My question is about the importance of the number of bathrooms vs. size and luxury of fewer bathrooms for the re-sale value of a home.

The home currently has 4 bedrooms and 3 baths (the two upstairs are a full and 3/4, and there is another 3/4 downstairs on the family room level). The master bathroom (3/4) is tiny and it shares two walls with an awkardly shaped second bathroom (full) serving the other two bedrooms on the upstairs level.

We are needing to update/remodel both out-dated bathrooms upstairs and are considering taking out their shared wall and making the two bathrooms into one large and luxurious one. The downside would be losing one bathroom.

I'm looking for some advice about whether to make the two bathrooms into one large nice one or is it better to keep them separate, when one considers re-sale values? Thank you!

bjenkins- I would say that if you ever did sell your home , the value would be a whole lot more ,as is then without being the way it is now, And you would sell it to family a lot fasterand quickeer, but I'm just sayingthis about my feelings, this is going to have to be your decission, to make. Talk to a real estate person about this ,they can answer thisa question then I can. Good luck :::: F.B.E.

To get an accurate read on how appraisers and real estate agents would price a home I'd ask one.

If you are planning on remodelling anyway, can you rearrange both spaces, borrowing space from the full bath to put into the master bath? For example, could you change out a full bath into a shower, so that the master could be bigger?

Or maybe borrow a bit of closet space from one of the kid's bedrooms to enlarge the space? Or borrow space from a linen closet?

For 3 bedrooms upstairs, I would expect to have 2 baths--one master bath and one family bath. In general, lack of a master bath tends to decrease a home's value.

But double check with your local realtors--as they know what is standard for your local market.

Thank you so much for your input!

Put together the two rooms are 10' x 12'

The master bath is 52" wide x 99" long, which is a very tight space for shower, toilet and vanity as it is currently.

The full bath is L-shaped with about 5 feet wide by 12 feet long, and a closet at the bottom of the L making that space 10' x 45". Both bathrooms are awkward but meeting all of our wants in existing space is proving difficult. Thanks again for your thoughts.

Try this (if you haven't already)...

Get a piece of graph paper. Measure out your rooms, and draw them on the graph paper. (One square can equal 1 foot or 6" or whatever makes it fit best onto the paper.) Since you are only working on the bedroom level, you don't need to sketch the whole house--just the area that you are working with (the 3 bedrooms and 2 baths).

Often, when it is drawn out, you can then see where you might borrow some space. For example, if you had a family room downstairs that you could convert to a master suite, then you could combine the upstairs bathrooms into 1 without any loss of expectations from future buyers. Or you might discover that you do have some closet space you can borrow if you redraw a couple of walls (watch out for load bearing walls).

As another example, we will be turning a living room closet into a half bath. But we don't want the bath to be directly off the living room. So we will be walling over that door and cutting a new door to the bedroom, which adjoins that space. Afterwards we will have a teen bedroom with her own half bath. Since the original living room closet wasn't that great, we also enclosed a small side porch, and putting the living room closet just a few feet from where it originally was.

Bjenkins- I still think you should do what all of us have answered. The best way to get a true opion is to talk with a real estate person, they can tell you really close on which the value would be both ways. Good luck and GOD BLESS ::::: F.B.E.