I'm finishing my basement (actually its the second basement I've finished). And I've built what I think is a bedroom in the basement. I had the ELECTRICAL inspector in here the other day and as he's going through the inspection he says: "So this isn't going to be a 'legal' bedroom, because it has no closet?" It's always been my understanding that a bedroom does NOT require a closet.
Does a bedroom have to have a closet?
I was curious so I just did some googling around and it seems that, if anything, some lenders might require a closet for a room to be included in the bedroom count for the house. I imagine this might be to help ensure consistency in home valuations. Check the first few results here for more info.
Code does require a bedroom have an egress window however. Also if your house is on a septic system it will be approved for a certain number of bedrooms and you may run into issues when selling the house if you've represented the new room as a bedroom but your septic system isn't rated for it.
I couldn't find a solid source that says a closet is Required, to make a room a bedroom. It seems to depend more on the agency listing the property, and the mortgage company financing the sale of said property.
The only requirement I could find dealing with bedrooms from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), was that an emergency exit is required.
I did find some information that suggests that the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), does require a closet when defining a room as a bedroom.
Your best bet would be to contact a local real estate agent, and ask them if they would list the room as a bedroom.
It really depends on the code in your area. Some places, you can't legally call it a bedroom for valuation and resale if it doesn't have a closet and a window. Other places, all a bedroom requires is basically 4 walls.
Even if code allows it, a real estate agent might now be comfortable allowing it to be called a bedroom when adding it to MLS.
Basement rooms almost always require a large egress window or sometimes a direct path to a door to be considered bedrooms. Honestly, this is a good safety requirement since people usually end up using the basement rooms for their kids.
While the electrical inspector may not have expert knowledge in other trades, the fact that he mentioned that it should have a closet would make me seriously consider adding one.
I recently ran into this situation, my wife and I are in process of buying a house right now. It was listed as a 4 bedroom house, however on inspection we found only one bedroom had a real closet. There was evidence of the closet space (you could see the "indent") in all the bedrooms but all the closet doors had been removed in the other bedrooms to reclaim space for built-ins, et al.
Our Realtor remarked right away this would potentially be an issue, particularly with VA/FHA buyers. We consulted with our lender (USAA) and we were told (in Washington State), for valuation purposes they would not consider a space a bedroom if it didn't contain a closet, a heat source and an egress window. I do not know if there's any difference if you elect to use a conventional mortgage or other methods of financing. Fortunately the sellers agreed to install doors for us so the issue is now moot.
TL;DR - My new 4 bedroom house would have only been appraised as a 1 bedroom home by my bank if the seller didn't put closet doors up.
