More floor plans, please

Good question. Although in my search I just took a camera to take pictures and ensure I wouldn't confuse one house with another. They tended to blend together after a while.

I completely agree. I went to an open house a few months ago, and the glossy brochure for the 1920s era house included a floor plan. What a pleasant surprise! And while it mostly served to remind us of the bizarre layout of the kitchen and the fact the upstairs bathroom was accessed through a bedroom, it also allowed us to sketch out how easily we could address those issues. Providing the house layout certainly gave that property a leg up, despite the initial visible flaws.

Because agents are shady and don't want to further illustrate how inflated the GLA is?

Couldn't agree with you more as in New York City they are almost exclusively standard on real estate firms websites. In Boston proper, most agents have to hire one of several firms who will draw a floor plan. Some agents like myself see it as an absolute necessity, particularly on a larger unit and others think they can get by without one. There's no question buyers prefer them for very obvious reasons.

The reasons however for Boston lacking in this area are simple: the vast majority of the housing stock is 150+ year old former rowhouses and single family townhouses. Floor plans were never drawn and stored in a central location. When you're working with subsequent floor plans for 1970s-1990s renovations in the Back Bay and South End which were filed at the Registry of Deeds, many are obsolete now due to subsequent renovations. In contrast, the vast majority of the housing stock in Manhattan are in pre and post-war buildings which were originally built as apartments.

I would be pretty satisfied with a rough drawing, as long as best effort is made to ensure it's reasonably done to scale. I'm not going to be using it for anything other than recalling the layout. I'm not looking for it to serve as the basis for some future architectural plans or anything. We didn't receive one for the house we bought but it was pretty easy to draw one up real quick on our own. I don't know why more agents/sellers don't do this (probably has something to do with the aforementioned inflation of GLA)

Why no floor plans?

Easy.

They cost money. (minor reason)

And they make it harder to market the property, by making the flaws easily memorable. Why would the seller do something not in their interest? I've certainly never done so as a seller, and never would.

They also don't precisely jibe with the universal inflation in square feet in the boston area - a consistent 25% I've found.

As a buyer, I bring my tape and graph paper and sketch my own for any place I'm interested in - simple enough.

I think it depends on the market in which you are looking. I see many houses with floor plans in Newton, Wellesley, Weston - see the trend? These plans include approsimate measurements and placement of doors (including the direction that they swing, which can be really helpful), sinks, closets etc. Most of these plans are created by third parties/consultants (you can see their names on the plans) that are not part of the real estate brokerage. Thus, somone has to pay for the plans and I think that 'someone' is most likely the listing agent. So, if the agent makes this investment, there are plans. So back to my first statement - it seems based on what I have seen, the higher the asking/list price on the property, the more likely the listing agent will pay a few hundred dollars to have someone come out, measure the place and generate the plans.

I am looking at places right now and I agree that the floorplans are amazingly helpful to have. When I do not see a plan, I get suspicious of the measurements in the listing as well as of the total GLA.

I completely agree that a floor plan is an essential tool for house hunters for many reasons. I experienced frustration while 'condo' hunting a few years’ back where the question of layout, room sizes and overall square footage was very unclear.

I was looking for a small fixer-upper condo in Brookline where every square foot counted but more importantly I was looking for renovation potential. I ended up buying a FSBO condo where the seller provided a condo document floor plan - but I had to ask for it multiple times. I was very close to making an offer on a different place but once I saw the floor plan, I was able to see how with a few simple modifications to the layout, I could make the space work better for my family while drastically increasing the re-sale value.

I am an architect by trade so it was fairly easy for me to visualize this potential, but I must admit that I did not realize the solution until I saw the floor plan drawing.

I got so frustrated that such a small percentage of listings contained floor plans that I actually started a service that provides affordable floor plans to be handed out at Open Houses and linked to online listings so potential buyers can view and download the plans at their convenience.

A number of posters above mentioned that price is a factor and while large houses could certainly cost few hundred dollars, a 1,000 square foot Boston area condo would come in at $70 (7 cents PSF) - a small amount compared to the $20,000+/- 5% realtor fee on a $400,000 condo. The fee is paid by the listing agent in most cases.

In my situation, it was the floor plan that convinced me to write up the offer and in the end it worked out for both the seller and myself.

The other posters beat me to it. Sellers haven't been willing to cough up the up-front costs--primarily because, until recently, they didn't have to. Plus, many properties in this old town suffer through horrendous layouts; it's standard fare to access a back bedroom by squeezing past the knees of whoever is using the toilet. Not something you'd want to advertise.

To charles's point: Oddly enough, agents haven't been very cooperative when buyers want to make their own floor plans. Several times I've hired architects and contractors to do rough plans just to help in estimating renovation costs before purchase. Each time, the agent gave us all of five minutes, punctuated by lots of eye-rolls and watch-checking. Not very conducive to making a sale. But, like sellers, agents are only now getting used to going the extra mile to work with a buyer. They've been spoiled. Until recently, uneducated buyers with no clue what renovations actually cost regularly overextended themselves to buy overpriced houses on the strength of vague, hand-waving promises like, "You could probably add a floor," or "Just knock this down and open it up."

Unfortunately we also live in a society where Lawyers rule and if there are mistakes made by brokers or owners using CAD or other tools to draw house plans. Brokers and owners are not qualified to do such drawings and they open themselves up to litigation if the information is not accurate. It has much less to do with cost or as one person put realtors being shady. Find a good/reputable broker that isn't shady and that will show you what you are looking for; this can't be stressed enough.

Good question. We provided the floor plans (used in building the house) for our listing to our agent and she didn't use them.

The house we just bought, had floor plans. Loved that! It helped to figure out afterward if it fit our style of living when we left.

Go figure.

From my country (England) we also show floor plans with house listings and also include measurements for each room.

Floor plans, measuresment of rooms give a lot better picture of the flow of a house or condo. So just because it's 1200sqft doesn't mean it's fully usuable especially if it's a condo built in the Attic space.

Also thanks for the idea, I am going to be adding a floorplan and measurements when I come to sell my place.

marcus - quite true, I've had the same experience when I draw up floor plans for a place.

YES. We saw two houses, identical square footage (1300sf) and one of them was completely boxed in, each room compartmentalized off a main hallway. The layout was unusable for us (dining room at the opposite end of a hallway from the kitchen, which had no area to eat-in).
The other house wasn't "open floor plan" but had a bit more 'flow' to it, that just made it seem about 200 sf larger by comparison.

We probably wouldn't have wasted time driving to house #1 if we had seen a floorplan beforehand.

I think most home brochures don't come with blueprints and/or floor plans because the onus is unfortunately put on the buyer to verify square footage.

Even on new homes, I noticed they don't always have dimensions for each room...

I was persistent and demanded a copy of my appraisal when I purchased my home, it had a cad drawing of the homes layout with square footage. I said I paid for it, I demand a copy. And on my fairly new house I am buying in a few days, I am asking the seller for copies of all the blueprints, so I have em when I need em later for resale.

Please, the cost is negligible. I had a perfect set of plans done for a 20 room house that cost $150!!!!! Considering the value, it's a no-brainer.

You can create your own floor plan at www.floorplanner.com, Ive been working on mine, it takes some time though, hours if you try to include every detail.

The documents for our small condo association (small building - not a house)includes floor plans for each of the units with square footage for each. This information is available to any prospective buyer. It also includes the storage / garage areas. Do the condo associations that you all live in have similar information in your documents? I suspect that the in some instances the information may be there, but the buyers do not scrutinize these documents closely enough before making an offer.

Company : Diamond Cut Builders

I am contacting you to find out if you would like to take a brief moment out out of your busy schedule to look at the floor plan designs I have done for residential, commercial , hotels and churches. If this is something you woul be interested in doing please fill free to give me call at 832-928-5216 and ask for David White and I appreciate your time.

Sincerely, David Whie CEO

I provide them for the St. Louis area but have had a hard time selling them to agents. With the glut of homes on the market its a toss up as to whether or not the agent is going to want to invest the effort to create a floor plan. If they have the time and lots of listings they can do it themselves fairly easily. I have graph paper and process listed if anyone is interested in making their own. Otherwise, sketch it up and there are many companies who will turn it into a nice crisp plan for marketing- myself included.
www.forsalefloorplans.com

The floor plan company I sometimes hire: http://newenglandfloorplans.com/
allows an online viewer to "drag-and-drop" furniture into the floor plan. Each floor plan has a stand-alone URL that can be emailed to anyone (buyer, friend of buyer, interior decorator, architect, etc.). There's always a disclaimer that the measurements are approximate. Sellers should be more forceful with their listing agents and insist, not ask, for their listing agent to pay for this service. I disagree with any agent or seller who thinks that it is disadventageous to provide an online or hand-out floor plan for fear of revealing any oddities or short-comings. "It is what it is" as they say. A floor plan will dissuade disinterested buyers and will please the person or persons who ultimately DO like the property in spite of its short-comings.