How do you think about sq. ft? Can less be more?

Personally I like smaller bedrooms and larger living rooms. I hate renovated kitchens because generally I hate the renovations people have done (stainless, marble, fridges on steroids). I love entryways and foyers and halls and room for walls of books. I like dining rooms. I don't mind a 1BR or 2BR that only has one bathroom, but it had better be accessible without going through a bedroom.

I cannot bear pass-throughs and open kitchens, and I wouldn't live anywhere that didn't have a deep-enough tub for soaking.

But ... patches of space in a corner? What on earth does that mean?

Of course size matters, but so is how it's used, especially if size is limited. I find the flow/path from one room to another to be very important. So tell us more about the bedroom toys you mentioned that take up a lot of space...

I've looked at many new and old places and square footage is calculated inconsistantly and inaccurately. You need to measure for yourself--get one of those laser bounce thingies. Some apartments give the usuable square footage, some give the interior footage (including closet space, space occupied by columns and walls, etc), some measure from the exterior walls, some even allocate the common space in the building to the apartments. If you look at the same listing over time, it often gets inflated to compete with the other listings that cheat (850 sq ft 2br in 2004 becomes a 925 sq ft 1 br in 2010).

I also like smaller bedrooms and larger living rooms, but dislike long foyers and halls in buildings where maintenance/ccs are allocated by square footage as you are paying higher carrying charges for something you don't necessarily use. It also annoys me when there is a giant HVAC unit protuding into the room.

One big thing that affects usable space is door placement/pathways through the apartment. I prefer a living room that you enter/exit only from one end, or a straight path through, so you have 2-3 walls of usable space for furniture. I've seen living rooms with three doors (e.g., from the foyer, into the kitchen, and down to the bedrooms) so you barely have room for a full-sized couch without it blocking a doorway. Also bedrooms with an entrance, a wall of closets and a master bath doorway... which all sounds great until you realize there's no wall space left for a dresser. You can tell I've thought about this a lot. :)

I agree on the smaller bedrooms and larger living space. Also for a single person, a half bath placed immediately next to a full bath just seems like a waste. I can see it being useful for a family, but I'd rather have the closet space. Or w/d. I like foyers and hallways, within reason, since it feels more like a home than an apartment. But they should be small enough not to take up major square footage, or large enough to fit furniture (e.g, bookcase). Otherwise it's just a waste.

typo-meant to say (850 sq ft 2br in 2004 becomes a 925 sq ft 2br in 2010).

@BossTweed-why don't you like open kitchens? I am ok with them as long as the stove is vented.

asd - you don't think closets, interior walls, columns in the space should be included in square footage? Are you serious?

I don't think those things should be included in usable square footage. Closets, built-ins,etc. add value, but aren't usable square footage. If there's a bunch of giant columns in the living room, for example, that living room has less usable square footage than a living room of the same size and layout without those columns. Also same with a stairway that has a large footprint--adds value by connecting living areas but not space that is usable..

while you're at it, maybe you should start deducting the 2' or 3' space above your head that is wasted because you're certainly not 8' or 9' tall.

@Sunday if apartments were priced with cube footage instead of square footage (pcf vs psf) then maybe..lol

before everyone jumps on me, OP wanted to know about how square footage was calculated and how it related to USABLE square footage

Also, there's the related question of whether the sq footage is calculated in a consistent manner and how it may be over or understated.

Off the top of my head, I've thought of a few potential negative adjustments (that lower the usable space):

Slanty walls
Patches of space in a corner
Columns
Thick (and maybe overabundant) closets
Air conditioning and related units
A second full bathroom (extra bathtub)

Foyers are hard to judge - they can be nice to separate rooms but may not really add anything.

Any thoughts and comments are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

asd - of course new yorkers HATE having overabundant closets!! And a second FULL bath? How terrible is that? And airconditioning? who needs THAT on 98 degree days in summer? and those pesky corners where the walls meet!!

Thanks for the feedback.

When I was referring to patches of space, I meant situations where a room wraps around and you have extra space in a corner or narrow hallway with limited options. Bedroom toys could mean sporting gear, protruding artwork, music system or things that you don't want in the living room...maybe bedroom "stuff" is more accurate.

The space taken up by doors and closets as they open is a good point. I guess the rule of thumb is for pass throughs to be efficient vis-a-vis doors and hallways to provide options for bookshelves or otherwise be small as possible.

At least as much art and subjectivity as science, but good to have a framework.

ph41,

The batch of negative adjustments in asd's post were copied from my original entry. All of this discussion is within the context of a given reported sq footage. Thus, a second full bath is incrementally positive in isolation, but arguably negative if it comes at the expense of an offsetting loss of space in the living room.

As far as air conditioning, it's taken as a given that all units will have A/C - the relevant question is the extent to which these systems eat up living space.

I only look at small places, because that's all I've ever been able to afford.
To me, foyers & hallways are useless sq ft, so I don't count them. When you actually measure the inside of an apt, it's shocking to see how different the numbers are compared to what's advertised.
Only in NY have I seen such gross miscalculations of sq footage (and, yes, I know to count the common areas- it rarely makes THAT big of a difference).
In small apts, every usable inch counts.

Closets, Closets, Closets! You may not think they are important upfront but you'd be amazed how quickly they get filled up. In my opinion any studio, 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom much less than 500, 800 and 1200 sqft respectively are'nt worth my time. I always prefer post-war buildings built in the 50's and 60's, that's the sweet spot for value per sqft. If your looking for glitz, look at something built in the last 20 years. If you like pre-war, make sure it's a top flight building, the 80-90 year old infrastructure can cause lots of problems.

Always get a floor plan with dimensions, verify the dimensions, and than calculate the sqft yourself. Never include outside space like a balcony, that's less expensive space and will mess up your true price per sqft.

>@BossTweed-why don't you like open kitchens? I am ok with them as long as the stove is vented.

There've been a few open kitchen debates around here with both sides argued. Me, I just like separate rooms for things. I love cooking and I love entertaining, but if I have people over I don't want my dirty dishes and pans in the same room (unless the open kitchen is larger than the ones in NYC). For me it's like having an unmade bed in the living room.

And I've never understood why anyone would cut a hole in the wall to hand plates through instead of walking through a door that's usually just three feet away.

>Always get a floor plan with dimensions, verify the dimensions, and than calculate the sqft yourself.

Why bother with all this if you see a place you like? I always just assume that the numbers are exaggerated, so I mostly ignore them once I see an apt.

Boss_Tweed: "Why bother with all this if you see a place you like? I always just assume that the numbers are exaggerated, so I mostly ignore them once I see an apt."

Let's say you're shopping for a diamond ring. You see a very beautiful ring that you like and the salesperson tells you that the diamond is 2 carat and the ring is priced as such. Are you saying it won't matter to you that it is in fact only 1.9 carat as long as you like the ring?

"You see a very beautiful ring that you like and the salesperson tells you that the diamond is 2 carat and the ring is priced as such. Are you saying it won't matter to you that it is in fact only 1.9 carat as long as you like the ring?"

Yes. Especially if you don't like haggling.

For apartments, if you've seen enough apartments, then you will know the value -- to yourself -- of the apartment. At that stage, EXACT square footage becomes irrelevant.

Sunday: that's kind of an impossible comparison, since square footage is always exaggerated, either a little or a lot. I find it useful mostly just to get a ballpark sense of a listing that I haven't yet seen in person, and I wouldn't look at diamond listings online.

If I were looking at a bunch of diamond rings and found one I liked, I don't think I'd really care how many carats it had. But who knows, I might well care a bit more if I found out a jeweler were lying to me. That's a more exact science than all this real estate measurement hoopla. As the responses on this page imply, smaller places can have nicer layouts and large places can have wasted spaces.

The reason I used the diamond ring comparison is partly because of what RealEstateNY wrote: "In my opinion any studio, 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom much less than 500, 800 and 1200 sqft respectively are'nt worth my time."
A 1.9 carat and a 2.0 carat diamond will probably both look just as beautiful and you probably can't tell the difference visually. A 2.0 carat have a certain premium over the 1.9 even if you personally don't care about it. If you care about resale value, then you would care whether it's 1.9 vs. 2.0. If some people care whether the apartment is 500, 800, 1200 vs. 475, 760, 1140 sqft, maybe you should care whether how it was measured is more or less common practice.

Sq footage measurements, like carats, mean a lot more for resale than for actual day-to-day usage.
Unfortunately.
It's too bad there is so much emphasis placed on price per square foot, when one factor in that equation is so unrelaible.

Agreed, on both counts.

Also, many people like to rely on statistics to make them feel like they have more control over a difficult process or a personal decision.

No one is saying you have to measure the sqft down to the last foot. But if you are buying something and are off by more than 5% something's wrong. If you think you are buying a 1000 sqft apt. and it measures between 950 & 1050 sqft, I can live with that. If it's more great, but if it's less by more than 5% an interested buyer should know that, and it's not very difficult to figure the sqft within 5%.

It's like buying a T.V. and not knowing the screen size. How many people do that?

what is here? isnt here just there, without a T?

>It's like buying a T.V. and not knowing the screen size. How many people do that?

I don't have a TV, but if I went to buy one I'd choose the one I wanted without caring at all how many inches it measured from one corner to the other, either by me or by the salesperson. Really, why would that matter?

"if I went to buy one I'd choose the one I wanted without caring at all how many inches it measured from one corner to the other"

But you would still see it before making the purchase, right? You;d still have a relative point of view on size, right?

FLMAOZ

Yeah, of course. But I wouldn't care if someone claimed it was 42" when it was really only 43.27"

Ha! Number typo!

I heard a theory that square footage in conversions from apts might be slightly under-calculated because the original owner wanted to pay less in taxes. Does that make any sense?