Question for Real Estate Experts
 

My wife and I are not looking to move, but we went to an open house, in a neighborhood we like, over the weekend.

The house was advertised as 3024 Sq Ft and the price was $339,000. About in line for the dollar per Sq Ft around here. It was alright, but nothing overly special and it surprisingly seemed to be about the same size as our house (about 1900 Sq Ft).

So, we take the MLS sheet don't think about it until later, until my wife decides that she is sure that it isn't that much bigger than our house. She totals up the specs for the rooms and it turns out to be a hair under 1800 Sq Ft or a little under 2200 if you include a covered porch (which is probably not considered a "finished room" -- I can't remember if it was screened in or not).

We have no interest in the home, but should we contact the realtor and suggest that she recalculate the SqFt of the home? It seems like a gross error that would make the price of the house close to $100K more than it should be priced as (based on average price per area around here) or a completely fraudulent listing that would likely be uncovered, I assume, by the buyers' appraisal.

Is this common? Any thoughts?

Is basement included as footage in your state? That's the only thing I can think of.

Are the property tax / real estate transactions for your area available online? If so, it'd be interesting to see how those list the house versus the listing & versus your own calculations.

Other possibilities might include an improved attic space, or finished basement perhaps (or space that's being counted as improved when it really isn't by any normal standard).

In the grand scheme of things, if you aren't interested in the house & have no connection to it then it probably falls into the realm of "why borrow someone else's troubles" and should be forgotten about. On the other hand, sometimes stuff like that bugs me too so I don't see anything wrong with simply calling the agent and letting them know you went to the open house & wondered about the discrepancy.

I've seen some properties occasionally be off by 100-200 sq. ft. thanks to creative rounding errors or whatever but I can't say I've ever run across one that's off by this much. Almost makes me wonder if there's something as simple as a typo somewhere that caused it.

I'd call about the item just from a knowledge standpoint.

FWIW sometimes a builder will sell a home while rounding some sqft numbers, IOW "Approximately 2500 sqft"....then a home owner a few years later remembers some of that number and begins to add it to other numbers and eventually lands on something.

SOMETIMES, due to $/sqft equations people try to get slick with their advertising and hope that it doesnt come up or the buyers dont ask for anything to confirm it.

When we were buying a place last summer, one of the places we looked at had a room listed as 24 ft. long, when upon measurement, it was actually 240 inches = 20 ft. I didn't mention it to anyone, but it really ticked me off for some reason.

Basements are included here. The lower square footage number includes a large, finished room and half bath in the basement.

Attic is unfinished (access is through a "door" in a closet, so it doesn't even have a pulldown). The tax info is a good idea and I'll check to see if that is easily available.

When my brother-in-law bought a house in North Carolina, the realtor's SqFt was off by several hundred from the appraisal and his realtor told him that the numbers had to be within 5% of the true number, or else they would face penalty. They didn't report her, as she became a lot more cooperative with their repair requests/demands after bringing it to her attention. :)

Anyway, I'm kind of having the JiMGa feelings going back and forth between thinking it isn't any of my business, but also curious to see if someone can successfully get away with listing a house that far from the truth and pricing it accordingly.

It could be a case of where the county/tax records say a number, and not having any other solid records to go off of then the realtor has to go off of that number. I know we fall into that sometimes. In fact we have a house right now that the county records show as being 1600 sq. ft., we had another realtor who showed it tell us how that can't be 1600 sq. ft. because he had the exact same floor plan a street over just sell and the county had it in the 1400's. In a situation like that we can't make any kind of change unless presented with another option on record, otherwise we could end up being the ones to get screwed over it. If it is wrong, we say that was our source for the info, and we had no other source on record to dispute that.

Now, iin a case like that though, we will say "The county says the sq. ft. is 1600, buuuut well that seems like it could be high to me." That way you are being honest with the buyer.

Anyways, I would say screw it, but that's just me.

garage?

I remember we were in the process of buying a lot when I was in high school. My dad even had the building permit. Anyways we walked the lot and it was nowhere near the size it was supposed to be. Apparently the scale drawings were off on the cul de sac and the real life diameter was actually the same as what the radius showed on paper. Then we didn't build there and bought a cooler house a year later.

Hey Swaggs...Nuke the agent's capital. Worked for me when a dick was giving me misinformation.

I had my wife distract the realtor and stole all of the oil from the garage. Hopefully, they won't notice all of the derricks that I set up.