What are Captive Bedrooms?

If you have explored real estate in Pittsburgh, you've most likely witnessed some odd layouts. You have of course seen the "Pittsburgh Potty" aka an old toilet by itself in a basement. You probably also would have walked through some basements that have the foundation and steps halfway passing the door frames. The other thing you may witness is captive bedrooms.

What is a captive bedroom. This is a bedroom that has only one entrance, through another bedroom. You have to actually walk through a bedroom in order to reach the other bedroom. This as you can imagine is not an ideal setup. A bedroom is a private place and the last thing you want is someone walking through to get to their room!

This layout makes it very difficult to sell your home in Pittsburgh on the market or off. The issue with this layout is you must block off the one bedroom, and add a hallway to disconnect the two. This will require not only added construction costs, but it can drastically reduce the size of the first bedroom. In some cases the first bedroom will be too small to even add a hallway. In this case the only other option is to turn the captive bedroom into a possible bathroom or large walk in closet. While this isn't the end of the world, it hurts in marketing your property for sale. If you had a 3 bedroom expectation, and looked at comparative sales for this property type, you may have to now reduce that to 2 bedroom sales.

If you happen to find yourself in this situation with one of your properties, it can make the sale a bit more difficult. The other options is to reduce the price to account for this issue. Investors are generally willing to take on a task of this nature. Cash For Homes PGH has handled many projects of this type. The value that can be added is we buy houses as is, even if they have a captive bedroom, pittsburgh potty, and a 4 foot basement!