What is the smallest bedroom size?

It needs to be 80SF min, and no less than 8' in any direction, so it sounds like yours works

must have closet

its got a closet, as well as heat/air and window. But there is a beam that reduces the width to 7'6" in one spot at the end of the room. Does that mean its not legal?

I think 10x10 is the smallest real bedroom. Anything smaller looks like a converted dining alcove or nursery.

Really?

Do the realtors know these rules?

I've seen 7x9 rooms without closets being called "bedrooms" simply because they have a window.

Of course, I've also seen apartments with sunken living rooms described as "duplexes".

I agree with villager that the room must have a closet. Also a suggestion if you're not planning to live in the apartment for a long time would be to put up a temporary wall to section off the room instead of a real wall if the room is for an office area. The apartments that we've seen (as a prospective buyer) where the dining alcove has been converted into a nursery, for example, sometimes make the apartment look awkward. Also are pocket doors that slide into the walls a possibility for you? Sort of the best of both worlds.

What "legal" means depends on the jurisdiction. Your 9' x 9' with a window of at least 8 square feet is more than big enough. The closet isn't required in order to call it a bedroom, but many people think it is, so good to have. As far as resale goes, check the ads for other apartments in your line and see what they've gotten away with.

Either way, turning a dining ell into a separate room always looks chintzy, makes for a bad layout what with the room opening directly off the LR, and is hard to undo without making a mess.

Who cares? If a bedroom is small, it's small - having the legal distinction of a bedroom doesn't provide any incremental value, esp if you are paying on a per square foot basis. Besides, most brokers will have no issue marketing it as a 1-bedroom regardless. They may just use an asterisk.

sorry - meant marketing it as a 2-bedroom.

If you add a real bedroom (walled off; window) to your apartment and you are doing it legally - of course you are - you will be asked by your Board to participate in a change in occupancy of your building. The DoB likes to know about number of bedrooms in a building because it denotes occupancy total.