It’s Not Always Just About Size and Square Feet

Myrl - Exactly!  How the space is designed makes a world of difference.

Great point, Myrl.  We do discuss sqaure footage alot. It really does depends on how the family that is moving in is planning on utilizing that square footage.

Myrl - you are so right with this information! It is where the square footage is that matters!

This is so true Myrl.  It's truly about the USE of the space that's there.  I've seen homes that might be larger on paper but in real life appear much smaller!

Each decade we seem to go through a renaissance of what builders think the average American family wants in a home.

• Small bedrooms and big living spaces
• Small living spaces and huge bedrooms
• Open concept
• All compartmentalized rooms

The more time I spend in this business I realize the importance of custom homes...

I think it depends what people do. If they turn a 4-bedroom home into a 2-bedroom by combining two bedrooms into one, they could lose value.

Great points, Myrl. It's all about utilizing space and making the most of it. You don't always need a mansion to feel comfortable.

I've seen 1500 ft homes that felt like 100, and vice versa. It's about feel. Most of us may be able to "guestimate" footage through experience. Most of our clients can't. How does it feel? How does it live? Much better questions than how many square feet? Great post!

Hi Myrl, this a very timely post. My daughter was looking a new homes recently and we very quickly found out that the square footage really didn't play in to the equation as much as the layout did when you considered how you would actually live in the house. Your description of bringing home groceries is so important for people to think about when buying. You have to buy and haul groceries in each week. Best to make it an easy task.  The other thing I notice is people pay for grand entrances with double doors and then never use them to enter the home. They drive in a garage and use a very narrow set of stairs in a usually dimly lit garage to enter a narrow hallway with no space to put anything down until you remove your coat and shoes.

Very true, and the square footage in a smaller home carries a higher value than in a larger home.  The usable square footage becomes an issue that is harder to quantify because what it ideal for one person is terrible for another.

Myrl, you make a good point there.  And in addition to square feet, the layout/floor plan is very important.

You can't always tell this without seeing both homes.

Myrl - So true! How many people end up buying a big house and only use half the rooms. There are so many other factors like do you need a big family room or want an open concept floor plan, eat-in kitchen. Square footage might be a starting point, but the buyer's family lifestyle factor into which home is right for them. Great post!

Hi Myrl -- Ever so true.  Moreover, even homes with the exact same square footage but completely different floor plans can be much different in value as one home may have an exceptional design and the other looks like they designed it in a DIY workshop at Home Depot.

Myrl, this is SO well said!  It's not about the number of total square feet.  It's room sizes, layout, does this house work for your needs....there is often a major variance in how a house lives, feels, flows even within a tight square footage range. Don't get hung up on a single number :)

True, true - so very true!  I've switched to talking to buyers about the rooms they think they will need and how they intend to use them, and then set a search for smaller minimum square footage than they think will work so we can go walk thru some of them to see.  Floor plan makes such a huge difference and when it comes right down to it, the square footage means very little compared to whether the home offers spaces for everything the buyer needs.

Thanks for posting this!  There are also those buyers that fixate on price per square foot, thinking the lower the price per foot, the better the value.  WRONG!

Myrl -- Excellent post. I was just talking about a house with 3,500 square feet of a so totally confusing floor plan. It was a dismal, architectural failure.   Then there was this lovely 2K+ SF house with open floor plan, beautiful flow, decent sized bedrooms and a feeling of spaciousness that was oddly missing in the larger home. Man can't live by square footage alone!

I agree it is all in the layout of the home. I am working with a buyer woould not even consider looking at homes under 5,000 sf until one day, we walked into a new home community that only builds up to 3,700sf. I told him it would be a waste of his time since it is not 5,000 sf and that was all he talked about. But as soon as we walked in he loved how the layout made it feel larger. We ended up putting an offer in on the 3,700sf home.

Myrl,

In my MLS, most listing don't have square feet, so this isn't a big factor in my market.  I always to to town hall, get the size from the tax assessor and put it in my listings but I'm rare.