If you are planning to sell your home, one of the many things you should know about your house is its area. Many a potential buyer, and even real estate agents, will ask for that information. You should know the total floor area of your property because it is one of the factors that help determine your selling price, and potential buyers will use this when comparing houses, and will need to present this information to financing institutions, to justify the mortgage.

Unless you still have the original architectural and construction plans of your house, you will have roll up your sleeves, get down on your knees and get the measurements the hard way. It is fairly easy to measure a house, and most of the time, you can do it without any help from others. You will need a 100-foot fiberglass measuring tape, 25-foot retractable measuring tape, graphing paper, and a pencil. If you really want to have an assistant, have someone hold the “dumb” end of the tape measure.

When you measure, start by measuring the exterior and round it off to the nearest inch or tenth of an inch. Pick any corner of your house and work your way around it. Map out the measurements you make on the graphing paper, allocating one square per 1 foot measured. At the end of the process, your starting point and your ending point should meet. If they don’t, you might have to go at it again. Create several “base” plans because you will base your interior measurements on this. Once you’ve measured the exterior, you can now start measuring the interior spaces. Include stairs, attics / lofts that have floor to ceiling heights of between 6 to 7 feet, provided that they can be accessed by stairs. Exclude basements or any below-grade rooms.

Garages or carports, even if these are attached to the main house, are not part of the finished floor area. If you have a garage that is connected to the house, you should lay your tape on the outside wall of the property (inner wall of your garage). Any structure that is not connected to the house (annexes, granny flats, etc) should also not be included in the measurement.

Measuring your house may be a little tricky, especially if you are doing this for the first time. Therefore, if you are unsure about what you are doing and need to provide fairly accurate measurements, can ask an architect, engineer, or contractor friend to help you out. If your network of friends does not include any one who is capable of surveying your home, you might as well get a professional to do it. You may have to pay him for your services, but it’s a small price to pay for the convenience and the comfort in knowing that his figures are correct. You may want to compare your measurements with his, so you can see how close (or far off) you were from the actual figures.

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