3-Bedroom vs 4-Bedroom House Prices
Knowing typical house prices for three bedrooms vs. four bedrooms can help you decide what to look for or whether to remodel or build an addition. A detailed comparison would have to consider all of the typical factors: the location, the house size, the lot size, and the age of the house.
A simple comparison can be made by comparing house sales prices in a typical zip code for different numbers of bedrooms, while ignoring other criteria. The percentage difference in price has remained relatively constant for the 27 years plotted.
Zip Code 94087 Four-bedroom House Sales Price vs. Three-bedroom Sales Price
The upper trace is the 4-bedroom house price and the lower trace is the 3-bedroom sales price.
House Sales Prices Per Sq.Ft. Are Typically Lower For Larger Houses
House prices per sq ft are typically a little lower for large houses than for small houses. This leads to a 3-bedroom house having a slightly higher price per sq ft than a 4-bedroom house. The lower price per sq ft means that if you estimate the value of a fourth bedroom by simply multiplying the size of the additional bedroom by the price per sq ft of an existing house, your estimate will be high. Adding a bedroom to an existing house does not change the lot size. Land is a significant part of the cost of a home. Also, the plots do not consider the number of bathrooms the houses have. Since a 4-bedroom house is likely to have more bathrooms than a 3-bedroom house, the price difference shown in the first plots of total sales price would likely be less if the houses had the same number of bathrooms.
The upper line is the 3-bedroom house price per sq ft, while the lower line is the 4-bedroom price per sq ft.
A Larger House Is Typically Newer
Silicon Valley house sizes have been trending higher for decades. A 3-bedroom house is typically older than the larger 4-bedroom house. With typical houses in Silicon Valley being over 50 years old, most have been updated. The age of the house still impacts the value, but the actual work done to update a house has a greater impact.
The upper line represents the age of 3-bedroom houses, while the lower line represents the age of 4-bedroom houses.
Lot Size Affects House Price
A 4-bedroom house in zip code 94087 typically has a roughly 10% larger lot than a 3-bedroom house. Although the lot sizes of houses sold show little change, the size has actually increased slightly over time. The variability in average lot sizes is significant, making it difficult to judge its contribution to the difference in prices of 4-bedroom houses and 3-bedroom houses. Shown below is the lot size of 4-bedroom houses sold in zip code 94087.
Summary Of 3-Bedroom vs 4-Bedroom House Prices
Simply taking the price per sq ft of a 3-bedroom house and multiplying it by the added sq ft of a 4th bedroom overlooks the typical drop in price per sq ft of the larger house. Much of the value of a house is in the land. Very roughly, in zip code 94087, a 4th bedroom adds 10% to the sales price and corresponds to a 20% larger house. The likelihood of an additional bathroom in 4-bedroom houses vs. 3-bedroom houses was not examined, even though the 20% difference in typical sizes suggests that the typical 4-bedroom house has more than just an additional bedroom compared to a 3-bedroom house.
2-Bedroom vs 3-Bedroom House Prices
Comparing 2-bedroom houses to 3-bedroom houses shows some similarities and noticeable differences. First, zip code 94087 has too few 2-bedroom house sales to provide good trends. Looking at zip code 94086 is easier to see.
The slightly higher line, which has more variability, represents 2-bedroom houses. The line, which has less variability, represents 3-bedroom houses. The difference in prices is impacted heavily by the age of the houses.
The age difference is quite significant, implying that the condition and features aren’t comparable between 2-bedroom and 3-bedroom houses.