How do YOU count how many rooms your residence has?

A room is part of a house or residence where one resides or does an activity. Usually has a door and a window to facilitate residing or the activity (basement rooms are an exception in the window concept). Hallway connections between rooms are just passage ways, and are not rooms. If space is used for storage rather than residing or an activity it is a storage space or a closet. Decoration or cleaning has no relevance to the definition of any of the different spaces. Closets still need to be cleaned. So do cabinets, and drawers. And cabinets are often decorated.

But in the end, whatever floats your boat.

As far as I understand it, a room is everything normal sized (not a cupboard) bar the kitchen, bathroom and hallways.  If a room is smaller than normal it's a 1/2 room.

There is a thing they did 100 years ago which was to have a day room with a smaller sleeping room off it without a door.   I'd classify the smaller room as a 1/2 room or not a room at all.   Useless really but that's how they lived.

When we answered the add for our flat it told the size in meters and in rooms.
It was a 1 1/2 room flat.

We have a long narrow kitchen, a large bathroom area a very large living room with a large loft and a smaller bedrooms with double doors.
These flats used to be several large rooms but they were chopped up post war to make more living space in the city for workers.
I think they did a good job on it overall.
My husband said some people who had small families and large flats were called into some office and told you are having another family move in today because your place to too large for your family.
I can't even imagine going in and having some person who is a terrible fit move in with you, share the bathroom and kitchen with a slob.
Some young families would have a old man move in or some old nasty drunk and have to live with them for years on end.

I mentioned before how our friends father moved his family into a large nice apt. that was left empty in 1956.
Well, some  other man wanted the flat for his family.
It was located in the 5th with 2 nice large balconies huge,and I mean huge bathroom facing the quiet st. over 100 meters but light and sunny.The man wanted it so badly and was so mad that he didn't snap it up first that he told our friends father that he knew some "dirt" on him from WW11, something to do with his military unit, he was not a officer or anyone with power so whatever dirt there was really our friends father had no control of it.
Long story, kangaroo court, he was tried and hung.
Our friends family kept the flat, not really worth losing your life over when you think about it.
A flat to die for...

Wow just now 4 ambulances and 5 police cars came through my street, all went to the hospital on the corner. Wonder what was up with that, they usually don't make so much noise, multiple stabbings? Family falling ill at once, very strange and very loud.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

When we answered the add for our flat it told the size in meters and in rooms.
It was a 1 1/2 room flat.

We have a long narrow kitchen, a large bathroom area a very large living room with a large loft and a smaller bedrooms with double doors.
These flats used to be several large rooms but they were chopped up post war to make more living space in the city for workers.
I think they did a good job on it overall.
My husband said some people who had small families and large flats were called into some office and told you are having another family move in today because your place to too large for your family.
I can't even imagine going in and having some person who is a terrible fit move in with you, share the bathroom and kitchen with a slob.
Some young families would have a old man move in or some old nasty drunk and have to live with them for years on end.

Talking of drunks....

Mrs Fluffy and I rescued an old fella collapsed in the street and we also rescued his dog.  He couldn't stand up under his own power. That was yesterday in District III up near the forest.   We got him off the road, put him under a tree.  I was quite disgusted with people who passed him and the disdain on their faces.  They just drove on.

He was in very bad shape but after chatting to him for 15 minutes, it was clear he was a person with alcohol problems.  He didn't look like he'd survive more than a couple of months living in the bushes.  Mrs Fluffy went to the shops, got him and the dog some food and water.  No booze.  She had a chat with the people in the shop and it was clear he had been in and out of the shop for beer etc.  They knew him. He told me he'd been married and his wife had kicked him out.   He insisted he didn't want to go to the hospital because they'd take his dog away.  So we left him there with a bit of food, some water and some dog biscuits.   

He needed feeding up, getting himself clean,  getting off the booze and getting himself generally sorted out.  But if he doesn't want that, there's no chance to do more that would help.  So we left him under that tree with a couple of hundred forints and some food in a bag.  Sometimes you cannot help people who cannot help themselves. But we did something for him which is more than I could say for others.  Brownie points at the pearly gates for Mrs Fluffy (I think I'm going further south).

I cannot say he was a nasty old drunk but just really a very sick and sad old man with mental problems.  If anyone needed to be in  care of someone it'd be him and thousands of others like that on the streets.

fluffy2560 wrote:

As far as I understand it, a room is everything normal sized (not a cupboard) bar the kitchen, bathroom and hallways.  If a room is smaller than normal it's a 1/2 room.

More or less, that is what for government purposes is considered a room, yes. Not what I would consider a room. For example, the fact that it is called a bathROOM (and similarly in Hungarian) would tend to imply it is a room.

I'm told they've got rid of 1/2 rooms for government purposes now, something either is or is not a room.

I am not sure myself whether I would consider an inner sanctum such as my toilet inside the bathroom (with its own door etc) to be a separate room even to myself. Like, I could just move the door to exit directly onto the hallway instead of to the bathroom (an arrangement I prefer as e.g. a visitor can use the toilet while I am in the bath). Would it suddenly become a room? Why wasn't it a room before? Are rooms not allowed to nest? I don't know.

fluffy2560 wrote:

Talking of drunks....

Mrs Fluffy and I rescued an old fella  (...)

I take my hat off to you both. I would have done the same thing, at least I think I would. I am no Good Samaritan or angel either but if you can help, you must. Often you can't, But if you can and don't, you're just an arsehole.

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

As far as I understand it, a room is everything normal sized (not a cupboard) bar the kitchen, bathroom and hallways.  If a room is smaller than normal it's a 1/2 room.

More or less, that is what for government purposes is considered a room, yes. Not what I would consider a room. For example, the fact that it is called a bathROOM (and similarly in Hungarian) would tend to imply it is a room.
.... use the toilet while I am in the bath). Would it suddenly become a room? Why wasn't it a room before? Are rooms not allowed to nest? I don't know.

Separate throne room is still a bathroom and not a room.  Bathroom is just a word like hall.  It's not a hall really as it would have been in earlier times. Just a word.

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

Talking of drunks....

Mrs Fluffy and I rescued an old fella  (...)

I take my hat off to you both. I would have done the same thing, at least I think I would. I am no Good Samaritan or angel either but if you can help, you must. Often you can't, But if you can and don't, you're just an arsehole.

Bloke looked like he was dying. He could have actually died there and then if no-one helped him get out of lying in that gutter. We discussed calling the ambulance. Mrs Fluffy even said we could take his dog with us to look after until he was straight again.  We might have meant well but that's not he wanted. What he wanted was a can or ten of beer, sit in the forest with his dog and drown his sorrows. 

One thing I'm acutely aware of is that people with diabetes and low blood sugar can appear drunk and incoherent.  We gave him some ordinary coca cola.  If he was insulin dependent he'd have been dead by now for sure.   

I expect he'll be found dead in the forest by winter. Not much we can do for him and all the others out there we see.   They do form communities.  I've seen them in forest on the airport road. Almost a village there but the cops break them up regularly.

Very sad stuff.
Alcohol issues are big here in Hungary, other places as well but in larger countries with more resources, many people can cover it up.
My step-dad loved to over enjoy himself, PTSD big time, POW in the 'wars" many broken marriages , businesses that once were thriving but let go.
Not even sure why my mom married this guy except she was a middle aged widow with a big home and a big heart.
we, her children think she got the raw end of the deal however.
My step-dad would sometimes take the nice brand new truck my mom bought for him and go drinking after doing a side job of fixing someones washer/dryer or fridge.
He was either smart or the police had more respect in the 1980's for older people. He would park his truck in front of someones home and go lay down on their lawn so he would not get a DUI.
Sometimes the home owners would call up the cops but the cops would then call my mom to pick him up
Sort of cool on the LAPD.
Hard to say for sure since racist things can happen in Ca. My step- dad was a nice Irish/ Scot type older man, just look at what happened to Rodney King. Of course old Rodney was silly enough to drive and drink.
I remember once my mom had some sort of tiff with my step-dad and hit him on the head with a large frying pan. He was bleeding.
He just drove off half drunk.
My mom called the police on her own husband to make sure he didn't hit or hurt anyone else.
Crazy really but also where we lived the police were usually allot cooler then normal. Every other house was owned by a cop or fireman in our city.
That was really nice of your wife and yourself, there is little you can really do if someone is not ready for help.
What is so odd about my mom and step-dad is he was the second husband of hers that my natural father introduced my mother to.
Very , very odd stuff.Like my mom still respected my fathers opinion on matters even with finding a second and third husband.
Off topic, well as far as rooms go how large a place is what  matters, one can always add walls and make extra rooms if needed.
We had a home in S. Ca. that really at the time had 2 rooms we never really used. Not a huge home but we hardly used most of the room we had. One room was only in use for it's built in closet space and the living room was only for when we had company over.
I like a larger yard with swimming pool then a big house.

In the countryside they seem to count living rooms as the same as bedrooms and in my cottage both larger rooms were set out like bedsits with beds at the back of the room and sofas at the front near the cooking stoves. These are large rooms but tend to be dark and gloomy.
The hallway ,  2  storage rooms, kitchen and bathroom are quite small in comparison.
Since buying the place I have converted one storeroom into a single bedroom and  glassed in the verandah.

This has given me a dining and living area near the kitchen and has greatly improved my amount of livable, light and sunny space.
I love having a huge four acre garden and so far I have put in a big goldfish pond. And planted more trees. There is room for a swimming pool but I will leave that for the next person to consider because I will probably hang up my spade when I retire in about two years time.

In Budapest I have a 2 bed apartment one of bedrooms is very large like my living room and kitchen and it has taken me ages to  get enough furniture to fill it . The second bedroom is considered to be a childrens room but is still bigger than either of my bedrooms in my last uk flat. it has a galleria in it which is very useful.

When I was flat hunting in Budapest there were many apartments with three rooms in a row having interconnecting doors. The living room being in the middle. I prefer properly seperate bedrooms. And these huge doors are difficult to draftproof and  soundproof . However families may prefer them.

anns wrote:

......

When I was flat hunting in Budapest there were many apartments with three rooms in a row having interconnecting doors. The living room being in the middle. I prefer properly seperate bedrooms. And these huge doors are difficult to draftproof and  soundproof . However families may prefer them.

Yes, that's so common here. I never understood why it was like that. Having to pass through various other rooms to get to the living room seems odd to me.  But there must have been a reason for it.  The only thing I can think of is that the kids were at one end and had to pass the parents to get elsewhere. All the modern houses I've been to here have hallways with rooms off them and no-interconnection. 

In my Austrian house (dated from the time of the Austro-Hungarian empire) the front door entered a tiny hallway and then went directly into the kitchen.  I guess kitchens were the centre of the house then as its where the fire and chimney were located.  I've seen almost identicaly laid outl houses here.

Greetings!

Any living space in your home that is 8-12m2 in size is considered a half room.
Above 12m2 it is a full room.
Only rooms that could be used as a living room or bedroom count, so a bathroom, a panrty, a walk in closet, kitchen, garage, hallway or basement do not count. Any room without a window is considered a hole, not a room. :-)

I hope that helps.

Have a nice day!

Thanks Peter, think you nailed it.I also think the reason some flats seem to be set up strangely is because many of these flats used to be much larger, some were servants quarters , some laundry areas or
food pantries.
Some were baby nurseries and they were close to either staff of the parents rooms.
Gosh, I visited a fellow American women a few years back. She invited us up to see her flat.
Some ex. from Tesco had bid on it but it had in the end she and her husband won out.
In the 5th, top floor 150 meters with a REAL American kitchen , beautiful cheery wood cabinets, 2 modern large baths, 2 living rooms, 2 bedrooms and a extra dinning room.
It was really pretty and sweet.
She really pretty much lived alone most times, her husbands job was with the US gov. and he was hardly ever in HU.
What killed me was her huge nice dinning room was empty except for 3 cat boxes... What a waste.
It pretty much looked like one of the very few apts. I ever saw here that had not been chopped or cropped over the years, it flowed  very nicely from room to room.
Even with that nice place , it still had noise issues though. It's near a music school so half the day it's hearing students trying to make music.
I'm good with our 50 sq. just enough space to not breath down each others throats and small enough to keep tidy without much trouble.
We figure it's city life and who wants to stay indoors all the time.

My sister used to live in Belsize Park ( not sure about the spelling) in London. I guess it was a "exclusive" area but her flat with her husband was very small. Used to be part of a large house but the owners chopped it up into smaller units for profit, just like over here.
I had wanted to visit her but when she told me I would have to sleep on the floor in her small kitchen for lack of space, I passed on a visit over.This was before I was married and had the time to visit her.

I forgot sitting room off a ladies bedroom chamber.
Many of these smaller apt. houses used to belong to just one family with allot of children and extended family with several servants living with them.
Horse groomers, maids, cooks laundry staff, coach drivers etc.
Hard to believe but at one time Hungary was the envy of Europe, the Paris of the east.

All those balconies weren't built just to hang out laundry to dry, back in the day people would stand out with a drink and wave to the passing riders and coaches that traveled down the blvds.
Get dressed up in the Sunday best and meet friends in carriages in the park.
Margret Island used to be exclusive for the rich, one had to pay to enter for a stroll or ride inside.
The city park was the first free park to the public in Europe.

I know our flat had to be part of or as I like to believe their apt. used to be apart of ours next door.
No one in their right mind would design a kitchen lay out like we have.
18 1/2 feet long by 6 1/2 feet wide.
I could always redo it in a nautical design or lunch truck style.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

My sister used to live in Belsize Park ( not sure about the spelling) in London. I guess it was a "exclusive" area but her flat with her husband was very small. Used to be part of a large house but the owners chopped it up into smaller units for profit, just like over here.
I had wanted to visit her but when she told me I would have to sleep on the floor in her small kitchen for lack of space, I passed on a visit over.This was before I was married and had the time to visit her.

Belsize Park was the right spelling. It is an expensive place.  Right next door to Hampstead Heath - one of the green areas of London.  It's an area where lots of "celebrities" (really famous A-listers and the half-baked C or D list variety) lived although Hampstead was more upmarket in the 1970s or 1980s.  More like a spillover place although "posh" in its own right now.  Not the same as Hollywood of course.

SimonTrew wrote:

In Hungary, there are lots of complicated rules for counting how many rooms a house has.

I wouldn't say they are complicated, they are the same as central Europe. If anything the UK is the odd one out.

SimCityAT wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

In Hungary, there are lots of complicated rules for counting how many rooms a house has.

I wouldn't say they are complicated, they are the same as central Europe. If anything the UK is the odd one out.

UK houses are useless, especially the new build houses at the lower end.

The rooms are ludicrously tiny and the walls are made out of cardboard.

I've never understood how they could get away with it.

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

In Hungary, there are lots of complicated rules for counting how many rooms a house has.

I wouldn't say they are complicated, they are the same as central Europe. If anything the UK is the odd one out.

UK houses are useless, especially the new build houses at the lower end.

The rooms are ludicrously tiny and the walls are made out of cardboard.

I've never understood how they could get away with it.

That reminds me, there were some new builds in Rugby, and they got robbed. The Burglar just went from one property to the next by knocking through the walls. Cheap terrace build.

SimCityAT wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimCityAT wrote:

I wouldn't say they are complicated, they are the same as central Europe. If anything the UK is the odd one out.

UK houses are useless, especially the new build houses at the lower end.

The rooms are ludicrously tiny and the walls are made out of cardboard.

I've never understood how they could get away with it.

That reminds me, there were some new builds in Rugby, and they got robbed. The Burglar just went from one property to the next by knocking through the walls. Cheap terrace build.

Breeze blocks - big hammer and you're done.  Not too difficult here though. Usually those big fat air bricks.  Just like roof tiles. Couple of quick whacks and you're in.

Thanks!

You are right as well! :-)

The houses in downtown area that have been built before 1945, used to have one flat per floor. So the entire floor was usually owned by one richer family. The front part used to be for use of the family and the back was for the service personnel. That is why the front staircase is usually fancy and the rear one is a small and simple one. It was used by the servants. usually the kitchen, the storage rooms and the servant's rooms were located there.
After 1945, these flats were (confiscated and) broken down into smaller ones to accomodate more families as people from rural Hungary started moving into the cities. Later on, as industry was developing and there was a huge lack of housing for the people, they started constructing those big concrete blocks called panel houses.
As you wrote about your 50m2 flat, that how it is just enough space for 2 people, but it is not designed to be in it for longer priods of time, it reminded me of an old definition of the panel house that I read in a textbook for architects from the 70's.
It is as follows:

"Panel house: A building designed to store the workforce at night."

Funnny. Right?

About the taxes:

I don't think you can get tax breaks on mortgages or anything for that matter based on the number of rooms. We don't use the number of rooms as an official unit of measurement, The only time when you use it is when you put up your flat for sale and you indicate how many rooms it has.
If you ask hungarians how big their flat is they will usually reply XX square meters.

Real estate based taxes are usually based on m2 or flat fee, but it is different everywhere, because it falls under the juridistiction of the local council, so for example in Budapest it is different in every district.

So the only way to reduce your mortgage is to pay it back faster. :-)

I am so glad my husband handles all business here.
He has always done the business side of things even in the US where English wasn't his native language.
We used to hire a Hungarian tax man in Ca. which made out lives allot easier, we could always just blame him and not each other for anything that was done wrong, never did happen but good to have a fall guy for taxes.
That is true too, was told the apts that face to back of the house or the yard were mostly for servants in the day, the family of the owner lived in the front and different floors were for various things.
One was for just sleeping, one for a office and living room, sewing or sitting rooms.
Must of been "sweet" to be "upper class" back then.
Not so sure how the servants felt though.
Odd story , not trying to "show off" or anything but here goes.
Back when my FIL, my husband's real father, not his step-dad, was young, they lived in a city in NE Hungary and were very well off.
FIL had cars and a driver etc. pre WW11. Cooks, servants etc.
Well our niece was dating a guy 25 years ago or so and when they broke up he hit her.
My BIL called my husband up in Ca. to tell him. My husband gave his bro a ear full, told him he should of beaten the guy up and not let it slide.Didn't happen, anyway the guy told our niece he had hit her because it was revenge as his grandparents had been servants in my FIL's home.
Wow, small world. Glad she broke up with him he didn't seem all that nice.
In any case the soviets took good care of that. My in-laws rented a small under 40 meter flat when they first married, the war broke out etc. and they never moved away.
My husband was raised in that tiny flat with his 2 siblings and his mom and step-dad. Just one room, kitchen and their own bathroom and tub.
He was pretty much a latch key kid growing up, they hardly ever hung around the home, Sort of a st. thuggy small kid then a Mod who was clubbing more then sleeping at home.
One summer he had keys for Palatinus spa, his friends mom worked there.
He would go over in the wee hours and just sleep after work, then hang all day long with his friends at the spa then go to work and start all over again. Hardly ever was home.
Gosh, that would be my dream to have keys to the spa and have it all to myself!
People do forget the Hungary was very elegant at one time, there were allot of class differences and people had a hard time moving up in the world.

Just before my hubby left HU in 1971, he moved out of his parents flat in the 5th .
Could only find a bed to rent in a small apt. in the 8th that a 80 something year old widow was renting out. Used to be  very hard to find anything to rent even if you had the money.
He paid her for cooking sewing etc. Really helped her out allot. In fact she was the only person he told that he was leaving Hungary.
Sent her some post cards over the years.Very odd roomies, a 23 year old Mod and a 80 year old lady.
Long way from the big house in the countryside.

fluffy2560 wrote:

Bathroom is just a word like hall.

To me, a bathroom is a room.

What the regulations state of course probably differs. But the original question was what we thought, not the legal definitions.