Was Your Home Measured Wrong?

Depending on the floor plan, measuring a home can be quite a headache.

 

It’s important to let your appraiser or real estate professional measure your property uninterrupted –we’ve mentioned this before.  What we haven’t mentioned is that getting the numbers right isn’t all it takes for a home to be considered mismeasured. 

While there are others, generally there are two commonly used standards of measurement in the world of real estate: the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) or the AMS (American Measurement Standard).  

In our review work, we find some interesting results when it comes to measurement standards.  On paper, the ANSI standard is the more commonly used of the two- but that’s just the problem.  It’s only on paper.

 In reality, many real estate appraisers and professionals are measuring and drawing up floor plans under the impression they’re using the ANSI standard, when they’re really recording measurements using the AMS measurement standards. 

There’s another word for this- wrong. 

 

While the difference between the 1/10th of a foot and a 1/2 foot may not seem like much, the real problems that can arise from this will show up in court.  

If your real estate appraisal (or any official document listing measurements on your home for that matter) displays the measurements for your home in the wrong measurement standard, it can ultimately discredit both the real estate appraiser (no so much your problem) and the appraisal itself (there’s your problem.)

Ultimately, it’s not a bad idea to ask your surveyor, inspector, appraiser, or whomever is measuring your house what standard they’re using.  It could help you catch that error that’ll save you the cost of another appraisal in the end.

 

 

 

Jonathan Montgomery Founder and President of the The Real Estate Appraisal Group.He has been a real estate professional since 1998. He’s been a broker, and investor and now serves as an appraiser.  He currently works as an appraiser, doing real estate appraisals in Washington D.C., Southern Maryland, and Northern Virginia.

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