: Real-Estate

Listing Your Residence? No Regrets is Found in Having Your Residence Physically Measured

Either selling your home on your own or listing your home with a real estate broker, the magic element to a hassle free sale is an exact account of your home’s material features in full documentation. A crucial move in the process of achieving an exact account of your home is achieving an exact calculation of living area, a crucial move that is regularly passed over. As one of the first phases in deciding on a home’s listing price an real estate agent will provide a Comparative Market Analysis , or CMA, which shows selected sales in the general area. However, without an exact calculation of your home's living area, the real estate agent’s CMA will not be very helpful.

In the U.S.A., the majority of agents build the price per sq.ft. of a home on living area size. Living area is thought as the area of a home which is heated and cooled, directly accessed through the inside of the home and possessing the quality of construction similar to the original home. Living area is taken from the outside walls, not from the interior part of the house. All real estate professionals are to abide by the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) rules for single-family residential buildings when finding home area, which advises physical measurement.

Furthermore, the most familiar grievances in real estate today is distortion of home size. I’ve been to residences under contract where the home’s items are packed up and the seller is ready to move only to be told that their property’s gross living area was not exactly embodied to start with. The sales agreement then has to be renegotiated or is totally voidunacceptable| with no reason for the purchaser to carry on the sale. The seller’s home sells for thousands of dollars below the original price. For this reason you should not permit the real estate professional to declare your living area based solely on county records, an old set of plans (which can and are altered sometimes during the years), or an estimate of what the typical home size in your subdivision.

Here is a scenario: A 3,500 square foot home is offered for sale @ 12345 Deer Park Drive. The home is priced at $120/sf x 2,000sf = $240,000. Instead of actually measuring the home to obtain an exact living area, the GLA was calculated with county records. The home gets a buyer for $240,000. However, the appraiser delivers their appraisal showing 1,840sf and an appraised value of $220,800, some $19,200 less than the sales price. The sellers are told that they will need to renegotiate the sales price due to the living area is actually 1,840sf, not the stated 2,000sf. The sellers get upset and sue the former sellers for falsification of living area.

Can this really transpire in transfers? Absolutely and it does. For this reason it is so important to get your home measured by the professional listing your home, whether by owner or by real estate agent, or preferably, by an appraiser. After doing so, you will have documented proof of your actual living area.
Unlike a real estate broker, an appraiser has no vested concern in what amount for which the home is worth. Appraisal fees are determined by complexity to develop the report and not a percentage of the sales price. Therefore, a professional appraisal can often help homeowners yield the best decisions setting a accurate sales price for their homes size. Whether you’re considering listing FSBO or through an real estate agent, it is always a good idea to get an appraisal prior to listing your property.
Author: R Chandler Smith