions? As Seifter puts it, “It’s a matter of they can, so they do.”

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Kate

last year

Interesting all those people with all that space and bathrooms are telling the rest of us how to conserve and protect the environment, go figure.

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Comments (19)

Marie J.
last year
Interesting- thanks for sharing. Selling Sunset is my mindless entertainment after a long day. However, I wouldn’t have called the Manhattan Beach house ”monstrous” at 4,400sf. That’s what made having nine bathrooms so weird to me with that square footage. I loved the interior.
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PRO
Sabrina Alfin Interiors
last year
last modified: last year
If you think about it, kitchens and bathrooms are always the things that make a sale on any home, aside from it's location. I'm guessing if you subscribe to the "more is better" philosophy, then having more bathrooms helps justify the exorbitant listing price. I agree it's more than a little ridiculous to have 9 baths in a 4400 sf house--I'd bet at least two of them are powder rooms and/or pool house/guest house baths.

In any event, I don't think this phenomenon is happening with typical suburban homes. It's when you get into houses that cost upwards of $10-15 million that this is even a thing.

ETA: Large houses often have servant quarters as well, e.g. live in housekeepers and/or nannies who need their own bedrooms/baths. When you're talking homes that cost this much, owners are likely to have live-in help.
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chispa
last year
I think this is happening in "typical" developments with en suites for every bedroom trickling down market. Nearly all the value of that Manhattan Beach house is the land value and not the actual house, which is not typical for most other areas of the country.

For retirement we built a large house, but mostly due to making all the living spaces large. I went very minimalist with bathrooms. The guest/kids "wing" has one hall bathroom and a powder room. The office (4th bedroom) also has a hall bathroom and it also serves as pool bathroom. Master has one bathroom. I also have a formal powder room. So total is 3 full bathrooms and 2 half baths.

Similar sized houses probably have 4 - 6 full bathrooms. I just saw no need for all those full bathrooms. My parents visit often and my mother complains every time that I didn't give her an en suite guest bathroom! The bathroom is right across the hallway and there is also a pocket door that can be closed to completely separate the guest/kids "wing" from the living areas.

Lack of secondary en suites might be an issue when we go to sell, but not something that we are worried about. The bedrooms are large with good sized walk-in closets, so a future buyer can feel free to reconfigure the spaces and add more bathrooms!
K R
last year
All new builds that I have seen these days have en-suite bathrooms. Some primary bedrooms have 2, his and hers. If not full extra bathrooms then they have 2 toilet rooms. Most larger higher end homes have 2-3 extra bathrooms, usually a powder room, a full cabana bath off the pool (if there is a pool), and/or a game room/media room bathroom. I have to say I’m a big fan of en-suite bathrooms. I just moved from a house built in 2003 to a new build and I much prefer having a guest room with a bathroom built in than a bathroom in the hall that guests use when staying - even if the bathroom is theirs and theirs alone. I do think the amount of bathrooms can seem to be excessive but it is nice having more options especially if you entertain a lot. I think over time builders have put more thought into what people who entertain would like to see, rolling with the changes.
Kendrah
last year
Wow, and I felt like a diva because I wanted at least 1.5 baths when we moved into our 2 bedroom apartment.
worthy
last year
last modified: last year
The higher ratio of baths to bedrooms in larger builds may relate to projected partying. Who needs inebriated strangers relieving all sorts of matters in private loos?

*****

... more than a little ridiculous to have 9 baths in a 4400 sf house--I'd bet at least two of them are powder rooms ....

Our last build was six bedrooms in 4,200 sf plus finished basement. Four ensuites, one full guest bath and one powder room. The absolute biggest drawback on selling was the paucity of bathrooms.
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Mrs Pete
last year
The primary bedroom will typically have two bathrooms, and the guest suite may as well. It’s not uncommon,

Yeah, double bathrooms in the master (much less double bathrooms in the guest suite) and more-more-more bathrooms are uncommon. This quote is from someone trying to sell something.

so people don’t have to go stumbling through their closet to get to a toilet in the middle of the night.

"Stumbling through the closet" ?

Why not have a bathroom for all occasions?

- Expensive to build /drives up the square footage unnecessarily

- Requires weekly cleaning as well as stocking of products

- Prone to expensive repairs

I'm guessing if you subscribe to the "more is better" philosophy

A philosophy closely related to "bigger is better". Both are false.
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chispa
last year
More is sometimes better.

Bigger is sometimes better.

One size does not fit all!
bpath
last year
last modified: last year
When my parents built their house in 1970, there was a J-n-J for the boys, I had an ensuite, and the third upstairs bedroom, intended for a housekeeper, had an ensuite. Instead, it was my grandmother’s suite after her heart attack. Downstairs, the primary had a his-and-hers, a bath by the study so it could also be a guest room (and it was), and a bath by the back door for coming in from the lake. So, basically 7 baths, 5 bedrooms.

But honestly, when you look at the almost de rigueur primary bath, with double vanities or even two vanitiies, and both a tub and a shower, a second toilet is the only thing keeping it from being two bathrooms.
kl23
last year
I just like the privacy. I assume others do too. Maybe not, but I would like to provide privacy for those I love. So my goal is a private bathroom for every bedroom plus one downstairs for company, so they don't have to invade the privacy of the other bathrooms. Maybe not the best choice of words but gets at privacy being key for me.

Maybe it's an issue too for blended families from divorces too or even blended households where multigenerational or somewhat related inlaws live together for support. We see a lot of single story houses being built up and bigger parking areas put in for families of two siblings living together.

Anyway, at the level of one per bedroom plus one more for guests, I don't think it's a matter of just showing off.
PRO
Mark Bischak, Architect
last year
There may be dietary concerns.
worthy
last year
last modified: last year
Too many loos.

How about two many kitchens?

That's the new standard in many homes of 6,000 sf. and up in our area.

For religious purposes (Kosher), for restriction of, uh, pungent cooking odours, i.e., fish & offal and Chinese foods, for in-laws, guests and staff and, most often: one for show, one for catered and party events.

Consider Aubrey Graham's 50,000 sf. digs.

Such impracticality! The poor boy must be wishing for a smaller island every time he wipes it down. (note the FR x Cornue range, a collaboration between Canadian designer Ferris Rafauli and Cornue.)

Our one-time drain and concrete contractor working several doors away on a more modest 28,000 sf build has recently inflated his fees to match! :-(
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chispa
last year
How many bathrooms does Jeff Bezos have on his new boat Koru? Oh, don't forget to add the bathrooms on the, also very large large, support vessel!

I'm all for spending your money as you wish, but don't tell me I can't have a V8 engine, that I barely put 10K miles per year on, yet Bezos wastes huge amounts of fuel to move around 2 huge yachts with helicopter, support vessels, cars and other toys on board! He'd better not be doing any environmental preaching!
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RedRyder
last year
We are happy that our current house has a private bathroom for every bedroom, and one guest powder room. It seemed like a lot when we bought this 8 years ago but apparently we are very “under-bathroom’d” here…..

The excessive number of bathrooms in high end listings just sounds nuts to me.
beesneeds
last year
I get bathrooms to bedrooms to an extent. But excess is just money. Kitchens and bathrooms are always reliably more expensive than other rooms. Kitchens have been doubling for a while too. Couple sinks, couple ovens, couple fidges, coolers, freezing drawers. Couple islands worth stuck into one. Cooking vs show kitchens. There are of course some more mundane reasons to have doubling, but a lot of it is just design to spend more money. Excessive bathrooms are design doubling to spend more money. Show bathrooms like there are now show kitchens in some homes. It's smart business from a sales standpoint. It can be difficult to start a trend of excessive wants are actually desirable needs- but if that ball can get rolling it can generate a lot in sales.
PRO
AiFL
last year
According to the 2018 Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse Research Institute, you need a net worth of $871,320. Credit Suisse defines net worth, or “wealth,” as “the value of financial assets plus real assets (principally housing) owned by households, minus their debts.” More than 19 million Americans are in the 1 percent worldwide, Credit Suisse reports, far more than from any other country. To be among the top 10 percent worldwide, you don’t even need six figures: A net worth of $93,170 will do it. And even if you have just $4,210 to your name, you’re still richer than half of the world’s residents.
David Cary
last year
Again, perspective here. $2M property portfolio (per the link) when we are talking about CA houses worth 10X that (and they are probably rarely a person's only residence). That is really light for an 80 year old professional that is still working. Really light.

For someone who is a Senator and older (and male and white), he is relatively not wealthy.

I suspect that he doesn't have a house with 10 bathrooms. Maybe not even 5.

I suspect most people consider 1%ers to be US 1%ers, not global. That is $10M in assets.
PRO
SafelyBuild
last year
It’s funny I live in the hills just above their Sunset Boulevard office. I guess it’s a prestige thing to have a lot of bathrooms, also, it’s really nice when guests come over for overnight stays, you don’t have to clean up the existing bathrooms. Also, it does really increase the value of the property up here.
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Why Are There So Many Bathrooms in the Houses on Selling Sunset?

Kate

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Marie J.

Sabrina Alfin Interiors

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