(post by Ardie) There may be many “reasons” for square footage being advertised incorrectly, ranging from ignorance (hello FSBOs!), to shadiness (hello grimy Realtor and greedy sellers), with confusion somewhere in-between. I won’t attempt to solve this problem. Just trying to expose the truth and help out a bit…

In Manhattan, where prices for apartments basically start at $1000K per square foot, every inch counts. The price you’ll be paying (or you’re getting, as a seller) per square foot means a difference between a steal and a rip-off. But New York also happens to be one of the most hectic and competitive markets. That’s where you get the lies. More square feet at certain price mean you are buying cheaper per sq ft. An average buyer won’t be able to tell the square footage of a New York City apartment, especially when being rushed through by a broker, when another bid is allegedly already in, and when every building seems to have different layouts. The complaints can be found all over the place. See these articles on the topic: from Curbed and from Urban Digs .

The real bad news is that there are no real universal standards and even if there were some, making a mistake or finding a way to misrepresent due to “margin of error” caused by nooks, corners, pipe runs, elevator shafts, closets, columns, etc. is just unavoidable. In the process of trying to find out about any standards, I’ve found three articles, two from the NY Times, from May 14, 2008 and August 27, 2006, and one from the New Yorker from December 10, 2007 – kept it NY-specific to stay on point.

Sometimes a seller declares the size to his/her broker, and it goes straight on the listing, without any verification whatsoever. Other time is the Realtor himself who does a crappy job calculating square footage or simply chooses to misrepresent to inflate the price and appeal of the unit he’s selling. Whatever the reason, don’t count on anyone to protect you. Here, ‘do it yourself’ is the only sure way (and, if you make the mistake, you won’t know it and will be happy with what you got).

Bring a tape measure to the open house or to the showing. Most apartments are have rectangular or square rooms and you can either measure the whole place wall to wall for an exaggerated size or measure each room separately and add them up (bring out the 5^th grade geometry skills).

Square footage also affects your maintenance charge ratio. If you take your monthly common charges and divide that by the square feet, you have a relative gauge of the common charge per square foot. So, if you have an 800-square foot place and pay $800 in common charges, that’s a buck of common charge per square foot. Compare this number between different apartments to see how much your common charges buy The you for what amenities you get. (Make sure to compare apples to apples… a building with a swimming pool, a doorman and a common roof deck SHOULD cost more per sq ft than a walk-up with no amenities!)