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Do You Know Your Home’s Square Footage?
The concept of square footage isn’t exactly a mystery. It’s a common measurement for describing a house’s size, but despite it seeming simple, square footage can be a bit tricky.
How exactly do you measure your house, especially if there are odd angles and curves? Does every nook and cranny count or do you skip closets? Who figures out your home’s square footage to make sure it’s accurate for a real estate listing? Most importantly, why is it such a big deal to get an accurate measurement?
Why Do You Need to Know Your Home’s Square Footage?
Whether you’re buying or selling a house, knowing the home’s square footage is essential. For one thing, the square footage is a significant determining factor in a house’s price. Many homes are listed using an amount based on dollars per square foot.
For example, imagine you live in an area where homes sell for approximately $200 per square foot. You guesstimate that your house is 1,600 square feet, therefore, it should be worth approximately $320,000 (1600 x 200).
Now, why are accurate measurements so important? For you, as a seller, what if your home’s specific square footage is 1,698? Then, the list price would bump up to $339,600. That’s almost an extra $20,000 — quite an expensive mistake for a home seller to make.
If you’re buying a home, you want to know the square footage to make sure it’s enough space for you. However, since the square footage influences the home’s price, it also influences the property taxes you’ll pay.
How big or small a home is also affects the number and type of renovations you can do. Your home’s size also plays a part in your homeowner’s insurance rates, flood coverage, and other insurance policy parameters.
What’s the Average Square Footage of a House?
Houses come in all shapes and sizes, but the average square footage of a house in the United States was 2,233 square feet in 2023. This was based on the 999,000 single-family homes built that year.
Overall, homes have gotten much larger over the last several decades. However, in the past couple of years, house sizes have trended downward, but not by drastic numbers.
How to Determine the Square Footage of Your Home
Now that you have a general idea of why square footage is important, how do you figure out how big your house is? The basic measurement for square footage is length times width. So, if a room is 10 feet long by 30 feet wide, it is 300 square feet. Simple enough. But not entirely accurate.
Experts measure homes in different ways. If an insurance specialist is measuring your home to determine your policy premium, they may use a large, special tape measure to measure outside, around the entire house. This is pretty efficient, especially if your house is a handy square or rectangular shape, since the total square footage typically extends to the outer wall of your home. In other words, not just the interior room measurements, but through the drywall, etc.
But what if your home has a little more unusual shape to it or several outcroppings? For example, your house features an L-shape, a bay window that juts out from your kitchen, or a round tower room a la an old Victorian?
In these cases, the usual method is to imagine each space as a collection of smaller rectangles and squares. You take the length and width measurements of these smaller boxes to determine their square footage, then add them all together. Likewise, you can measure individual rooms and add everything up.
The one caveat with this approach is it doesn’t take into consideration the space between your interior drywall and exterior walls. Therefore, when measuring this way, the rule of thumb is to add 6 inches to each measurement.
For rooms with odd shapes (like circular turrets in Victorian homes), using a special square footage calculator is helpful. You select the shape and the calculator guides you through the process.
Can You Use Your Own Measurements for Your Real Estate Listing?
If you’re simply curious about your home’s square footage or planning a small no-demo renovation project, take your own measurements. But if you’re determining square footage because you plan to sell your house or embark on massive remodels, press pause.
Despite square footage being a math problem, it can be relatively subjective depending on who’s taking the measurements. The MLS (Multiple Listing Service), in most cases, requires that square footage comes from a certain verified source.
Builders will also often need and want to secure their own measurements. When in doubt, check with your real estate agent, contractor, or builder before declaring a definitive square footage for your home.
