Either attempting to sell your home alone or listing your home with a professional, the essential element to a smooth exchange is an precise depiction of your home's material characteristics fully documented. A necessary phase in the process of finding an precise depiction of your home is finding an precise sum of living area, a necessary phase that is simply skipped. As one of the first phases in concluding a home's selling price an real estate sales person will provide a Comparable Market Analysis ,CMA, which lists selected transactions in the general area. However, without an precise calculation of your home's living area, the real estate sales person's CMA will not be very helpful.



In the US, the majority of real estate professionals build the price per sq.ft. of a home on livable area size. Living area is known as the area of a home which is heated and cooled, directly accessed within the interior of the home and showing the quality of construction similar to the original home. Living area is measured from the outside walls, not from the internal walls. All realtors are to use the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standards for residential buildings when determining home area, which advises physical measurement.

Furthermore, one of the largely familiar grievances in real estate now a days is falsification of house size. I've been to properties in a contract where the home's items are boxed up and the home seller is ready to move out only to find out that their property's gross living area was not precisely embodied to start with. The purchase agreement then has to be renegotiated or is completely null| with no reason for the purchaser to carry on the purchase. The seller's home sells for thousands of dollars below the original price. For this reason you should not let the agent to publish your living area based on county records, an old set of plans (which can and are changed sometimes during the years), or an estimate of what the average home size in your neighborhood.

Here is a scenario: A 1,000sf home is put up for sale @ 111 Maple Dr. The home is listed at $120/sf x 2,000sf = $240,000. Instead of physically measuring the home to find an precise 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 agreed price. The sellers are told that they will need to renegotiate the purchase price because the living area is actually 1,840sf, not the stated 2,000sf. The sellers are angered and file a suit the previous sellers for falsification of living area.

Can this really occure in transfers? Absolutely and it does. This is why it is so crucial to have your home measured by the agent listing your property, whether by owner or by real estate sales person, or preferably, by an appraiser. Upon doing so, you will have documented evidence of your true living area.

Unlike a real estate agent, an appraiser has no vested interest in what amount for which the home is worth. Appraisal fees are based on amount of work to develop the report and not a portion of the selling price. Therefore, a professional appraisal can often help homeowners yield the best decisions setting a reasonable asking price for their homes size. Whether you're considering listing FSBO or through an real estate sales person, it is always a good idea to get an appraisal prior to listing your house.