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Comparing Your Home? Being Without Worry Means Choosing to Have Your Home Physically Measured

By: R Chandler Smith Either attempting to sell your property on your own or listing your property with a real estate sales person, the necessary element to a efficient transaction is an exact statement of your property’s physical characteristics in writing. A key move in the progression of finding an exact statement of your property is finding an exact measurement of gross living area, a key move that is tragically skipped. As one of the first stages in concluding a property’s selling amount an real estate broker will provide a Comparative Market Analysis ,CMA, which details selected sales in the neighboring area. However, without an exact calculation of your property's living area, the real estate broker’s CMA will not be very helpful.

In the United States, the majority of agents establish the price per sq.ft. of a property on livable area size. Livable area is known as the portion of a property which is heated and cooled, directly accessed from the interior of the property and showing the quality of construction the same as the original property. Livable area is calculated from the exterior walls, not from the inner walls room-by-room. All appraisers are to abide by the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) rules for single family residential units when determining property area, which recommends physical measurement.

More over, one of the largely regular court cases in real estate now a days is misrepresentation of home size. I’ve been to homes under contract where the property’s contents are boxed up and the home seller is ready to go only to find out that their residence ’s gross living area was not exactly embodied to begin with. The purchase document then has to be renegotiated or is completely dead| with no duty for the buyer to continue the acquisition. The seller’s property sells for thousands of dollars less. For this reason you should not permit the realtor to publish your living area based solely on county records, an old set of plans (which can and are altered sometimes during the years), or an estimate of what the average property size in your neighborhood.

Here is an issue: A 2,500sf property is offered for sale @ 12345 Maple Dr. The property is offered at $120/sf x 2,000sf = $240,000. Instead of actually measuring the property to obtain an exact living area, the gross living area was calculated relying upon county records. The property gets a contract for $240,000. However, the appraiser turns in his appraisal showing 1,840sf and an appraised value of $220,800, some $19,200 less than the sales price. The sellers are informed that they will need to renegotiate the purchase amount due to the living area is actually 1,840sf, not the stated 2,000sf. The sellers get upset and sue the former sellers for misrepresentation of living area.

Can this really happen in property sales? Yes and it does. This is why it is so important to have your property measured by the agent listing your house, whether by owner or by real estate broker, or preferably, by an appraiser. Upon doing so, you will have written verification of your true living area.
Unlike a real estate agent, an appraiser has no vested interest in what amount for which the property is worth. Appraisal fees are determined by amount of work to finish the report and not a portion of the sales amount. Therefore, a professional appraisal can often help homeowners yield the best decisions setting a accurate asking price for their propertys size. Whether you’re thinking of listing FSBO or through an real estate broker, it is always a smart idea to get an appraisal prior to listing your property.

Article Source: http://www.lifeweightloss.com

This article was written by William Cobb with the assistance of R. Chandler Smith. Bill heads Accurate Valuations Group and has performed as a home appraiser for 15 years now primarily in the Greater Baton Rouge, LA area. For more information on William Cobb and Accurate Valuations Group, visit Baton Rouge Louisiana Real Estate Appraiser. R. Chandler Smith is a successful real estate authority in the Houston and Austin area. He manages Houston Appraisers

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