You get a lot of pretentiousness about houses here as well, especially since the Celtic Tiger. Suddenly it's all about the five and six bedroomed houses (though the property market is not good and people who forked out on those houses over the last eight years are up to their eyeballs in debt and the houses are in negative equity), and the bigger the house the better. But Irish people have a thing about owning houses anyway. I think it's genetic memory from the Famine and there not being enough land in families to give a patch for everyone to build a house on.
But some people are just trying to make out like they are better than the rest of us; their houses are making a statement! I feel like saying "it's far from four bathrooms you were reared!" Which is true for most people. We had an outdoor toilet until we built a kitchen and bathroom extension back in the 1980's. It's only in the last ten years that houses come with more than one bathroom. While it might sound impressive to say that your house has so many bathrooms and bedrooms, I just think of all those rooms to keep clean and shudder.

Though if you were to offer a bigger house in the morning, I would be in there like a shot happy to have room for my books. When I read "5 bedrooms", I think "5 libraries".