Square Footage Reviseted - The Truth Revealed

A must read - it debunks a lot of what both brokers and non-brokers say on these boards. And I think everyone can agree its buyer beware on this.

I would change the ceiling heigt to minimum of 8 feet. Also, mezzanine unless higher than 8 feet clearly not included. Also, more buyers need to measure when they see the open house rather than complain after the contract signing. It is not that difficult to measure.

It basically remind us that brokers-sellers inflate sqare footage 10% to 20% and buyers have no recourse if they sue. This country is amazing! The Land of gansterism in thousand forms and shapes!

gangsterism

Check out 92 Warren Listing and try to find the listed square footage, which is as per the offering plan.

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/561925-condo-92-warren-street-tribeca-new-york

I do wish the city would set a standard. For gross and net (useable) square footage, both interior and exterior. Gross including pro-rata portion of all commons spaces, net being that space in your unit one can actually use.

how would they do it? how many people would it take? what would happen if they made a mistake? etc. etc.

I have seen a broker round up a 1283 sq ft apt into 1400!!!!! Every apartment in this line was 1283 except this one was listed at 1400. The same broker listed a 1430'ish apt to 1500 sq ft. This should not be allowed!!!!!

Politicians will never allow this ruling as they get a lot of money from real-estate industry. Also, the real-estate industry is fragmented. This means that it is not worth the time/money of class-action law firms.

There are plenty of places in the US and western world where standard SF measurments are dictated by law. A simple method is that your property tax information would have to accurately reflect teh square footage. Why on Earth would it be difficult to enforce? It would be enforced when buyers (or the city) discover a discrepency and sue (or fine) the seller/owner.

where in the us are square footage measurements enforced by law? how do the penalties work?

The City took 35 years to figure out that it was cheated in a deal that relied on usable square footage measurements. The Verizon building downtown is the subject
http://www.tribecatrib.com/news/2009/december/462_city-says-verizon-cheated-on-lower-manhattan-tower-deal.html

but of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of square footage.

but, you don't care, do you?

Who are you talking to?

huntersburg, midtownereast, nicercatch, buyerbuyer & riversider.

Ok then I'll answer for myself.
You think my post is not relevant to the topic? Someone talked about setting NYC standards on square footage and NYC potentially enforcing the standards. Yet there is a big example, recently in the news, of a large real estate deal that originally involved the City where the City was cheated in the determination of square footage and wasn't able to determine that fact for 3 and a half decades.

And your posts?

Don't bother, not interested.

according to this article there were floors that were misrepresented

The suit claims that Taconic “knew or should have known” that Verizon didn’t own some of the floor space it was selling, and that the investment firm got a discounted price on the property as a direct result of Verizon’s fraud.

what does that have to do with residential real estate square footage being overstated?

You are really that narrow minded?

Hey guys.

Hunters burg

Midtownereast

Nicer catch

Buyer buyer

Riversider

What does that mean? And what does that have to do with residential square footage, or anything?

I seem to recall a developer a few years back who pushed the envelope on this to new limits and decided to count common space.

is it fraud or deception? If a broker publishes an accurate floorplan with accurate dimensions but then overstates the size in the 'sft datafield', is that really fraud?

Look I hear you guys..this causes me pain in my business every once in a while when one of my buyer gets pissed because the dimensions dont add up to the total size listed. But I usually tell them to ignore that size from the beginning, that its an estimate, not to be trusted with disclaimers everywhere. Instead, visit the property, see if the space works, measure for yourself to be 100% sure and confident and go off the floorplan. Plus, I never do valuations or guide on bidding based on price per sft for coops..i usually dont do it for condos either. So our bid has nothing to do with the overstated size. Rather its frustration and the feeling of being deceived that gets to my clients and who can blame them!

I like it better when brokers with coops leave out sft and tell potential buyers they do not know exact size and that a floorplan is attached for them to see all room dimensions. If its not documented, leave it out. Including the common elements to justify a higher asking price, dont get me started on that

Urban,
The better question is what prohibits builders and the city from using a set standard calculation?
What is it about the process that prevents a single standard from being applied?

my guess is lack of will and motivation, outside of that, a culture that succumbs to sell side pressure to inflate size to justify a higher sales price...and not ask questions and just add the 'estimate/disclaimer' tag to it. At some point it will make enough noise/lawsuits that all firms will stop allowing brokers to put any size up there that is not documented

If you're selling an apartment in Manhattan you should simply (be required?) to pay a professional to come in and measure. It may not be perfect but it will be pretty close. This is a minimum expense for someone selling an apartment here.

That I agree with and said that somewhere in a forum when this came up years ago..but we all pretty much agreed that firms and agents will not dole out the extra $150 or whatever it the fee is for something that may piss off the seller and make their apt look smaller than what it was previously marketed at or sold to the seller in the first place at

Unfortunately Digs you nailed it, many sellers want to live in la la land when it comes to the size of their apartment.Especially when we are talking $1000 dollars a square foot. On many occasions when I have given a price based on the actual square footage, I was jeered at...lol. Many of these properties then sat for the 6 month "holding" period, then either came down to earth via the current broker or else the new broker priced it right and comes off looking like a genius when it sells in a month!

Of course many listings are priced within reason, but boy are there some dosies out there!

Urban, I think you nailed it with the sell side pressure.
Seems you could say the same thing about bond ratings.

U should see all the Pens and junkets my wife gets from drug companies. The sell side pressure is enormous. So you'll understand when she prescribes you crap you don't need and grow a third nut sack. The pressure to sell is huge.

I'm all for honesty and think it's b.s. to include portions of common areas, etc. in square footage. But my own preference -- and the only thing I relied on as a shopper -- is honest, tape-measured interior wall to interior wall dimensions (including ceiling height) of each room. Let the buyer count the square footage that's important to them. E.g., some buyers may want to count mezzanines and terraces, but discount foyers or galleries, which meet "technical" definitions but may be functionally useless.

Honest room measurements are the key, in my opinion. I'd be happy with that and no stated square footage number.

Sunshine is always the best antiseptic. Time to shed a little light on this issue.

So where do we start with all of this "buyer-beware" stuff? Does this mean we have to check with the city to verify the taxes? Do we have to check with the coop board to verify the maintenance? Do we have to send out samples of the hardwood flooring to be carbon dated to verify that it is original pre-war? Where does this madness stop? At some point, the realtor must be OBLIGATED to provide accurate information. It is one thing for the realtor to provide a floorplan with dimensions and omit any specific numbers about square footage. But it is another thing for the realtor to ouright LIE about the size. It dumbounds me how every realtor in this city is not being sued for engaging in this deceptive practice.

'Does this mean we have to check with the city to verify the taxes? Do we have to check with the coop board to verify the maintenance?"

Actually yeah, this should be required, it's so easy to do, especially today. And if you made the fine, 1% of the sale commission, guess what, the info will always be correct.

UD: "is it fraud or deception? If a broker publishes an accurate floorplan with accurate dimensions but then overstates the size in the 'sft datafield', is that really fraud?"

Its both. And you over-state even this simple example. MANY floorplans have misleading dimensions - i.e an L-shaped room is listed as "15X20" when, factoring in the L, its not 300SF but maybe 220. Or diagonal or round walls. The Floorplans THEMSELVES are fraudulent and deceptive. And yes they also often include common areas, or are middle of the wall or outside wall to outside wall.

The city should stipulate specifications for net, usuable interior space for each unit, and also allow the buildings to pro-rata the common space to each unit so that every apartment has a "net" and a "gross" square footage. Common charges can be based on gross to boot.

Here is such a standard from an industry organization: Its not that fricking hard.

http://www.boma.org/MeasurementStandards/Pages/MURS.aspx

As a seller, I would leave square footage blank (given that everyone else lies) but have accurate room dimensions (yes, and make my broker measure 3x).
As a buyer, I ALWAYS, ALWAYS ignore stated square footage and if I'm really interested, bring my laser measure. And as I've said before, I'm not fixated on price/sq. ft as many are (including people who should know better). I focus on the building, the line, room count, and exposures.

p.s. and I don't care enough to have the city or state legislate on this measure. Sure, if you want them to, but I thought most of you folks were against bloating our bureaucracy.

There is no government solution here, folks, not because they can't but because they won't. REBNY can address this, but so far has shown the will only to protect industry members with disclaimer language, not consumers with disclosures. (REBNY has a sq ft measuring standard for commercial space, interestingly.) I've been blogging about this for a while, including today.

The math is not as simple as you might think. Look at it this way: those buyers in the Times article who sued paid for three different measurements, and got "1,634 sq ft", "1,741 sq ft" and "nearly 1,800 sq ft".

My suggestion is that REBNY give agents a choice (and disclose what they choose): If (a) you don’t have a number in the Offering Plan, and (b) you don't want to measure or pay someone to measure (it’s too hard!!), and (c) you don’t have another (identified) reasonable basis for estimating, then REBNY should have a rule that you cannot quote a measurement. At all.

There is no perfect system, but this is pretty simple; I just don't see it happening.

amen Sandy!

REBNY is an industry trade group. As such it's absurd they would act as a consumer watch group or work in some capacity that benefits buyers. This is exactly the type of situation where the government does have a role.

RivSid -- Real Estate Boards (industry trade groups) all over the country do this, with standards. REBNY has a standard for measuring commercial space.

I just don't see the City Council or the State Legislature doing anything about this, especially if they think REBNY will lobby against it. REBNY *should* lead, nonetheless....

Just shooting from the hip here. But why can't the A.G. set the standard at least with regards to new construction.

RivSid -- AG's interest is in disclosure, not standardization or fairness. (With sq ft, with common charges, with a lot of things.) Probably because the law that makes any of this interesting to the AG has to do with disclosures to investors / purchasers (Martin Act for coops, not sure if that literally applies to condos). So the disclosure angle is 'covered' for AG purposes when the developer states how things were calculated, including whether common space is included in unit allocations. The AG has no legitimate regulatory interest in other issues. Specifically, for this discussion, the AG dos not care if there are different methods for measuring sq ft that make comparisons difficult (impossible) so long as the method is adequately disclosed.

Insofar as the AG allocates scarce resources to cover its statutory / regulatory workload, investigating whether a disclosed method is 'fair' or 'standard' might not be a good use of those scarce resources.

City Council could hold hearings, in theory, which might be easier to do in face of REBNY's lobbying power. You'd think press attention would embarrass REBNY firms, but it hasn't yet. You'd think PruDE did not like having to spend $$ to defend that lawsuit, so they'd look for a different solution. You'd think the problem Corcoran had with the commercial space in my office 'growing' 2,000 sq ft for lease renewal would suggest this is a 'problem'. Nothing has happened. Yet.

We've got so many problems in this city, why is the City Council going to spend the time on an issue to protect people who hire lawyers to represent them on a routine basis in their transaction, and who can hire others to help with their evaluation and purchase, not to mention buy a tape measure.

The biggest reason the sellers get away with overstating the square footage is due to lazy buyers who do not do enough work before making such a large purchase. Also, I would think you can sue the seller/listin broker unless you buy. Otherwise Charles Rutenberg will be a prime candidate (see one bond street listing. The previous history shows half the listing size. They included very low ceiling mezzanine!!). Having laws due to real estate lobby will be very hard.

If borkers were able to do basic math, they'd be the ones calculating the moonshot. Omfg, on second thought thank Fking Allah, you guys sell real estate instead of arguing for gay rights in front of the supreme court nor fighting a war where miscalculations might kill my nanny's husband.

Pls for Xmas, don't allow them to operate heavy machinery.

I agree buyers are stupid, often, but Urbandigs and smattingly are fricking insulting our inteeligence. You buy residential RE in plenty of other big cities in the US, or commercial RE in NYC, and you have standards. And the article above has different SF totals because they all did NOT use the SAME standard.

A freshman in HS could easily figure out the SFage of just about any apt in NYC. Either you two are truing your true colors as shills for the real estate industry, or you are both incredibly, unbelievably stupid. There is no third option.

nice rant Jason! Right. So I say for buyers to NOT trust coop stated sft and not be bullied into bidding up for a coop based on a price per sft argument..and rather, they should refer to the floorplan and their own measuring when it comes to figuring out total size since there is no oversight of any standard of measuring/marketing in this industry..yea, shill for the industry. u momo

Is that like tig ole bitties?

I think we're forgetting the big elephant in the room.
Urban, arent' these numbers in connection to tax rates?

not sure how the city handles tax rates for each bldg, but for shareholders, I believe its based on number of shares, not the units total square feet

And how are "shares" allocated?
I'd LOVE to hear that fairy tale.
No regulation or standards there either.

anyone ever heard any stories of unfair "share" allocation?
(rhetorical)

The sponsor gets a disinterested third party to say the share allocation bears a reasonable relationship to size, location, view, special features, etc.

That's why before buying you look at the offering plan to see the share-allocation pattern, just in case. Most co-ops were conversions, though, with the tenants looking carefully at the allocation, so not much chance of anything egregious getting past them.

To use the mezzanine example, what happens if there's an official regulation that says spaces with less than 8' (or < 7'6") ceilings should not be counted toward square footage?

Let's suppose there's an 800 square foot unit where 200 square feet have high ceilings and 600 square feet have 7'5" ceilings. Can the unit owner, whose offering plans says 4 rooms, go back to the co-op and sue for share reallocation based on material breach because only one of the four rooms would meet this new legal criterion? I know share reallocation is tough, but it has been permitted in cases where an apartment was falsely described in the offering plan.

Can the co-op then sue the city for tax reduction because a certain portion of the square footage that's currently counted is now deemed to be "unofficial" square footage?

I see all kinds of problems with using too stringent criteria, especially with older, grandfathered buildings that do not meet current code.

For what it's worth, I just had a bank appraisal come in at 45 sq ft (about 7%) more than the listing...Based on the above it doesn't really matter, but figured one "happy story" would be fitting (in light of the holiday season)

I have been looking at a magical apartment. From the floorplan (640) to the original listing (725) to the latest listing (740), the square footage grows like Pinocchio's nose.!

cra:

If it doesn't sell it is likely to grow to 900 square feet

cra, than's for your 2 valuable posts on Streeteasy since February, 2008.