The judges’ final verdicts on The Block NZ teams' master bedrooms and ensuites came earlier this week, before the teams turned to living rooms - in what little time they could find amongst increasingly dramatic dinner wars - plus the drama surrounding an after-hours transgression, which threatened to put the show’s future in jeopardy.
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So, it feels like a good time to look at second bathrooms and their potential for adding value to a property.
Many New Zealanders – especially those of a certain age, will have grown up in houses with a single bathroom, finding their way down the hallway in the dark at night and enduring queues to clean teeth on cold winter mornings. Of course, it got even worse if the family toilet was located in there too.
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These days the most common place for a second bathroom is as an ensuite, usually connected to the master bedroom. While multiple bathrooms can often be found in the grand old houses in suburbs like Remuera, where maids did all the cleaning, ordinary homeowners only started adding an ensuite routinely around the 1980s.
These days they are generally considered a fairly essential feature in new-builds, but can be difficult to install retrospectively in older homes, often due to a shortage of space.
Architects and architectural designers can generally come up with a solution to this problem by reconfiguring the layout – often only slightly – possibly cribbing valuable and essentially underutilised square metres from an existing bedroom or perhaps from an adjacent hallway.
If a second bathroom is required, but doesn’t need to be an ensuite, large laundries can often be converted – especially because the plumbing is already in place and even sacrificing a corner in an internal access garage can be successful.
Although his and hers ensuites – complete with a bath are certainly desirable, more modest examples might only contain a streamlined shower, small basin and toilet.
A stylish ensuite could attract more buyers, but in Auckland’s “fickle” market, it isn’t a deal-breaker. Photo / Getty Images
Second bathrooms that have been created in small areas often benefit from installation of a skylight to add natural light, without compromising privacy and buyers will be looking out for storage space, good ventilation, electric power points, plus certified plumbing and stylish décor.
Bathrooms generally aren’t the ideal place to add a grand stamp of individuality because the elements within it can be expensive to replace when the next owner doesn’t share your tastes.
It goes without saying that trained professionals should be used for electrical and plumbing jobs – as we’ve seen on The Block NZ. Homeowners can certainly tackle painting and tiling themselves, but safety is paramount, and councils can be very strict indeed when it comes to upholding regulations. Meanwhile, it’s also vital to have adequate insulation and ventilation.
Home buyers in the provinces are still philosophical about purchasing properties with a single bathroom, as are many first-home buyers in Auckland and a house in Ariki Street, Grey Lynn, with no bathroom at all, sold for over $2 million this week.
Auckland purchasers often do pay a premium for a second bathroom, if only because commuting times can be significant, and having more than one shower or toilet speeds up family ablution time in the mornings.
However, David Downie, from Ray White Ponsonby, has found that having only one bathroom isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker.
“It’s nice to have two bathrooms, sure, but in the current, very fickle market, where there isn’t enough stock to satisfy demand, people are happy to compromise,” he told OneRoof, adding that a second bathroom crammed awkwardly in a very tight space within a smallish home possibly won’t add significant value.
“Having said that, if you’re renovating and maybe pushing the house out a bit, it definitely makes sense to include one in the plans.”
