Please post overstated sq footage examples here

I have a good friend who always takes one of those laser measurers with him whenever he does a second viewing of an apartment. He says that out of 8 apartments he's viewed and measured, ALL 8 had overstated square footage by at LEAST 200 sq ft. He always tells me this story as a cautionary tale.

I am always surprised why more people do not carry the laser meters which only cost $100. I guess too many people have justified buying expensive real estate emotionally and convinced themselves that the apartment they are buying is genuinely as large as the inflated square footage stated by the selling broker.

When I started in RE in 1990 we never priced co-ops in ppsft, not sure when that started. Back then I only did rentals(no sales market downtown). Not sure when we started pricing by the F2 or how brokers quantified pricing of co ops?

I remember a very good friend that rented a 2 bedroom on west 19th street she thought her apartment was at least 900 F2, it had 2 bedrooms,1 bath, kitchen and living-room. When she had the floors refinished the guys told her the apartment(wood floor area) was 500 F2. She called me up really upset, "I thought I had such a good deal, my apartment is so small". Well it was fine until they measured it.

I think we all have to get on board withaccurate measurements and not be afraid of the truth. I wonder if we should just be so concerned with ppsft? Perhaps we need a more comprehensive and acceptable way to value a co-op. From location, amenities, condition, exposure, fixtures-not just "Oh this is 865 dollars per square foot...to much! As we are seeing the F2 numbers are so off it's impossible to assign value based on ppsft.

Well sq footage and location should be the starting points for any real estate valuation with price adjusted suitably for maintenance, light, condition and amenities.

think about it ... if we can't agree on what actual square footage is, how could we possibly have reasonable basis to gauge these other items?

Further complicated by the fact that there are many ways to measure the square footage. Appraisers typically measure from the inside of the walls and give the most conservative estimate. Architects measure half-way into the walls and through any interior walls giving a higher estimate. Then there is the engineer's method which measure (I think) all the way through the walls to establish the structural foot print of a unit, giving the highest estimate. Also, if you had 3 appraisers/architects/engineers measure the same unit, they will likely come up with different calculations. So it is not an exact science, particularly in co-ops that have no public records of size.

I agree that the focus on square footage is somewhat mis-guided. You are ultimately buying a home, not square footage. I used to live in a 600 sq ft 2-bed that because of the way it was laid out felt much bigger. I also lived in a 600 sq ft 1-bed that because of poor layout felt much smaller. The first easily had a 10-15% premium for me in terms of livability.

There is an entire other and recent thread on this topic - one which is much longer and includes links to actual stories on the subject:

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/8529-broker-squatre-foot-inflation

That one has 100 comments already...

Listed at 1100 here, 1000 from other sources. Some quick math and eyeballing leads me to believe its close to 1000, but under. There is just a simple .gif floor plan to go on...

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/rental/458079-condo-20-pine-street-financial-district-new-york

Initially co-ops are assigned a price according to the number of shares. Perhaps this should be the on going base-line for price. This will be an interesting project, design a program to value a co-op based on inputs with a standard value. Luckily a good friend is a software engineer, this could be fun.

I keep a spreadsheet for my own co-op, tracking $-per-share. Those are still over the place, showing just broad patterns over time, because the share allocations were a best-guess effort by the sponsor at time of conversion, and cover only some factors. E.g., in my line the share count increases a bit with each floor, but doesn't account for the magic floor where the river views start. The pattern just continues. Then there's no standard to quantify condition, etc., etc. That's why appraisers will come up with different numbers.

I've looked at almost 100 studios and one bedrooms over the past 3 months. I've measured them with tape measure and laser pointer. Most of the time these apartments were overstating the square footage by about 50 sf. Some were wildly off. Some were pretty accurate. Most were off by about 50 sf. Maybe that gets multiplied in apts 2BR and larger... I don't know. What I do know is that if everyone inflates by about the same amount, then it's not that relevant since it's equalized (for the most part) across the market. It doesn't matter as much either because regardless of what size is listed, what matters most is how big it feels/presents to me and other buyers.

In the places I have actually measured, it seems 10-15% over is pretty much standard if you measure useable space from the inside walls. If you go into the wall as the new co-op offerings do with their official measures, 10% higher is about right in most cases. As long as the official measures are the same, at least you are charged the correct share. But price/useable sq ft is obviously not right.