What's the square footage [really]
Many buyers who are searching for Charleston homes for sale would like floor plans, room measurements and accurate square footage of homes that are interesting to them. If they happen to be from another part of the country and are considering relocating to Charleston, it may be something they are used to in their home market.
Sometimes buyers want to know if their furniture will fit in a bedroom or dining room or whether there will be enough room for their pool table (btw, you will need a room that is 12X16 to accommodate a pool table).
So, what kind of measurements will you find in the Charleston MLS.
The Charleston MLS does not require local real estate agents to measure room sizes. There is not even an optional field in the data entry form for room sizes but some agents can, if they choose to include room sizes in the description and they can (if they have one) include a floor plan with the pictures. But rarely will you see either.
As to square footage of the home, the MLS has significantly improved the accuracy in recent years. In the "old days", agents could get the measurements from a variety of places or even guess and if you think most agents might guess higher rather than lower, you'd be right.
Today, Charleston real estate agents have to include the source of the square footage. It could be from the tax records, a previous appraisal, professional measurement, owner / builder as source or even from a previous listing. Now the tax records aren't always accurate so you can't really be certain of the square footage unless you actually measure it yourself and all listings advise the buyer to to measure if square footage is important to them and of course, the usual disclaimer, all information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
So what might happen when the listed square footage is higher than the actual square footage. When the appraiser discovers that a home is smaller than believed, the home might not appraise for the agreed upon value in the contract. Let's use a simple example, a home is believed to be 2000 square feet and comparable homes in the neighborhood are selling for $100 per square foot and the agreed on price is exactly $200,000. But if the home is actually only 1900 square feet, it might be worth only $190,000 and since most if not all contracts are contingent on an appraisal, that could present a problem.
Charleston real estate contracts includes this verbiage regarding an appraisal contingency.
If (the property) appraises for less than the selling price, the Seller may elect to sell for the appraised value. In such case, the Buyer agrees to proceed with the consummation of this sale at the reduced price. However, if the Seller does not agree to sell at the appraised value, the Buyer shall have the option of proceeding with the consummation of the Agreement without regard to the amount of the appraisal valuation, or terminate this agreement without penalty.
So, what's the square footage, really.
Photo courtesy of Flickr by zeiak