For the longest time apartment plans were an afterthought for brokers, who merely took old, photocopied, and often illegible depictions from dated directories. But according to the New York Times, more and more established brokerages, including Halstead Property, Brown Harris Stevens and Gumley Haft Kleier, are turning to New York-based Lou Wenger and his company Floorplansource to create updated floor plans for their listings tailored for the Web. Wenger uses laser distance measurers, custom graph paper and colored pencils to create a detailed, aesthetically pleasing floor plan that looks just as clear online. The Times reported that Wenger will alter details to accommodate brokers’ requests: for example, he’ll draw a window wider than scale if a broker feels the true measurement under-represents the amount of light it allows into the room. [more]

During the boom, New Yorkers increasingly relied on “price-per-square-foot” as a way to compare rapidly rising apartment values.
The metric is even more popular in the downturn, as discount-crazed buyers look for good deals.
But price-per-square-foot isn’t as reliable a measure as they think. Unbeknownst to many shoppers, it’s extremely difficult to determine the true square footage of a Manhattan property, experts say.
“When it comes to square footage in New York City, it’s the Wild West,” Bill Staniford, the CEO of real estate data Web site PropertyShark. “It’s measured in so many different ways.”
And in the current downturn, the difficulty of determining square footage is contributing to a number of other problems, from low appraisals to ruined deals.
Staniford, who constantly fields questions from brokers about inaccurate square footage data on file with the city, said using price-per-square-foot as a measure of value is “totally pointless.”
That puts “every single broker in a very difficult situation, unless they want to break out the measuring tape,” he said.
Even then, they might still be wrong.
It’s fairly easy to determine the square footage of a suburban single-family home: measure the footprint of the house, factor in the number of stories, and you’re done.
Manhattan apartments are a different story. [more]