Listing Square Footage — How hard can it be? May 27, 2008
Back in middle school, one of my favorite math classes was geometry. Calculating the volume of cylinders, figuring out the angles of oblique triangles…now that was living! Best of all, it seemed like math that maybe I might really use someday.
Fortunately in this business there’s lot of opportunity to practice. Whether we’re helping a client to analyze a land development, or figuring out the volume of topsoil needed to resod a yard, or simply figuring the square footage of a house, we get to use some of that old fashioned geometry in the process.
It turns out that the square footage thing, though, just isn’t that simple. It’s been talked about before (like here, and here), but today we were listing a new townhome, and as I evaluated the active comparables, I found that what should be a “standard,” creating apples to apples comparisons between listings, is really all over the board.
In the MLS we have three OPTIONAL fields to populate when we input a listing. These are SFF, SFU, and ASF. Here is how to fill those fields out, as copied from the NWMLS Legal Bulletin 15:
“SFF - Finished.” Does not include attics and basements unless they are finished living space. For instance, if there is a furnace in the middle of the room or it is suitable only for storage, do not treat the room as finished living space. Let your common sense guide you.
“SFU - Unfinished.” Unfinished, but potentially livable rooms should be in the “SFU - Unfinished” category. If the attic or basement has a ceiling which is too low for anyone but kids to walk around without bending over, do not include it in the unfinished or any other category. The test is whether it is potentially livable space. Such praises as “nice large storage attic” are common and should not result in any problem. Again, let your common sense guide your conclusions.
“ASF - Total.” Add together the finished and unfinished space to get the “ASF - Total.” Note however, that prior to 1998, NWMLS listing input forms did not include unfinished space this category.
The “ASF,” or approximate square footage, is the critical figure. This is the one that gets transposed to the Square Footage field and appears in all of the IDX listing feeds. Lots of times this is left blank, and there is no square footage shown in the listing (and therefore no price/psf calculated). Do the agents think the house/condo is so darn small that it will be detrimental to the listing if the square footage is actually displayed? As if the agent or buyer won’t eventually ASK, or find out the size when they walk through or pull the tax records?
And the Bulletin goes on to state something which should be obvious (and covered in the “common sense” area):
Garages. DO NOT INCLUDE THE GARAGE in the total square footage, even if it is in the basement. The same is true of carports. The listing will show whether or not there is a garage. If you feel compelled to say more than “two car garage,” do so in the “Remarks” section.
In looking at 43 active townhome listings in northwest Seattle today, only two had the complete and correct information. Complete and correct shows “SFF” as the total finished square footage in the townhome.
To get it right on a townhome, you list the finished square footage (all of the house, not including the garage); you put nothing in the SFU field, as there is no unfinished square footage and you DON’T count the garage; then list your ASF as your SFF from the first field. Good for Kirk Levandoski, a Windermere agent for getting it right on this townhouse listing (not one of ours :-)).
The problem is – at least with townhomes, which are a bit of a commodity item in their similarities – that the consumer can be easily misled by the inconsistent application of these rules. A 1010’ unit can show online as 1250’ if the agent includes the garage in that bottom line ASF figure, and that’s not right – it’s inaccurate at best, misleading and duplicitous at worst.
And if you just can’t find the square footage ANYWHERE…there’s always plain old geometry to fall back on to figure it out.
So come on agents, let’s work a little harder on this. I think it will serve everyone to have this information displayed consistently on all listings.
Free Flushes? May 2, 2008
Our development company has been a certified Built Green builder for several years, and we’re always trying to find economically feasible ways to add “green” features to our new construction. “Economically feasible” to me means that while we’re willing to pay more to build in a more sustainable fashion, we’d like to be able to recover most of those extra costs in higher resale prices, or shorter market times.
So when I read about a “greywater recycling” unit, I thought we should try it. Here’s our first installation, in a stand-along townhome in Crown Hill — North Ballard:
This octopus-looking thing takes water from our two showers (the black pipe) and puts it into this 50 gallon tank. There is a water supply that fills the tank if the level gets too low. The city inspector scratched his head at this — first time he’d seen it — as did our plumber. But now that we’ve gone through it once, hopefully the next ones will be easier to install.
You can see the level of “grey” water in the picture, at about the 20 gallon level. This water is pumped back into the toilets to use for flushing. Flushing constitutes nearly 40% of domestic water usage, so in theory, this will reduce your water (and sewer) bills considerably. And it’s just “light grey” shower water, which if you avoid shaving, toothbrushing, and any other debris-generating activities (not to get too graphic), should be 98% pure domestic water and a little bit of ivory soap and shampoo. The feedback that I’ve seen from consumers is that they don’t notice that they’re flushing with anything different than normal “clean” water. So when you do flush, it’s with water that would have gone down the drain after its first use, but you’re giving it a second life.
The cost, all in, is about $4500 (it would be much more expensive to plumb into an existing house). This particular townhome is about 1750′, and is priced at $450,000 — not priced any higher than it would have been without this system, but our hope is that this is a feature that will set this unit apart from the competition. We wouldn’t be able to justify this in a $300,000 townhome (not just b/c of the price point, but the $300k unit wouldn’t have enough physical garage space to fit the tank), but we’re putting them into about a dozen other units right now in Seattle.
There are lots of green things that just can’t work in our spec houses — $40,000 solar arrays, for one. But this system gives a lot of bang for the buck, and I think our buyers will really like it.
I Dig Dueling Digs April 1, 2008
Zillow, which seems to produce new features almost daily, has birthed something totally unique. As a member of Zillow’s board of directors, I usually get previews into what’s coming through the pipeline, but with this release, I hadn’t seen too many of the details.
Dueling Digs is like nothing I’ve ever seen on a real estate site. It’s pretty simple, really: You are presented with two photos, and click on the picture that you like better. After ten “duels,” Zillow tells you how many pictures your final photo has vanquished. It also provides you with a link back to the Home Details Page for the home from which the photo was taken, so you can see more of what that property looks like.
For example, I’d like the pool in my backyard:
rather than the picnic table:
Not surprisingly, 72% of voters agreed with me (the other 28% are either gaming the game, or they’ve actually had to maintain a pool!).
Where do these photos come from? Well, from you of course. These are photos that have been uploaded by users to Zillow. So you might see YOUR kitchen there. But with thousands (zillions?) of photos, you likely won’t see how your kitchen does in head to head combat quite yet – wait for the next upgrade.
And here’s what I think is really neat: If you like a particular kitchen, you can right-click, save the photo, and print it out for your own personal house planning. For several years before we built our home I subscribed to Architectural Digest and Fine Homebuilding magazines, among others, for the main purpose of clipping the things we liked and putting them in our scrapbook of features we’d like to incorporate into our new home. Of course not all of what we saw was feasible (read: affordable), but it all helped us to clarify what we did want in the finished product.
So if you’re thinking about remodeling, or just are one of those that loves to flip through “Better Homes and Gardens” to see different home designs, this is for you. If you haven’t already checked out Dueling Digs, it’s worth a minute. Or an hour. It’s a little addictive.
Used Car Salesmen, Trial Lawyers and Real Estate Agents March 15, 2008
[Editor's Note: It's been a while since I added a new contributor to our mix here at Rain City Guide, but when Gordon Stephenson showed some interest (after at least two years of requests by me!), I can't help but be excited to have him on board! Gordon is the Co-owner and Managing Broker of Real Property Associates. I first came across Gordon when Zillow added him to their Board of Directors in July of '05, and have run into him both online and offline since then. He's a great guy and a virtual real estate institution in Seattle, so I couldn't be happier to bring him on board as a contributor!]
When I started selling real estate fresh out of college, nearly 20 years ago, my parents were confused, even apoplectic: “You just earned this degree and you’re choosing to sell real estate? How are you going to pay back your student loans? Couldn’t you have done that with a GED?”
Back then being a Real Estate Agent sat somewhere on the top ten list of least admired professions between Used Car Salesman and Trial Lawyer. It wasn’t a hard job to get. In fact, when I met with a series of residential and commercial brokers to research where I wanted to work, all seemed to want to “hire” me. Little did I know what “hire” really meant in the real estate industry. Despite some slight tightening of standards for getting a license (60 clock hours of study are required, up from 30 in 1988), it’s still pretty easy to break into the biz. Turns out you actually don’t even need the GED. There are 2.6 million real estate licensees in our country, up 24% since 2001. And while there is no question that most agents who last beyond their first few years turn out to be quite proficient at what they do, and many of us actually have college degrees, advanced degrees, and industry designations for ongoing education, we’ve still got a big image issue.
Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow.com, wrote a post recently his blog: Give Realtors a Break. In it, Spencer describes giving a talk on Wall Street, and defends the role of the Realtor:
“Wall Street people more than any other group tend to discount the value that Realtors play, but I have to keep reminding them that the purchase or sale of a home is by far the largest transaction that most people do in their lives, and it will therefore always be professionally assisted. Wall Street types frequently cite the decline of stock broker commissions and try to argue that Realtors also will have their commissions eroded. A ridiculous comparison, in my opinion.”
This followed a similar talk that Spencer gave at Harvard Business School where his audience had the same reaction: “…the HBS crowd was almost militant in their “bring down the 6% commission” mentality.”
I think that real estate agents have made great strides in recent years. Doug Holman, who has been one of the top producing agents in my office for the past ten years, has a business degree from UW, started in management with WaMu, then chose real estate as his career. He has a long list of loyal, satisfied clients with which he has built a terrific business. I think Doug is typical of the great agents that are successful in the business today: Men and women who could be successful in any of a number of businesses, but who have chosen real estate for their profession. I’m sure most of the agents who regularly read and contribute to RCG fit this mold – they see real estate as a career, feel a need to learn, innovate, and improve in an effort to serve their clients. There are fantastic agents nearly everywhere you look.
Unfortunately, central casting still provides us with characters that reinforce the “old” image. Two of my favorites are Glengarry Glen Ross’ Ricky Roma, played by Al Pacino, or his sales manager, Blake, played by Alec Baldwin, who uttered lots of profanity and also this memorable line: “A-B-C. A-Always. B-Be. C-Closing. Always be closing.”

So why do we get this rap, and how do we work to improve the image?
- Have a slower real estate market for a few years. Maybe this is a bright side to the changed market. I think when the market is brisk, as it’s been for a while here in Seattle (up through early 2007), the public can get the perception that all we do is put a sign in the yard, upload a photo to the MLS, and then manage the multiple buyers’ bids. And sometimes maybe that’s true. But far more often, it’s like fishing – we need to tie the right lure (pricing, staging), fish the right part of the pond (where’s our target market?), then troll (Fast? Slow? Deep? Shallow?), sometimes for months on end. And when we get a tug, we need to know how to (while continuing with this bad analogy) “set the hook,” keep the negotiation going, and make sure everyone is getting the information they need to keep a sale on track. You can get lucky, but is far more effective to have all of the right equipment on board and to be experienced in the process. In addition to having to prove our mettle, a slower market will also weed out some of the agents who may not be committed to making real estate their profession. Already our MLS reports a year over year decline in membership, and all over the country the NAR is reporting flat or declining numbers. As one agent commented to me recently, “A bad market? I love it. It weeds out the weenies.”
- Get our satisfied clients to speak up. As a broker overseeing agents who do a few hundred transactions each year, it’s rare when I hear directly from a principal, either buyer or seller, during the course of a transaction. Even rarer is the post-closing call. But when I do hear from someone, it’s usually with a complaint, not a kudo. And while the vast majority of our clients are satisfied, even thrilled, with the work we do, they’re rarely vocal about it. The un-thrilled are far more noisy and persistent. Perhaps we need to be more proactive about having the happy clients spread the gospel, and not just by providing referrals and those cheesy “I LOVE MY AGENT” promos that you see on agents’ marketing products.
- Do our jobs better. This is pretty obvious, but bears mentioning. When I started in real estate, we had no Form 17, no Lead Paint Disclosure, no Agency Disclosure, and the purchase contract itself was three pages long. Now a typical contract is 25 pages long including all of its addenda, and the closed file is an inch thick. Well, good. It’s a complicated transaction, and there are lots of details. As agents, we need to be experts in every facet. That means ongoing education (and not just for clock hour renewal), networking with other professionals, reading online (you can spend hours each day just keeping up with a few of the blogs listed in RCG’s sidebar), spending material sums on tools to improve the way we do our business.
- Don’t count the money. I’ve always believed that agents who try and calculate their commission at any point during a deal do a terrible job during all phases of a transaction. Similarly, agents who NEED those commissions do a poor job of client representation. It flies in the face of the hungry agent being the best agent. Your goal to give the client the best counsel and service you can gets eclipsed by your need to make the buck. Last year, 52% of the agents in Palm Springs didn’t close A SINGLE SALE. When they get the chance to make a sale, do you think they’re more prone to take the time to make sure their clients make the wisest decisions? It’s not always easy, but telling the client your objective, expert opinion is always the best thing to do in the long run.
- Keep up with the times. It used to be that a single picture on the flyer was as far as we went. Now if you don’t have all 15 possible photos, professionally taken, in the MLS in the moment you go live, you’re not serving your client (it can take days for the different IDX sites to refresh the photos if you don’t get it right the first time). So while five years ago pictures were important, now they are essential. Same with having nearly immediate access to email. I have a blackberry, and it’s probably not critical that I’m responding so quickly to my agents and client, but I know it’s appreciated. At a minimum, emails need to be responded to by close of business each day – otherwise why pretend to be connected? Personal websites, property specific websites. We know the drill. It’s just a matter of making it part of our regimen.
Since the early days of Zillow (I’ve been an advisor to the company and on their board of directors since its formation) it’s been apparent to everyone there that, as Spencer pointed out, real estate “will always be professionally assisted.” It’s not a business where the product is a commodity (like a stock, or a plane ticket). Each home is unique and each transaction is further complicated by the fact that every buyer and seller has a unique situation. The process just can’t be scaled. Can the consumer do it on their own? Sometimes, sure. But as agents, we have the opportunity to add real value to the transaction for everyone.
