Side note: my guilty pleasure is watching those "House Hunter" style shows (which come in different flavours - island, overseas, just in the US) etc. They ALWAYS, without fault say one of they main needs is plenty of room for guests. I really want to yell at the tv every time they end up spending hundreds of thousands more so they can accommodate their potential guests.
Haha, I'm the echo you hear when you're yelling at those idiots.
Having said that, we have a 4 BR house with a dedicated guest bedroom. When DH and I wed, we both had houses. My BR furniture ended up populating the guest room. The closet in that room is my gift closet, as I watch for screaming deals all year. Otherwise, it's a specific-purpose room and gets used at least a half-dozen times per year. We like to have guests, which helps. We also have folding futons and air mattresses to accommodate large numbers of guests, which happens at the holidays.
Unlike those silly house hunters cited above, we shopped for this house with a short list: bedrooms that didn't touch, no pool and a gas stove. That's it. This one fit the bill, even though it was bigger than we needed. It was a short sale, thus comparatively well priced for the Bay Area, and so close that DH walks to work. He actually gets paid a small amount extra because he utilizes "alternate transportation" to get to work.