For info: Coldwell Banker website listings nearly always indicate sq feet, or at least they did when I was house hunting in Baltimore

When I was searching for a home to buy in Baltimore, I couldn't find SF numbers for the rooms. Asking realtors wasn't helpful, because they'd either want me to see the house first or they would claim they didn't know.

As a result, I was shown several houses that had unacceptable room sizes, and it was a waste of time. Who wants to live in a house that has a 7 X 10 living room??

There's a good reason you don't find Square Footage listings in the MLS very often. In a word, Lawsuits.

http://www.sfhomeblog.com/2006/08/luxury-condo-complex-spawns-lawsuit.html

http://activerain.com/blogsview/709676/listing-agent-pays-buyer-for-square-footage-ouch

The Tax records list square footage, but they are often inaccurate, particularly if a home has been remodeled. As a realtor, the risk of a lawsuit over something such as square footage is huge. In order to avoid a lawsuit, most agents leave the information out.

If you find the information on some sites and not others, that could be for a multitude of reasons, perhaps a particular site is pulling from tax records, while one is pulling from the listing information, while another site may not even have square footage as a detail field.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Jonathan, that's a very helpful explanation -- both for why you won't see the square feet and for why you (in some places) will.

Realtors = liars

It is not listed to force you to use their worthless services. Real story is that the realtor world is headed the way of travel agents; specifically, online access to all desired data and more do-it-yourself dealing with fewer realtor bottom feeders getting in the way

I know there's strong Realtor dissatisfaction among some commenters here, Darwin Rules, but do you really want to call ALL agents liars? Speaking as a member of an industry that's frequently belittled as biased, I don't think much of broad-brush pronouncements. Perhaps there are some (legal) occupations that are rife with baddies, but most professions are a mix of excellent, OK and lousy folks. That's life.

@Darwin Rules Believe it or not, there is no law that forces you to use a realtor. By all means, please list your house FSBO, and rebuff every Realtor that comes calling. As an agent, I'm okay with that.
Despite your "viva la revolucion" view, there are people out there who do not agree with you. This article by Jamie is a huge case in point. Agents typically don't list square footage because they don't want to risk the lawsuit. If they were to get sued, they have insurance and liability (Errors and Omissions) protection for such an event. As an individual, you've got more risk.

Nobody sues the airline for not getting they 2" of extra legroom they expected, but they will sue the person selling a home if it's being 50s.f. less than advertised. Why? because the flight was only 2 hours and $150, but the house was a long term commitment and $350k. There's a lot more at stake when buying a home than there is when selecting a flight.

I understand that there are lots of people who hate Realtors. We rank somewhere below lawyers and used car salesmen as far as some folks are concerned, but that doesn't make us all "Liars" or worthless, like you try to point out. We are a service industry, and if you don't like the service we offer, then I URGE you to avoid using one. Everyone wins that way. You don't have to deal with people you think are all "liars", and the Realtor doesn't have to deal with an unpleasant personality. I get to pick and choose my clients, just as the client can pick and choose their Realtor, and I don't need the added stress of dealing with a hostile client.

Jamie,

As a Realtor, I would love to know why Darwin Rules has such strong opinions against Realtors? I am assuming he/she had a bad experience. Can you investigate? I would love to see it as one of your posts.

Darwin went too far by brushing all realtors with one stroke, however, his main point is, I think, that realtor as a profession has outlived its usefulness. I kinda agree with that. My home hunting experience has taught me that I do all the heavy lifting. If I don't buy within the 1st 10 houses I see, the realtor starts to grumble. I've written several contracts so far, and a lawyer can do just as well as a realtor.

A realtor can be useful if they help you to "discover" the right price. But I haven't seen one yet that's interested in that. With all the databases and internet sites where information is readily available (e.g., franklymls.com), I agree that realtors as a profession needs serious re-examination.

Darwin Rules, what do you think of Jim Gunsiorowski's suggestion? You can email me or just comment here.

Semiconscious, I'd like to applaud the way you wrote your comment. It's a subject that people have strong opinions about, and I'm sure some who read your comment will disagree, but you offer your thoughts with specific examples and no name-calling. This is exactly the sort of commenting I like to see. We don't all have to agree, but we can be collegial about it.

As someone who has been working in the industry for many years now, I will say this in Darwin Rule's defense.

Most realtors I've encountered are not "liars". In fact, many believe quite strongly in what they are telling you. There are, of course, unscrupulous people as there are in every profession. Perhaps there is a greater propensity for them to push one's perception in a certain direction, but that is to be expected in any sales related job. At the end of the day, a realtor's job is to sell houses.

However, over the past decade, there has been a marked increase in the bullish rhetoric about the housing market and real estate values in particular coming from Realtors. I think this trend is the result of groups like the NAR becoming more centralized and influential. The NAR is a notorious cheerleader for the entire bubble mentality (as illustrated by people like David Lereah and Lawrence Yun).

So no - I don't think most Realtors are liars. I believe that they are being fed incorrect information. But when they scoff if you tell them that that split level fixer-upper is not worth $350,000, they really do believe that's a good value.

It's a shame, because people used to really trust realtors. They used to often form a personal relationship with a realtor as an unbiased source of information. You're lucky now if you can even get in touch with them a lot of times, and as a result they're increasingly being viewed as snake oil salesmen. The entire industry has been "McDonaldized".

An additional fuel to the fire is that the compensation mechanism for realtors is becoming out of wack. 6% of 150k is not much, but 6% of 450k is quite a chunk of change. The work involved is not necessarily more. If prices are following inflation, then it's kinda fair. But bubble prices made it a feeding frenzy.

When you buy stock, your broker does not charge a percentage, a fixed fee is charged. That makes a lot more sense.

I prefer a blend of the points Semiconscious and Darwin Rules brought up.

In some situations it is entirely proper to blanket characterize all realtors as liars. These are people who make a living off of convincing people they can help people buy and sell real estate. As a buyer, ask any realtor to visit an FSBO or seller who doesn't offer that 3% commission. Immediately the facade of "adding-value" disappears and the agent will start showing their true colors typically through a laundry list of excuses and protests. Liars ranking below used car salesmen indeed in this specific context.

However, I don't agree with the point of the realtor profession outliving its usefulness. What I think is that the profession has become a de facto monopoly controlled by the NAR. It aggressively opposes anything in which would bring about competition or modernization. The "adding-value" argument has lost most of its credibility. I've also found that all of the searching and analysis in the home buying process was done by myself and not an agent. This person acts as a filter and gets in the way or delays communication. The NAR needs to compete against the internet and other forms of real estate representation. Right now it strong-arms its way into every aspect of real estate to snuff out opponents. People are feeling fleeced by all the junk fees, increasing commissions, listing shenanigans, and constant focus on making the most money with the least amount of effort. The industry needs a reboot. It got us into the current pickle by running unchecked and unchallenged for the past decade.

And for an on-topic comment, floor plan is more important to me than square footage. Some small spaces feel huge. Some huge spaces feel closed in. Layout is more important to me.

Good observation about layout. It's critical to the flow and feel of a house.
My own realtor experience was wonderful -- she got a sense for what I really needed/wanted and helped find it while I was living overseas... she and I worked together using Internet as a supplement. I must admit, however, that she may not have been considered as "successful" (in the raw sense) as some of her pushier colleagues whose main aim was a quick sale.

Too bad this topic got sidetracked. I checked out the two referenced articles and both seem to be unusual cases. In one there is a "clerical error". In the other, there is clearly intentional deception.

So while there are a couple of cases of lawsuits involving arguments over square footage, it doesn't seem to me to be reasonable grounds to not publish the values in the tax records. I checked and found that listings in San Francisco (redfin) and Austin (some agent site), the two locations where the lawsuits occurred, still show square footage on their listings. So evidently, the lawsuits didn't cause the action of removing square footage there. If this truly is the reason square footage isn't shown in Baltimore, it seems to me to be quite an overreaction.

Thanks for bringing this back on topic, convulsing. (It's been an interesting conversation, both on topic and off, in any case.)

In my own house hunt, I've looked for the sq. ft. and $/sq. ft. metric, too, but it's not been key when determining whether I want to see a house or now. If I'm looking online, I'm more concerned about the availability of other information - does the online listing profile have pictures to offer a quality preview of what I'd expect to see upon touring a house? information about taxes, special assessments, HOA/condo fees? data on list-sales price ratio?

$/sq. ft is an interesting metric if you're trying to line up comps and figure out where to make your offer, but it doesn't give you the full picture anyway. It won't tell if you the house has been upgraded to the hilt or if it's a box of fireplace kindling.

Likewise, square footage alone doesn't tell you if the space functions well, or if additions were quality construction. Take the question a step further and try to distinguish overall square footage from finished square footage. We found in a number of cases that the square footage presented in the listing profile did not factor finished basement living areas.

Square footage and $/sq. ft. also doesn't say anything about the neighborhood in which a house is located. I doubt folks are going to pay much mind to these metrics if they are turned off by the neighborhood, by lack of curb appeal, less optimal school district, taxes, etc.

Even with all of that info, we ended up seeing a bunch of houses. Several of the ones that looked good based on sites like Redfin were real duds. You've gotta take it in stride - we always had the expectation that these types of sites were good at providing screening-level information. Yeah, we've used a buying agent and our expectation was exactly that - they he/she act as our agent and set up all of the appointments and take the time to meet us at each, to draft up the offers, to set up the inspections, etc. Worth 3% to buyer or seller? I dunno, that's a subjective measure, isn't it? If you were willing to pay someone to take care of all the details for you, what price would you put on it?