Your Home's Square Footage by the Dummy Method

Measuring Square Footage of a House

Many times our researchers come across an internet post with the unenviable combination of excessive verbiage and erroneous facts. It's no wonder that the bulk of these occur at content farms and other websites where amateurs were paid to write about topics that professionals have already covered (usually correctly, we might add). Yes, when we say "content farm," we mean HubPages, WritEdge, InfoBarrel, and the whole Demand Media Studio / Leaf Group stable of websites. Whatever... when you're buying or selling a home, the square footage is a key detail. Consequently, you probably want to know "How to Calculate the Square Footage of a Home" — but you may not want to take the advice of Carter McBride, which the three-time DotD published at the DMS¹ site Synonym.com...

First, we'll point out that methods for "calculating square footage" differ from location to location, something McBride fails to point out. For instance, closets and even bathrooms are omitted from the total in some places; but in others, the whole building is fair game. In most places, however, the key is "livable space." That means space that is enclosed (has walls and a ceiling) and is under HVAC. An unheated garage, basement or attic should not be counted.

McBride doesn't bother with such niceties, however. All Carter says to do is:

Consider the house as a group of rectangles. Measure the length and width of each rectangle. Multiply L x W to get area of each rectangle. Sum the areas. ...and Bingo! According to Carter, you're done! Except no, you're not: all you've done is measure the square footage of the building's footprint! At the very least, you also need to calculate the area of an additional floor or floors and any part of the basement that's finished and heated, plus subtract the area of the garage.

While you're at it, you should make certain that stairwells are only counted once, as are any rooms with a vaulted ceiling -- appraisers in many areas don't count the open area as part of a second floor. Depending on local custom, you should also omit unlivable areas such as a walled-off utility chase, sections of finished attics where the ceiling is less than six feet, and other areas usually left out of the total, e.g., closets or utility rooms.

In other words, Carter knows jack about how to appraise the square footage of a house, and so does anyone who thinks his method is sufficient. As far as we're concerned, that's all that's necessary to hand yet another Dumbass of the Day award to Mr. McBride, JD. Oh, well, at least he got the arithmetic right...

¹ DMS = Demand Media Studios. As we often say here at the Antisocial Network, "You can't spell 'dumbass' without 'DMS'!"

copyright © 2016-2022 scmrak

DD - REAL ESTATE