[QUOTE=featherlou]
Ain’t that the truth. Our house looks like a cracker box from the street, but it feels huge inside, with large rooms and vaulted ceilings.
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My old apartment felt either cramped or too big, depending on the room, while this apartment feels Just Right. The old one had a huge living room and tiny everything else, while this apartment has a much smaller living room, big bedrooms, and a somewhat bigger kitchen. The actual size is probably not vastly different.
[QUOTE=Labrador Deceiver]
Couple things that may help:
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Excellent suggestion. Here’s the link for Fairfax County: http://icare.fairfaxcounty.gov/Search/GenericSearch.aspx?mode=ADDRESS which would help you out in Chantilly though Manassas is in Prince William County.
and on preview, Tabula Rasa also linked to the Fairfax County website. Shoulda read the thread.
Just kinda surprises me to see so many folks so concerned with the square footage of their homes. I’ve lived in 2, and have no specific idea what either’s square footage was.
My understanding is that there is no standard manner for calculating square footage. Do you simply measure the houses outside perimeter and multiply it by the number of floors? Do you include closets and interior walls? How about finished, walkout basements? Do you add extra footage for “volume” ceilings?
I definitely think the number of rooms and room sizes is important, and have seen that info on just about every listing I’ve ever seen. But square footage? Lacking a standard, it impresses me as a pretty meaningless number.
they don;t want to tell you all they know until they get their claws into you.
[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
Just kinda surprises me to see so many folks so concerned with the square footage of their homes. I’ve lived in 2, and have no specific idea what either’s square footage was.
My understanding is that there is no standard manner for calculating square footage. Do you simply measure the houses outside perimeter and multiply it by the number of floors? Do you include closets and interior walls? How about finished, walkout basements? Do you add extra footage for “volume” ceilings?
I definitely think the number of rooms and room sizes is important, and have seen that info on just about every listing I’ve ever seen. But square footage? Lacking a standard, it impresses me as a pretty meaningless number.
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There is a standard. On single family homes it should be measured from exterior wall to exterior wall, including all interior walls and closets. No garages–only occupiable space, but including the structure that defines those occupied spaces. No Volumes unless there is a floor (ie. you have a loft). If the basement is finished, then you would count it, otherwise not.
For condos, etc. you would measure from exterior face to corridor face, centerline of party walls to center line of party walls.
Now as to what happens by realtors and sellers–is anyone’s guess. In condos your square footage is tied to your contract in that it is your legal description of what you own, distinctly different from those portions such as corridors, stairs, etc that are defined as limited common areas.
Thanks. I stand corrected. Tho I question the utility of a “standard” that may not be consistently applied! 
Also, just my opinion, but unless a family has 4 or more kids, 2300 sq ft is a huge-ass house, and 12’x12’ is more than adequate for a single kid’s room.
But hey, we are in America where bigger must be better.
I’ve just bought a house without an agent of my own. The seller had one, negotiated down to 2.5%.
What I have learned is that agents are still doing stuff the same way they did 20 years ago. Agents do not have blackberries – they rely on their cell phone. I was lucky if any agents I corresponded answered an email in under 3 days. Some only got back to me a week later.
And when it comes to websites, it’s pretty hopeless. The agent takes info, plugs it into his agency’s own website, and a day or two later someone forwards that info to MLS, which takes another day or two to put it up. It can easily take a week to make changes to a listing online.
There is a market for some entrepreneur to agressively market home sales on the web, but it will take an agent who is willing to get into a war with his peers. That’s pretty much what’s going on now with dupropio.com – which was started by a second-generation real estate agent in Quebec, and is expanding throughout Canada.
[QUOTE=Barbarian]
There is a market for some entrepreneur to agressively market home sales on the web, but it will take an agent who is willing to get into a war with his peers. That’s pretty much what’s going on now with dupropio.com – which was started by a second-generation real estate agent in Quebec, and is expanding throughout Canada.
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I think that Foxtons did the discount commision thing in the NY NJ area, they used to be called Your Home Direct. They had a salaried sales force, 2-3% commission, and dynamite web listings, with floor plans, square footage, detailed description and lots of pictures. I loved looking at their website when house shopping.
I wanted to see one of their houses 2.5 years ago when I was house shopping, it took them 2 weeks to call me back. I visited the house with a Century 21 agent, and wound up buying a different house with her help.
Foxtons is bankrupt now.
Now that was comedy. Would you like 6% of my laughter?
-Joe
I m not going to repost my last reply to agent bashers located here.
Suffice it to say the basing of real estate agents as a class is retarded in the extreme. The existence of the job of real estate agent is almost purely a function of efficiently functioning supply and demand marketplace forces and the fact that their services are deemed to be useful and valuable or they would not exist. Like any business or human endeavor some residential agents are great, and some are not so great, and some are just not great with an individual client they don’t mesh with, but can be great with others.
I’ve been selling commercial real estate for over 20 years now and it always amuses me when some people who should know better start to go into a frothing “I hate real estate agents” bash frenzy. Most real estate agents effectively work for free until they make a sale, and this generally requires more fortitude than the average bear possesses. When people remark that agents make too much money on an individual sale that settles, I ask them to look at the big picture, and think how about many thousands of hours and huge chunks of advertising and marketing dollars etc. the agent expends when listing and marketing properties that don’t sell. These go right down the rat hole, and there are a LOT of properties that don’t sell for one reason or another, even when you have experienced agent, and a big marking push. People only think about the houses that sell, not the money wasted and time lost when properties fail to move.
Beyond this, people often have little understanding of how real estate splits and commissions work. Most residential agents typically have splits that hover around the 45%-65% range for the majority of their sales where the brokerage is taking 55% to 35% of the total commission dollar BEFORE the agent’s bill for signs, E&O insurance, advertising, local and regional real estate board membership, multiple list membership, key-boxes, continuing education, website maintenance, automobile expenses, (and assistants if they have them), etc. etc. etc. costs. In addition as independent contractors agents get no insurance coverage or benefits, no pensions, no retirement. You are on your own.
Some plans exist where an agent can retain all their commission (after co-brokering the commission 50/50 with another agent in most cases) if they are willing to pay upfront, non-refundable and non-adjustable “desk fees” of (typically) 3,000 to - 6,000 per month depending on the office and the market. All this buys you in most cases is the right to sit at a desk. All the aforesaid fees and more are still the agent’s complete and total responsibility. In addition in these 100% scenarios the agent generally pays for their phone charges, office supplies, pro-rated copier use etc.
Another thing people don’t understand is that when an agent gets a referral, the referring entity (including the brokerage itself in some cases!) the agent typically pays between 20-30% of their total listing or selling commission to the referring party (corporate or individual agent). Corporate re-locations or RELOs are even more fun where the corporate RELO department will often demand 50% of the total listing selling or commission depending on what side is being referred. The amusing thing is that many of these (often high maintenance) corporate clients have no idea the agent is only going to make three quarters to nine-tenths of one percent of a commission after the deal is done, and before expenses (ie 6 % x 50/50 co-broke with another agent = 3% x .50 - .60 broker split = 1.5% - 1.8% x 50% RELO fee = .75 to .90 - Those agents are rolling in money!
Agents exist because in modernity selling real estate is often a complex and expensive endeavor, and beyond this not many people want to incur the upfront costs and risks of expending the money to put the property on the market and advertise it properly.
If real estate was a pure commodity item salespeople would be significantly less needful, but it’s not. For most people their residential property reflects the time and work they have invested into it, and is the ultimate non-commodity. It’s the largest, and most complex asset most people own, and everyone wants to get top dollar for their precious unique snowflake of a property, even if it’s a condo in a 1000 unit complex.
Many “Do It Yourself” real estate marketing plans have been promoted over the years to allow homeowners to save commissions and sell their properties themselves. These have mostly been abject failures because the majority of homeowners who try this soon discover that selling real estate is a lot more work, frustration and cost than they bargained for. If you have a sophisticated buyer or seller in an active market the need for an agent is less pressing, and people with some degree of savvy can often minimally advertise and sell their properties themselves if they are so inclined. Interestingly, these sophisticated buyers and sellers often find themselves somewhat less sophisticated in down markets, and turn to agents when their efforts don’t pan out or get the number they desired.
Which brings us to necessity of knowing know how to deal with people and more importantly knowing how to sell. The loudest objections to the value of good salesmanship usually comes from arrogant doofuses that are clueless in handling the subtleties of interpersonal negotiations, and have no idea how to be an effective salesperson. The most amusing crashes and burns in real estate are retired people (often men in these scenarios) who previously worked in occupations where selling and the ability to deal with people on a cooperative, non-authoritarian basis were never primary requirements. These people find out in short order what it’s like to deal with real world home buyers and sellers. A few of them succeed and do well, but most run whimpering out of the business after a year or two.
It seems really bizarre that they can’t be bothered to list the square footage as approximate, like the do in every listing that I have looked at here in the Las Vegas area (we are currently going through the b.s. of buying a home).
Examples of listings in the LV area can be seen here , here and here .
We also have the county assessors page that you can look up properties on and verify square footage, build year and other info like taxes and property liens, before you decide if you want to even be bothered to go look at the house.
I also dislike it when there are no photos of the inside. Sometimes it’s a BIG SUPRISE!! This house we looked at seemed really nice from the street/outside. Inside was like a whole different ballgame. The kitchen cabinet doors had been ripped off the frames, the shelves were missing, big holes in the walls, broken windows in the back, damaged flooring, damaged countertops, missing light fixtures, carpets partially torn out, door frames - ripped off the walls, the master bath shower glass surround was gone, broken mirrors, most of the pool equipment was gone, etc… the horror. They want 304K for the place :eek:
I’m looking at houses right now, and I’m amazed at how badly some of the houses are represented online. Up here in Minnesota, all the MLS listing have square footage and usually the dimension of the main rooms.
But why in the world would I bother to go see a house where the picture posted are:
2 outside shots - both crooked and out of focus, one with the picture partially blocked, maybe by a thumb.
A lovely shot straight down the hallway. Yep, it’s a hallway. Long, narrow, white walls, lots of doors.
2 shots of the toilets and sinks. Oh oh oh. I just HAVE to have that toilet seat.
A picture of the reclining chair in one corner. 1 recliner, 1 lamp, 1 corner.
A picture of the fuse box.
These are supposed to make me want to schedule an appointment to view it in person? That agent would be canned so fast if that was my house.
[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
I definitely think the number of rooms and room sizes is important, and have seen that info on just about every listing I’ve ever seen. But square footage? Lacking a standard, it impresses me as a pretty meaningless number.
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Heh. Here in the UK, everything is sold based on the number of bedrooms. Generally that means you get to subtract one (since a closet barely big enough to fit a cot into will be enthusiastically described as a ‘double bedroom’) and that properties which might have made a roomy two-bedroom will be set up as cramped three or even four-bed properties. The idea of measurements is only just taking off, and you’d be lucky to get any idea of total floor area. Most likely because no-one wants to fess up to just how cramped a shitty little shoebox they are trying to sell for half a million US.
Astro - I think part of the reason so many people have it in for estate agents (as they are known over here) is that in many places the residential property market has ensured that no skill of any kind is necessary to make a fat chunk of money. If a property was on the books, it would sell, guaranteed, and the agent would get a fat commission for nothing more than putting up a couple of signs and some pictures in a window. The only question was how much the commission could be ramped up by sqeezing the buyer - not hard in a rapidly rising market, as shown by the fact that there are more estate agents than coffee shops in many parts of London.
The other part is stuff like this.
When we bought our house, the agent was an absolute diamond - not only did he put us onto the perfect house despite us contacting him about a completely different property, without him acting as an intermediary the incompetent solicitors handling the conveyancing would probably have screwed the whole thing up for us and the sellers. However he was the only one out of half-a-dozen agents we met who wasn’t a complete shyster. Apparently only four percent of estate agents enjoy their jobs - it’s tempting to assume that the bad ones feel guilty and the good ones feel tainted by association.