Kudos To Dayton Board of REALTORS(R)! Room Sizes Now Required on ALL Residential Listings!

Stacey, You've got to love being able to eliminate a home that won't work PRIOR to stepping in the door! :)

Michelle, We didn't have any mandatory rooms at all, although 99.9% of your non-distressed properties were getting room sizes entered.  It's got to help everyone involved better evaluate the homes that are available.

Michael, Always amazes me the wide variety in MLS practices region to region.  No room sizes at all?  Wow!

Paul, Our Dayton MLS pulls sq footage from tax database.  The Cincinnati MLS doesn't report it at all.  You have to click elsewhere to pull that info.  Fortunately public record on county auditors' sites.

Christine, We've had the same.  A long dining room table (family heirloom of course) that HAD to be accomodated.  Room sizes help narrow out.

Jerry, Making it more consumer friendly has to help.

Richard, Maybe it's different here, but almost all of our non-REO listings have full room size detail.  We all know there's a little give and take on those sizes.  Is 13' 6",  13' or 14'?  And the oblong, odd rooms may cause a problem.  Despite all that, we're not having litigation issues.  The standard MLS disclaimer about not guaranteeing accuracy seems to keep everyone calm cool and collected, and it does eliminate showing homes that didn't have a prayer of being bought due to some size requirements.  Sellers don't needlessly get put out & get their hopes up.  We'll have to disagree on this one.

Ginny, Same as with Richard, we and everyone that looks at a home has the ability to verify for themselves the room sizes and livability.  I'm afraid the lawyers have put so much fear into everyone about liability that we're not actually allowed to serve the people we're tasked with caring for.  The MLS disclaimer statement again seems to be adequate to protect the agents measuring and reporting the room sizes.  We can only report in full feet, so a plus/minus 1 foot tolerance should be understood to be safe.

Juli, This isn't for overall square footage of the home, but strictly putting in a room's size.  Dayton MLS automatically pulls overall square footage from tax auditor records, so no liability on us for that.  Doesn't affect the overall square footage available from the public records.  Like your disclaimer, and in a rational world that should be enough.  It's not like the buyers typically don't have enough opportunity to measure if the exact sizes are that critical to them.

David, We'll cite the "everything in California is different when every fourth person is an attorney" clause :)

Once again, real estate is REALLY local.  I do find it sad that the lawyers have taken it to the point that the consumers are actually NOT being served out of fear of being sued over a half foot variation in measuring technique.  And not sure why the floor plan people couldn't be sued too.  Same principle at work, just measuring rooms and reporting results.  Is their skill with a tape meaure that much better than ours?? :)

David, Exactly.  Money grab is what it seems to boil down to.  I'd love to see the court systems start kicking responsibility back to where it belongs.  Absolute fraud is one thing, but the buyers have ample opportunity to confirm what is important to them during the purchase process.  To come back later and say I was shorted 10 feet or 100 feet, just a shame to even have to spend energy on that.  Livability should trump sq feet anyways.  I've seen big houses feel small and small big, all based on best use of the floor plan.

Jane, It would seem that there should be some rational way of doing it so that the consumer is served and the agent isn't threatened with a lawsuit over a 2" variation in measuring a room!

Cara, I think in time the photo requirement will expand beyond 1.  That's a nice phrase to add to the contracts.  Is that written in for her buyers, or does she add that when she has the listing?  I know both sides are at risk if the buyers want to get funky about it later.

Pacita, It's funny how the lawyers can get in the way of doing what would actually be a good service for the consumers.  I would think the absence of those sizes might lead to a lot of showings where the buyers go "this room is too small", when if someone had published "9 x 9" they'd have known without a visit.  To each area their own way of doing things we suppose! :)