This makes a great follow-up to Wednesday’s blog post, “Random Thoughts About Square Footage.”

There was a lot of conversation in the comments about how to calculate square footage, what standards to use, how developers make the calculations, what the difference between buildable and usable square footage is, and so on.

For a would-be condo buyer, this could be quite confusing.

But in my mind, it’s more than confusing; it’s downright scary.

When you consider that we pay for condos based on the square footage, not knowing the square footage, is a scary proposition.

Imagine if this were the case with other goods and services?  Imagine if you had to purchase a bar of gold without weighing it?  At $1,300 per ounce, wouldn’t you want to know if that bar weighted eight pounds or nine pounds?

To think that we value real estate based on a standard that we have no idea how to calculate is absolutely scary.

And as a reader pointed out on Wednesday, organized real estate is doing nothing to help:

Well isn’t that great.

This reeks of, “We’re afraid of failing, so we just won’t try.”

Or the classic Ned Flanders line, “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas!”

I understand the argument that you don’t want to provide a platform for constant litigation, but not looking for a solution is a cop-out.

The idea that publishing square footage is not made mandatory, I understand from a potential litigation perspective.  But to basically ban agents from publishing square footage?  That’s pathetic.

What’s next?  What about a bedroom that might not be deemed a bedroom by all, because it doesn’t have a window, or a closet, or a door.  Why not ban agents from specifying how many bedrooms there are?

As an industry, we have to do better than this.  We have to raise our standards, and provide the consumer with better, more complete, and more accurate data so that they can make an informed purchase decision.

I have long maintained that TREB should make square footage mandatory, and the simple way to do that would be to get together with MPAC and work out a deal so that we have access to the square footage reports.

For those of you that don’t know (and this includes many Realtors…) MPAC has a slew of real estate related products available, customized to each property.  And by “each property” I mean every property, since MPAC is linked to every single listing on MLS, current or past, and has an easy-to-use interface for those properties not appearing on MLS.

For example, I just looked up a newly-listed condo, and if you click “Store,” you see the following:

Right there, you’ve got twelve products that you may, or may not, find helpful with respect to your property search, comparative market analysis, or upcoming listing.

These are tools that Realtors have at their disposal for every property out there, be it house or condo, and these are far from cost prohibitive.  Then again, if agents balk at paying $400 for a fantastic photographer to help advertise their $600,000 condo listing, then maybe $6.00 for a building permit report is a bit steep.

But the one product that every Realtor should be familiar with is this one:

The Residential Floor Area Report contains a square footage amount, on which MPAC presumably bases taxation.

This square footage, again – presumably, would be from a source deemed accurate, likely from the builder.

Having purchased about a thousand of these reports over the years, I can personally attest to the fact that they almost always match any available floor plan.

So it is my contention that the Toronto Real Estate Board should, at the earliest possible opportunity, make the inclusion of an MPAC Residential Floor Area Report mandatory for all condominium listings, and failure to provide the square footage and/or the document shall result in an error message when one tries to submit the listing to MLS.  That’s the case when you don’t fill in the taxes; you can’t submit the listing.  Same goes for any mandatory field – you get an error message in RED.  Of course, you can put “$0” for taxes, but that’s not the point.

The point is, if we, as sales professionals, want to do our job effectively and to our fullest capability, we will find a way to provide consumers with this information.

So where does a person find square footage for a condo, in lieu of an MLS listing?

Here are the most effective ways:

1) MPAC

As described above, this is an option available to Realtors for $5.00 per property, and I believe the public can open an account and gain access as well.

2) ONLINE FLOOR PLANS

As a client once asked me, “How is your Google-Fu?”

If you’re willing to put the time and effort into it, you can probably find any floor plan from a condo in the past ten years.  You just need patience.

I have complied a massive database of floor plans on my laptop, for thousands of units in hundreds of buildings.  Every time I see a new floor plan, whether it’s attached to an MLS listing, or even a soft copy at a condo I’m visiting, I file it away.

There are a lot of real estate agent websites out there that have floor plans for newer buildings.  I don’t feel like plugging those agents here and now, but let’s just say they’re easy to find.

There are also a lot of websites that have the word “floor plan” in the body of a web-page, whether visible or hidden, and that means that hundreds of clickable search results on Google will return zero actual useful information.

A colleague of mine at Property.ca told me once that his goal was to accumulate the floor plan for every single unit in the city of Toronto.  Quite the endeavour!  Condos.ca was, and still is, and industry leader in Toronto condominium data, but a database of floor plans would be something else altogether.  I told him that I would gladly pay an annual fee for access to a database, as would many agents, I’m sure.  Then again, most agents won’t pay $5 for the floor plan from MPAC for a property they’re listing, and being paid $10K, $15K, $20K or more to sell, so perhaps my suggesting that floor plan database subscriptions would go through the roof is wishful thinking.

3) PAST LISTINGS

In many condos, the square footage for Unit #1101 is the same as Unit #1201, and the same as Unit #1301, and so on.

Again, with some time and effort, this is an easy search through the archives of MLS.

Because most agents don’t include the actual square footage in listings (I would estimate less than 20% of historical listings have an actual square footage), this endeavour can be painstaking, but it often bears fruit.

When I’m doing a Comparative Market Analysis for a condo, I’ll include the exact square footage for every comparable unit.  When I see other agents give a “range,” like 500-599, I laugh.  Imagine that gold bar, weighing somewhere between 8 and 9 pounds, and being expected to pay $1,300 per ounce.

To find the square footage of every unit, the first place I go is to the MLS archives.  First, I look up the history of that unit, and if the building is old enough and the unit has been sold before, I might find it.  Then, I’ll go to the archives for all the units with that model number, and 95% of the time, I’ll find the square footage.  Of course, I have a rule that I need triple-confirmation, otherwise it doesn’t fly.  If 1201, 1301, and 1401 are all said to be 542 square feet via past MLS listings, then we’re good.

4) MAINTENANCE FEE MATH

This is a very inexact science, but it can get you anywhere from 90% to 100% accuracy.

In virtually every building in the downtown core, maintenance fees are apportioned by square footage.

So if you can solve for “X,” you can figure out the fees.

Keep in mind that basic maintenance fees, per unit, do not include a locker or a parking space.  Those are separate, and are lumped in with the overall fees on MLS.

So if Unit #1201, with parking and locker, has fees of $451.87, and is measured at 652 square feet as per MPAC, floor plan, or other source, then you know the fees are 69.3 cents per square foot.  And you’re looking at Unit #2707, which also has parking and locker, and shows as having fees of $655.52 on MLS.  Get your friend from NASA to work this complicated mathematical dilemma, and voila – the unit is approximately 946 square feet.

Just remember, you need to compare apples to apples.  So if you’re looking at a unit with locker, and no parking, then you need the square footage of another condo with locker, and no parking.  And, since we know maintenance fees usually increase one out of every two years on average, then you need a comparable sale that’s very recent.

5) PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

Are you good on the phone?

Suave, charismatic, and convincing?

Property management has the square footage for every condo in the building, so why not call them up and just ask?

They don’t have to give it to you, of course.  And human nature is to question a person’s agenda and integrity.  Just say, “I’m looking at buying Unit #XXX that’s currently listed for sale, and there’s no square footage on the listing.  It just says 900-999, and I’m trying to figure out the exact square footage.”  Maybe give them my “bar of gold” anecdote, and the person on the other end of the line will see the logic, and respond in kind.

Now this might not work if you needed the square footage of sixteen units for a CMA that you’re doing, but if you’re just a prospective buyer looking for one unit’s square footage, I see no reason why the property manager wouldn’t help.

–

I’m not a “car guy,” but I’ll give this analogy a shot.

There are different types of engines, right?  V6 and V8?  I’m assuming that the difference between those two is about……..V2, or something?

Right.  Okay.  So there’s also litres, horsepower, and torque, and I won’t even guess at things like HEMI and turbochargers.  I just hear the words on television ads.

So if you’re a car-buyer, do you want to know the size of the engine?  Does the engine in a Lexus IS 250 differ from that of a Lexus ES 350?  If so, would you want to know, or just guess?

What if the windows on the car were tinted, and you couldn’t see inside?  What if you had to guess whether the seats were leather or cloth?  What if you didn’t know whether there was a navigation system in place?

The fact that we as Realtors are not required to provide exact square footage is mind-boggling, and I’m downright embarrassed as an agent.  Considering the “price per square foot” metric is the most commonly-used evaluator of condominiums, it’s puzzling as to why we haven’t made this mandatory as of yet.

Fear is not the best motivator.  If the folks at TREB are afraid of being sued, then use those same lawyers who say, “There’s no upside to this, just leave square footage out,” to draft some legalese that covers themselves, and agents if need be, in the event of a discrepancy.

We could avoid all of this if TREB just used some of their accumulated war-chest (from their Competition Bureau fight…) to work out a deal with MPAC, but I didn’t intend to turn this blog post into a TREB-bashing, so I’m going to stop here.

One final thought about square footage sources, for both buyers and sellers: what’s the deal with virtual tours?

If you’re using a virtual tour’s floor plan on a listing for the square footage source, should you get further verification?

Does the virtual tour usually end up higher or lower than MPAC?  That’s tough to say.  I’ve seen it both ways, to be honest.

And that begs the question: what source do I use when I have two different numbers?

Truthfully, folks, I leave that up to the seller.  If MPAC says the unit is 635 square feet, but the floor plan shows 646, I will ask the seller what they want to use.  It’s up to them, and that’s not me passing the buck; it’s me giving my client options as to how they want their condo marketed.  I would suggest they use MPAC, but MPAC has been wrong before, and I’ve seen first-hand instances of MPAC being lower than an in-hand floor plan from my seller, albeit maybe 2-3 times, but it’s happened.

I’m not God, and I’m not the authority on this.  I leave this decision to my sellers, and I would advise all listing agents to do the same.

As a buyer, if you see square footage on a virtual tour floor plan, I can tell you that in my experience, it’s lower than the MPAC square footage about 70% of the time.

But then again, two sources are always better than one, so when in doubt, just go for a deeper dive!

Have a great weekend, everybody!