Editor’s note: Real estate’s fuzzy math

From the February issue: Loss factor is one of the more maddening concepts in New York City real estate. It’s the measurement that office landlords use to figure out how much tenants pay for the shared space in an office building.

The only problem is that a building’s loss factor — and therefore its size — is arbitrary and driven by market forces, so it doesn’t reflect that actual size of a building. [more]