Oklahoma Supreme Court Makes square footage a material fact

Do discalimers keep you out of trouble in OK with the new law?  What does your addendum say?

Good morning Lenn,

Our MLS auto fills with the square footage from the tax records that the owner is paying taxes on. The SF can now be changed to reflect a professional "reliable" sources. When a buyer purchase the house he has to pay for an appraiser to measure for the appraisal report. I ask all my buyers to save this report and ask sellers to obtain this report from when they made the purchase of the home. It can only include heated and cooled areas: no garages, no porches or attached sheds and since we do not have basements here that is not an issue. I would never considering measuring for myself..let the expert do that and even then 2 appraisers could be off 10-30 feet! There is human error in all things!

Lenn, Here in Atlanta the FMLS service does not quote square footage. The tax records often have a square footage quote from the original building permit . BUT, I've built a few homes and and you can build a different floor plan and/or alter a plan and the powers that be never check what your original building permit dictated.

In the Atlanta area we do not sell by square footage.  Several years ago an agent was successfully sued for small error (Something like 10 square foot...) and lost.  If a home were appraised by 3 different appraisers, they would all be off +/-.  So why hold the agent to a standard that cannot be exact even by the professionals?

Lenn, in Ct we have 3 options for square footage, town records, agent and owner. I always choose the town records. If I'm going to have a problem, the town's lawyers get paid more than mine would. Interesting post.

Our forms disclaim everything. That is why our purchase and sale agreements look like the introduction to War and Peace. I supply the tape measure for my buyer and we measure until they are satisfied... I get the dumb end of the tape.
Just trying to get moving on Monday,
Paul

Lenn, oh boy. Like my buddy Ed, I use the towns records. And I always take the dumb end. I don't put sf in the remarks, but wonder if I should go to the additional remarks and add that.

Now our listings will look like one big disclaimer.

Seller believes this to be a 4 bedroom house, although the town says 5. Currently there are 3.5 bathrooms in the hom but the septic is the size of a 5 bedroom septic. The town says the home is 3,800 sf, appx, the owner does not agree with this but doesn't want to measure anything. This does not include LL, which according to the town is 1000 sf, and the owner tends to agree. Buyers should measure all rooms themselves! Realtor is not responsible for SF amounts, sue the owner or town.

OK, that is what my new description in the MLS would look like. Ghesh...

True, so true.  I toured a property once and if felt "smaller" than what the total sq. ft. rendered.  Come to find out, listing agent included the garage.

In a coop I usually put NA in the listing description under approx s.f. I include a floor plan with a disclaimer. Agents (who should know better) often ask what is the s.f.?  I say "REBNY Brokers are not allowed to quote s.f in coops and actually I have no idea". "You're welcome to measure".

In condos the sf is in the offering plan although I will still use approx. and a disclaimer.

IMO either you like the home or you don't. If you love it and then find out it is 100 s.f less than you thought will you hate it? All s.f is not the same. Good light and design can make a home appear larger and more liveable than a poorly designed home with more s.f.

Lenn, with your permission of course, I am using YOUR disclosure, LOL. I recently listed and sold a house that had 3 bedrooms, well, it had a 3 bedroom septic and was on the tax records as having 3 bedrooms. The basement was finished, with 3 rooms, could be 2 bedrooms, one with a full bath, and a larger rec room, or wreck room. But this is lower level and is not counted in square footage, and.... without some real big production with the town you can't have a bedroom in the basement. Anyway, enough of that. Where was the third bedroom? I have NOOOOOO idea, and no one else did either. Maybe it was the small room off the kitchen... which you could have fit a twin bed and not much else in. It was a mystery. My buyers were aware of this, I made it perfectly clear that when the time came to sell the house they should remember it is a 3 bedroom home with a disappearing bedroom.

Side note, the appraiser didn't care... I found that VERY interesting.

Lenn:

Hope you are doing well.  I see you have done it again.  Thanks for bringing this to our attention.  If 10 different individuals measure a house, there should be minimal difference between the measurements taken.  Otherwise, one could conclude that someone made a gross error.  Getting 200 s.f. difference suggests that there is a gross error. I do not measure myself, but I never trusted the numbers.

Hi Lenn -- In my market, the county appraisal records can be inaccurate, both significantly under and over.  I see misrepresentations all the time and have actually reported some to our local MLS which seems to fall on deaf ears.

Lenn - In the Palm Beach MLS room sizes are a required field as is square footage.  We overlap Broward County where they do not require either one.  So half the listings have them and half do not.  The listings in Palm Beach County have disclaimers all over them.  I've seen agents copy old listings for info not knowing if they were correct or not.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.  It's a very informative post. 

Like Elyse's MLS, the San Antonio MLS requires agents to fill in room sizes on the form, while defaulting to county tax records for the total SF, which usually doesn't match the appraisal.

Thanks for the heads up, Lenn and Joe!

Cheers,

Robin