Typical Square Footage Calcs
What is the conventional means of calculating square footage for real estate purposes? Include exterior walls or exclude or something in between? Include interior walls or exclude? Is there a standard?
What is the conventional means of calculating square footage for real estate purposes? Include exterior walls or exclude or something in between? Include interior walls or exclude? Is there a standard?
When you get an insurance quote, they just look at the exterior dimensions (at least upstate). You know the realtor is going to exaggerate. So, figure about a 20% “error” margin. That’s why calculating the price per sq. ft. is a bit of a farce. At a $800.00 to $1,000.00 a sq. ft. down there, a few feet make a big difference. Size isn’t everything.
johnife, c’mon, does it really seem like I’m agreeing with brokers’ approach estimates in my post? people tell baldface lies about residential square footage amounts all the time and get away with it, even in a sales contract. When cornered, people fall back on the “oh the other 200 sf is somewhere else.” i’m not saying it’s a good thing, but that’s what to expect.
Including common spaces in apartment square footage is sometimes done when enticing buyers or renters but it’s BS.
The only correct way to to measure the actual space forming your unit. Since such space requires an exterior wall to keep the elements from your dwelling, the area occupied by the exterior wall should be included. Using the same logic, the measurement should be taken to the center-line of the corridor walls and demising walls between apartments (i.e. these walls have a function that is shared between your space and the adjacent ones. Any plumbing or vent shafts within your apartment should be included in your square footage. When the efficiency of an apartment building is calculated it is a matter of dividing the aggregate area of all the apartments obtained by using the above method by the overall gross square footage of the building. This efficiency ratio is used all the time in assessing how adept the architect is space planning and is so critical to the developer’s pro-forma that the criteria by which it is measured are pretty much set in stone, contrary to the fast and loose methods adopted by RE agents and the opinions expressed above.
Yeah, I know smokeychimp is an architect, I respect his opinion, and his posts are always informative, but I think he’s being too accepting of brokers’ all too frequent lies on this one.
Rentable Square Footage – RSF – to exterior of building and center of demising Interior walls.
Usable Square Footage – USF – what is actually in space.
I spent many years calculating Rentable and Usable Square Footage and loss factor for Commercial Realtors. I don’t want to remember those days.
Commercial definately follows a formula.
Residential, I’m not so sure about. It seems that for Condos this many be useful information and maybe that’s how they calculate cost, but not so sure.
NYC real estate convention for commercial square footage measures to the exterior glass. This is why all those office towers in Midtown have the glass all the way out on the exterior plane, rather than deepset windows.
Residential conventions are much looser. You see real estate agents describe a 40 by 20 apartment as 1000 square feet, you ask how that’s mathematically possible, and they say the extra square footage is in the common spaces or some such thing.