are bathroom and kitchen areas included in total square footage in floorplans?

Sq. ft. are even based to the middle of exterior walls (and possibly sometimes ven to the exterior walls), and of course bathroom and kitchen areas are included.

You probably should base your bid on what YOU think of LIVING in the space, and what you think the overall space is worth

the problem is that it throws off all the comps. from what i've now seen, i have no idea what developers are really doing.

Read the fine print on the ads. "Stated area is less than usable area."

For condos, the declaration and offering plan will detail how ft² were calculated.

Typically, it's from the center of interior walls to the outside of exterior walls. In some condos and conversions, it might be from the inside face of all walls, or to halfway through exterior walls, or something else.

For co-ops, there is no standard.

As ph41 said, there're ft² and ft², so best to go by how the space works.

measure yourself as stated sq footage is almost always inflated. Every thing inside the middle of the exterior walls should be included. Closets, bathrooms, interior walls. Many new developments have inflated square footage in their plans as they may be including common space very thick exterior walls. Most lofts include stairs and elevator and exterior walls which needs to factored in.

They should be required to state it as "oh, say, around 1200ish square feet or thereabouts, give or take".

Sometimes even the common stairwell OUTSIDE your apartment, as well as part of the elevator shaft, is included in the square footage of your apartment.

The only standard that counts is interior space. Exterior walls are a developer's poor trick to make you think you're getting a larger space than you actually are. Measure wall-to-wall. That is your size. Ph41 is a broker (actually, in real life, not usual SE insult) and thus more sympathetic to the developer's trick. You as a buyer have to actually pay for and live in the space.

condos ofter include your % of common areas in SF numbers

these tricks are very bad. it doesnt make sense to look at anything other than livable sqft.

Which is why you should measure yourself and decide whether the price is appropriate rather than relying on the stated square footage.

evnyc - I am definitely NOT a broker

Sometimes just seems like everybody gets so caught up in $/sf.ft. rather than in total $ for the space you'll be living in.

Which is better: 5 pounds of chuck steak, or 3 pounds of NY strip?

Clearly you get more for your money with the chuck steak but some would say you would have to spend too much time and energy making it edible. Some are creative in the kitchen, so not such a burden. But others wouldn't know where to start.

So the answer: neither

but isn't it nice that you don't have to bring your own scale to the store to know which is which?

spinny - didn't get the feeling from your posts about the apartment you actually purchased that you looked at it in $/sf.ft terms - sounded as if you liked it a lot, thought it worked for you, and the price worked for you, or did I read all your posts so wrong?

If the floor plans actually showed what the livable square footage was, it would completely change things. And if the develpoer is playing games with that...who knows what else they are doing.

I'm not hung up on "exact" square-footage and $/sq.ft. Layout matters a lot. Obviously, there is a real diff. between a 600 sqft 1br and a 1000 sqft 1br, but everyone "measures" differently, so the numbers mean nothing.

New construction condos are the worse offenders. 60s/70s era buildings often feel bigger than their stated square footage in the sales plan in comparison.

Of all the things that a developer does, this IMO is the least of your worries. Square footage is something you can easily verify, by checking dimensions of rooms against the stated total area.

How is it even legal to misrepresent size? isnt that fraud?

perhaps penthouse lady--the broker--would like to explain how this works.