Do some brokers cheat when listing square footage?
OK, I can imagine what the response here is going to be - I plead guilty to not being skeptical enough in this regard.
I can think of a couple instances where I walked through a condo or an apartment and had a nagging feeling that the listed square footage sounded too large.
But given how easy it is to check - just roll out your measuring tape - I simply thought it was an issue with the layout of the rooms and the overall impression created.
After finding a very interesting note in my inbox the other day from "Sam," who is experiencing a major case of buyer's remorse, I will start bringing along that measuring tape.
Sam rents in the western suburbs, with his wife, an architect. They thought they found their dream home in a section of Newton, a 1920s Tudor-style home, according to his description.
They signed a purchase and sale agreement in late April for around $800,000 and were all ready to move in when they came to a stunning realization - their dream home is actually 20 percent or so smaller than they thought.
Sam and his wife's cute but in need of work 1920s gem is actually much smaller than they realized, say about 1,850 square feet compared to the nearly 2,400 square feet it was listed as.
The couple hit upon the discrepancy when they began doing detailed planning for a round of renovations and found that their measurements and the sellers' floor plans did not match up.
The culprit seems to be an overhanging roof, which extends the roofline out over the house. Somehow the space underneath got counted as interior square footage. Maybe it was just an old, city assessment error that never got rectified.
Or it may not be that innocent. The reaction of the sellers and their Realtor, at least according to our friend Sam, has been less than reassuring in this regard.
"The Sellers' party became furious that we might have made measurements simply to void the P&S, despite us being clear we merely wanted to have this issue resolved before continuing. The Sellers' agent began to demand that we make good on the P&S and told us neither she nor her sellers would be willing to discuss our findings and refused to talk to us for the remainder of the evening."
Basically, the sellers' and their Realtor are refusing to look at the evidence uncovered by Sam and his wife about the house's true size and are simply insisting that it is 2,400 square feet, take it or leave it.
The Realtor in question is apparently doubling defensive since the floor plans for the house were drawn up by an architect she regularly uses, Sam notes.
"I find it so incredibly disturbing that this (very high volume, high profile) Realtor has used one individual to do the floor plans for all of her listings for the past decade and seems completely unconcerned that this "architect" might be less than completely competent," Sam writes.
Maybe Sam is alone in his "conundrum," as he puts it, but I suspect that inflating a home's size may be more common than we realize.
What's your take?
