Canceling A Contract When The Numbers Don't Match

I'm an exclusive buyer's agent in Charlotte, NC, and I think you're missing the point of the complaint from the buyers who were under contract to purchase a home that the appraiser had measured as 4% smaller than the listing agent had advertised in the listing sheet. The point was not that the home was only 4% smaller; the point was that the listing agent did not verify the square footage of the home by measuring it herself or paying a professional to measure the property before she listed it for sale. Instead she used an outdated sq.ft. figure that she found in the tax records, and represented that as the current sq. ft figure. Tax records are notorious for being grossly inaccurate. At a minimum, the listing agent's J-O-B is to measure their seller-clients home or pay an appraiser to measure it before they list it for sale, so they can estimate the new value including any improvements/changes the seller has made to their home since they bought it, and advise their seller-client as to a competitive asking price. Real estate agents know that buyers make their purchase decisions based almost entirely on emotion, but listing agents must still treat buyers and buyer's agents fairly, and that includes verifying the size of the property they are advertising for sale on behalf of their seller-client. The sq. ft. of a property cannot be easily ascertained by consumers, their real estate agents, or even appraisers, yet it is often the biggest value adjustment an appraiser makes in a tract-built neighborhood of homes with similar styles and features. Real estate professionals must be able to trust that their peers will deliver the legally required level of service that consumers expect from them, and in NC that includes measuring the size of the seller-client's home before listing it for sale. Using tax records as the sole source of sq. ft. information on a property listed for sale is prohibited and against NC real estate license law. Tolerating sloppy practices from listing agents who use tax information for sq. ft. instead of measuring the properties they are listing for sale has contributed to the market plummet of property values in the past 3-5 years. And the buyers then are the sellers now who are paying the price again, with banks and appraisers facing stricter lending requirements as a result of the foreclosure crisis crippling our economy today.

I know there are many different ways of measuring square footage depending on the method appraisers typically use in any given area. But that listing agent did not measure her seller-client's home at all! Don't you think that measuring sellers' homes in order to determine the new value is a minimal level service that consumers should be able to expect from the listing agent they hire? And like you mentioned, what if the seller's home was actually larger that what the tax records said? How can listing agents be the fiduciary of their sellers if they use the square footage measurements in outdated tax records to estimate value instead of verifying the measurements themselves? Nobody wants to unknowingly pay more than a home is worth even if they like the home very much. If they knowingly pay more than a home is worth, then at least they are making an informed decision! And I think appraisers would agree that the biggest variable in determining value is the size of a home, regardless of how it's measured. Each state Realtor's Association publishes guidelines for real estate professionals to use when reporting square footage as required by that state's real estate license law. Here's the NC Guidelines: http://www.ncrec.state.nc.us/publications-bulletins/sqft.html And here's a Boston Globe article about the problem of square footage inflation in the Boston market: http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/blogs/renow/2008/05/square_footage.html Real estate agents still have a long way to go with regards to raising their estimation in the eyes of consumers. And making sure they verify the size of a home they are advertising for sale would go a long ways toward accomplishing that goal.