what’s the Square Footage of your house or condo?

What’s the square footage of the house or condo you are selling? The size of a property is critical when analyzing price.

There are three ways to obtain square footage:

1. Use property appraiser record. Building size is available on public websites, such as Okaloosa County Property Appraiser, Walton County Property Appraiser or Santa Rosa County Property Appraiser. It’s often subject to error, as “rounding” is commonly used in dimensions by the property appraiser office. For example, if a building length is 41’6″, that number may be rounded to 42′, and so on. The property appraiser measurements may not include all room areas, additions or changes to heated and cooled living space, so watch out for that. For example, if someone better enclosed a Florida room, adding heating and cooling, this may not be reflected on the property appraiser website, so you’ll have to add that space back in.

Hint: Always verify that the building sketch square footage on the property appraiser website reflects all the heated and cooled spaces (that are finished to interior living space standards). There should be a chart or spreadsheet showing which area is attributed to heated and cooled living space, and which is not. I’ve seen many errors on the property appraiser website with these type of errors over the years.

2. Use the square footage stated in original building plan. The building plans are generally reliable, but if changes were made during construction that were not on the plans, the square footage would be off. For condominiums, it’s handy to reference the Declaration of Condominium to determine square footage. You can find the Condo Decs on the Clerk of Courts websites for each county. Normally, the Declaration of Condominium has floorplans of different models in a condo project (like “Elite” model, “Penthouse” model, etc.) and perhaps specific unit numbers, providing the corresponding size from the plans. You can download these pages to document your research. (Sad to say, but many real estate agents simply copy the square footage for their listings from another listing, and don’t do the research.)

3. Licensed Appraiser or ANSI Professional. The licensed property appraiser is professionally trained to measure a building and would have the most accurate results, although I have seen a bit of variation for square footage in different appraisal reports for the same property. You can use an appraisal report of the subject property if you have one, or hire an appraiser to measure it. Appraisers would charge more for complex properties that are not simple rectangles. Only appraisers, architects and ANSI (American National Standards Institute) certified professionals are licensed to measure properties.

Remember to investigate your square footage to accurately price your property.

Other related articles:

Price per square foot? Not the whole story.

Factors Other Than Square Footage in Pricing

It’s Wendy

Wendy Rulnick, Broker
Rulnick Realty, Inc.