Comments on: Indeed, Size Matters!

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 22:57:28 +0000

Hey, lets not forget the realtor who never looked at what the house NEXT door sold for. Or the one behind it, or down the street.All they want is the listing !!!And we want them to do a better job with GLA’s ….lol

By: Fritz Vogel

Fritz Vogel — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 17:24:31 +0000

In reply to John Pratt.

I don’t mind the laziness of “missing” a vaulted area, or adding Unheated area to GLA. I am PISSED off that Realtor boards allow licensed Agents to list a property with an “estimated”, rounded or derived from owner GLA. It’s 2017. 99% of towns I work in have GLA of every property on line, and in 90% of the MLS systems it is FREE data. Why allow a “Licensed” person to enter bad data at all.

Screwing home sellers, buyers and making appraisal work “Silly” to have to keep correcting another professionals mistakes/Zestimates.

By: John Pratt

John Pratt — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 17:41:36 +0000

Oh for the good old days when you knew your local lenders and could call the loan officer directly and tell them that the MLS listed the home at 1600 sq ft and your just measured the home and it is only 1375 sq ft. I have had that happen several times. This puts the ball back in the loan officers and the real estate agents hands. I would wait for a response to see if they wanted me to complete the appraisal, not going to happen today. I will just compete the appraisal and let the chips fall where they may. Just a month ago my neighbor was buying a home and the MLS listed the home at 1850 sq ft and public records show 1575. He asked the listing agent where he got 1850 sq. ft and he said from a prior appraisal. He asked if I could measure the home to check the sq ft which I did (for a fee). I came up with a total different square footage. I requested him to get a copy of the appraisal that the listing agent used and he did that. When I measured the home the listing agent was present and insisted that I view the interior which turned out to be a blessing. I noticed an area of the home that protruded in to the garage ( over sized garage) and I commented to the agent about that area. He stated the attached garage was added a few years after the home was built and the original attached garage was converted to living area with permits. I checked with the building department on the permits and found that the new attached garage did not show the protruded area in the new garage and that area was not permitted as living area. This was the major difference in the gross living are however the prior appraisal sketch had some errors in the measurements of the exterior and it included the unpermitted area in the garage as living area. I went back to the home and verified my measurements then reviewed them with my neighbor to show him where the errors where in the appraisal sketch. We all make errors but both the prior appraiser and the listing agent had some red flags that should have made them double check there information.

By: Baggins

Baggins — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 19:59:48 +0000

Great story but it’s often not that simple. Various counties have various standards for records keeping. And standards have changed over the decades. And to top it off, builders are not consistent either. All data comes together to form a perfect storm of unreliable sizing data, but still reliable at the same time. How so Baggins, because you’ve just made a completely illogical statement. Well, it’s all about the common standard. If every home in the area was really a 1.2k sq ft, but all county records double dipped on the stairs and other measurement and reporting factors, and all homes were really only 1.1k sq ft, what does that matter? If you’re properly comparing 1.1k to 1.1k or alternatively 1.2k to 1.2k, you’re not getting any unnecessary sizing adjustments. But if you try to walk in there with your all digital super duper equipment and claim you’re the authority on measurements, you’d better back that up with area wide research and a larger comparative sizing example base than just the subject home. As that’s often not a very realistic or cost feasible effort to make, it’s just better form, and moving towards more credible appraisal results, to be some what lenient with small measurement differences. If builders double reported stairs, and an appraiser does not, the appraiser’s emphasis on exacting size measurements and reporting, despite the accuracy, actually under reports the subjects fair equivalent worth. Now if the listing agent reports that basement half as agla, you’ve got a problem. But if your subject is 100 sq ft less, and you’ve got 2 stair sets 5×10, well, you should make note of the extra ordinary assumption, and adjust sketch to match county, or adjust all comps down. With the FNMA UCDP CU system seeking consistent entries, you’d be foolish to utilize the extra ordinary assumption for all comps, and you would be wise to raise up your exacting sketch to double dip on those stairs. FNMA UCDP CU system is an absolute game changer when it comes to the use of extra ordinary assumptions, because it would penalize appraisers with detailed area knowledge, who may adjust those figures out properly. You can bet your bottom dollar that nearly every agent, and most appraisers have been slackers, and merely auto imported data, or utilized shared data. They’re running with county. That’s one group measurement, you can count on. If you find substantial size variance with subject vs county, it’s important you include a special addenda requesting that at closing or through title, someone inform the county to have that corrected, so the subject will be taxed appropriately and fairly. I still use a 100′ tape measure. Always have, always will. They rarely break, have multi purpose usage, and I’ve got plenty of outs when I sit down to draw a sketch. No technical tomfoolery, costs, or additional hassle. Just reasonable assumptions and data comparisons to the ‘common data standard’.

By: bubba jay

bubba jay — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 17:12:36 +0000

any realtor who doesnt know or understand that GLA matters, doesnt deserve a license, and their license should be revoked immediately.

By: Retired Appraiser

Retired Appraiser — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 03:49:54 +0000

From my experience open foyers are the Realtor’s largest nightmare. For some reason listing agents refuse to acknowledge that if there is no floor there is no living area on the second floor of an open foyer. Over 20 years I would say that 75% of the listing agents I ran into created this problem for themselves. In retrospect, I now see that it boiled down to sheer laziness.

Northern Kentucky had the wackiest board of Realtors that I ran across. They took a vote years ago and came to the agreement that their agents didn’t need to assume liability for measuring the product (homes) that they were marketing. Rather than list the GLA and basement area they would list the dimensions of every room in a home as well as the dimensions of hallways. In short, they don’t trust their agents to measure the exterior of a home but they trust them to measure every room and every hallway. No liability there…right? Wrong!