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]