There was a BIG fuss over this, and other, terms in Real Estate advertising in the early-to-mid 1990s. We discussed this, tangentially, in the thread about “Normal Shampoo” last month.
I wasn’t able to find news articles specifically about that (although there were plenty at the time), because all attempts to search came up with pages upon pages of cites about “steering”, which was and is a real problem.
The real problem is that real estate agents and sellers are forbidden to “steer” prospective buyers either toward or away from properties where doing so would be illegally discriminatory. This certainly would have included explicit language in advertisements like “Whites only” or “Jews need not apply”.
Where things got crazy was when the rules about language in advertising became a slippery slope, where even the most abstract or trivial wording was imagined (by those looking to be easily offended) as “steering”.
Words and phrases like “family room” became a faux pas because that might encourage married family people to apply more than single people, and we can’t discriminate on family status. “Walking distance to schools” likewise steered people with children toward the property more than older “empty nesters”. “Walking distance to [anywhere]” was considered to be favorable to able-bodied people at the expense of the disabled. “Close to [churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.]” was right out.
Laws were passed in some states allowing any citizen to have standing to file suits against such advertisers. It became a cottage industry. Ambulance-chasing lawyers scanned the real estate want-ads for “steering” terms, steadily becoming more and more imaginative as to what terms could be “steering”.
Real estate firms and agents compiled ever-growing lists of common words and phrases, categorizing them as “acceptable”, “unacceptable”, or “use with caution”. The phrase “Master bedroom” appeared on some of those lists.
Here is an example of such a list that I was able to find.
Note that “Master bedroom” doesn’t appear on this list, although it did appear on other similar lists. Most of the unacceptable (bold-face) words on the list are obvious. But there are also forbidden phrases like “traditional neighborhood”. “Christian”, “Jewish”, “Muslim” are listed as “caution”, but "Churches (near), “Synagogues”, “Mosque” are shown as forbidden. Go figure.
Sometime around 1995 or 1996, the whole craze more-or-less blew over, but in these newly woke days where every word or phrase walks on eggshells, you can’t be too careful.