Builders Take Lead in Setting Square Footage Measurement Standards

Suppose you wanted to know the square footage of your house. There's nothing to it, right? You just get out a tape measure or yardstick, go around the walls, take the measurements, multiply the length by the width, and you've got it. Your grade-school kid can do it even faster than you can.

But wait a minute! Here are some questions you might have:

• That fireplace over there - do you count it in?
• Here's a utility room. You don't use that floor space for general living. Does it count?
• Your living room has a little "jog" into which a window seat has been built. Does that floor area count?
• Your house has another nice feature - an enclosed porch. Does it count? And what about the unfinished basement?
• Over here is a closet that has room only for hanging clothes. Upstairs is another one - a "walk-in" closet. Does either of them -- or both-- count?
• A portion of your second floor is under the eaves, and part of its floor runs into an area where you can't stand up. Does all of the part that offers less than standing room count, or part of it, or none of it?

So you see, determining the square footage of your home isn't necessarily simple. Traditionally, these and other puzzling questions have been answered in different ways. the result is that if you ask a group of highly skilled professionals to measure your house and give you the square footage, they are likely to come up with different answers.

Architects have a set of rules for measuring square footage, but the system is designed for structures that are far larger and more complex than homes and is generally regarded as being too cumbersome for home building. Real estate appraisers, local building inspectors, and home builders all have methods that they use, but the methods are not identical, and sometimes there are differences within the professions.

Home buyers are interested in knowing footage, and they would like to have numbers that can be compared. Home builders are taking decisive steps to solve the problem. The National Association of Home Builders has commissioned its research arm, the NAHB Research Center, to develop a set of uniform standards for measuring the square footage of homes.

The Research Center formed a committee that includes representatives of federal agencies, real estate appraisers, architects, mortgage lenders, realty groups, building codes, industry associations, home builders and home owners. The group has been designated as an Accredited Standards Committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

This group is reconciling old differences and hammering out answers. Plans call for the committee to complete its work by Memorial Day and to forward its results to ANSI by Labor Day for adoption as an official ANSI Standard.

All of this means that, beginning in the fall of 1995, when your grade-schooler measures your house, he'll get the same results as everyone else. It also means that you can compare homes, knowing that the figures reflect a uniform set of procedures.

Written by Collier Merrill, President, Home Builders Association of Northwest Florida.

May not be used without written permission from The Home Builders Association of Northwest Florida.