Will knocking out en-suite lose value?

Anya

We bought a new house 5 years ago now and it basically is badly designed. The master bedroom is fairly small with no built-in wardrobes etc, so afetr you have got the bed, wargrobes, drawers and desk, there isn't much space for anything else. A portion of the room is an en-suite room with just a shower and basin in it. We were thinking of taking out the shower and putting it over the bath in the main bathroom and getting rid of the extra basin completely as we never use it. We would then use the room as either a computer room or walk-in wardrobe. Would losing the en-suite cause us to lose value on the house though? It makes more sense to get rid, but we will outgrow the house eventually and will have to move so I don't really want to lose any value in doing it. Any ideas?

flea72

i think most people would prefer an ensuite to having a larger bedroom/walkin wardrobe

it also depends on how many bedrooms will have to share the main bathroom, if you remove the ensuite

cant say whether it will affect price, until you come to sell, but given the choice, if i was looking at two similar houses, and one had an ensuite off the master bedroom, and the other had a bedroom that was slightly bigger, then i would go for the one with the ensuite, even if it cost me a couple of £k more

perhaps you need to look at getting smaller furniture in your bedroom, rather than losing the ensuite - any bedroom would be a squeeze, with the amount of furniture you have in yours - could you not have the desk elsewhere for eg?

Anya

No house is really small so nowhere else for computer to go. There isn't a toilet in the ensuite it is just a shower and a basin. That's all there is space for in there. The shower cubicle and small basin take up the width of the room. The length of the double bed with a wardrobe at the bottom, is the length of the main bedroom. The width of the bedroom is like a double bed width + a single. There are 3 bedrooms, both the other rooms are a little smaller than the main one. It would probably sell to a first time buyer - that's what we were when we bought it. If it was a bigger house I could understand the appeal of the ensuite, but when its using up valuable space in a teeny house... Don't know what to do?!

bunking_off

In general I'd say it'd be unwise to take out an ensuite, but yours is a bit of a strange situation as it isn't really an ensuite as it has no toilet
(unless, thinking back to my student days, no, that's too gross for polite company...).

How about having a chat with your friendly neighbourhood estate agent? They'd know better than most what the impact is likely to be.