Your listed square footage is probably low.
Builder-listed square footage comes from plans. Plans do not describe what actually got built. An ANSI Z765 measured figure is frequently higher — and square footage is the denominator on every comp, every price per square foot and every appraisal.
Why the numbers disagree
A plan set is a design intent document. It predates field changes, bump-outs, conditioned space that got finished later, and every decision made after the drawings were stamped. Nobody goes back and re-measures.
We measure the finished building to ANSI Z765 with a laser-based camera and produce an area total that traces to the scan.
What it is worth
Square footage is the denominator. Raise it and the price per square foot the property is compared against moves with it. On a portfolio of homes that is not a rounding error.
Appraisers work to the same standard, which is why a compliant measurement holds up rather than starting an argument.
Included in every capture. Standalone measurement quoted per building.
How accurate is the area figure?
99% on square footage — roughly 1% uncertainty against a standard that permits 2%.
Which standard do you use?
ANSI Z765, the same standard appraisers work to.
Will an appraiser accept it?
They work to the same standard and to the same tolerance. That is precisely why this measurement tends not to get argued with.
Can you measure a whole community?
Yes — one measurement per plan type, reused across every home built to that plan. That is the cheap way to do it.
Measured square footage: two standards, and they do not agree
ANSI Z765 is the residential standard. It measures the building — finished, above-grade living area, measured to the exterior wall face, with defined rules for stairs, sloped ceilings and what counts as finished. It permits a 2% tolerance.
BOMA is the commercial standard, and it does something different: it allocates the building's common areas across tenants, so rentable area is larger than the space anyone can stand in. That is covered properly here.
A building can legitimately carry both numbers, and they will not match. When somebody says a space is 4,000 square feet, the useful follow-up is “measured to which standard?”
Where the recorded number comes from
Rarely from a measurement. In practice, it is inherited from a county assessor record, an original permit drawing, a prior listing, or a previous appraisal — each of which copied it from the one before. Additions, enclosures, conversions and mezzanines get made without anyone updating it. The figure everybody relies on is often decades old and was never verified in the first place.
Which is why the delta between measured and recorded area is so consistently interesting, and why it is worth measuring before it becomes somebody's argument.
Where the number decides something
- Price per square foot on a sale, a lease, or a valuation — the multiplier on the whole transaction.
- Appraisal and lending. An appraiser working from a wrong figure produces a wrong value, and the correction usually arrives at the worst moment.
- Property tax assessment, where an over-stated figure has been costing money quietly for years.
- Insurance replacement cost, which is calculated per square foot and is the number that matters after a total loss.
- Disclosure exposure. Advertising a figure that turns out to be wrong is a claim waiting to happen, and “that is what the county said” has not historically been much of a defense.
What you get
A measured area calculation to the stated standard, a dimensioned floor plan in DWG, plotted sheets in PDF, and a walkthrough of the space the number describes. Accuracy is about one centimeter on wall distances — roughly 0.5% on distance and 1% on area, against a standard that permits 2%.
If the measured figure differs from the recorded one, we say so plainly and show the working. We do not adjust a measurement to match an expectation, which is the entire reason to hire an independent party to take it.
Phoenix metro. Anywhere within 35 miles of Gilbert — Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale, Tempe, Glendale, Peoria, Queen Creek and the rest of the Valley — carries no mobilization charge. Outside that, travel is quoted from the published zone table, and we work nationally.