American Measurement Standard
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Residential Square Footage
When it comes to buying and selling real estate, we all want to get a fair deal. Who sets the price and how do they determine the fair market value? In the real estate industry it often comes down to a price-per-square-foot number. Who gets to determine that number? The answer is – it depends. It depends on where you live and who measures your house. With the American Measurement Standard, you can be sure your home is measured by a “standard” used for over a century all across the country. In every residential transaction, size matters and the AMS helps you get the size right! Welcome and thanks for visiting.
The Book
The American Measurement Standard® is all new in 2023 and is a voluntary standard for the measurement of residential square footage. For those professionals who choose to provide this service, the AMS® helps to promote the public’s trust, as well as offering a consistent, reliable, reproducible, and defensible source for the methodology utilized in the collection and communication of square footage for single-family dwellings. The employment of a written “statement of square footage” is encouraged for the advancement of professionalism and consumer protection, by all those that create and communicate residential square footage data. In this, the information age and the era of technology, it is our sincere hope that the real estate industry will embrace the adoption of a universal measurement standard, mandate it, and educate all professionals about the importance of credible living area data. One industry, one standard.
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D. Hampton Thomas: Leading expert on residential square footage and its influence on the home valuation process. Instructor, appraiser, Realtor and author. Offering new insights into real estate and appraisal issues, studying the power of size or square footage for over twenty-five years. America’s favorite real estate formula, price-per-square-foot, is 100% dependent on having accurate square footage. The sqft information contained in public records and the MLS should be sounding alarm bells across the country. The next real estate crisis may be the information crisis. Inaccurate square footage details are costing home buyers, sellers, and the insurance industry millions every year. Author of over a dozen books, over a hundred videos, eight continuing education courses and numerous nationally published articles and blogs. When it comes to the world of residential square footage and home values, no one knows more.
The AMS helps Protect Real Estate Agents, Home Buyers & Sellers. In every residential transaction, a home’s “Size” Does Matter.
Too often people take this simple number for granted. The one number at the start of every transaction ill determine in the owner (or buyer) receives a fair price for the property. Square footage should be measured by a “standard.” In the United States there are only two residential standards. ANSI and the American Measurement Standard. Both methods have been in use for over a century and it truly depends on where you live and who taught you to measure as to which method you follow. To best protect yourself and your clients, it’s just a smart business practice to follow a standard of practice, and be able to hold that method in your hand and explain it to others, if needed.
Home builders, architects, assessors, insurance adjusters, real estate agents and appraisers, mortgage underwriters, and many other that measure square footage have different methods and practices for measuring residential square footage. If you’re buying a new home, chances are it was measured by the AMS. If you buy an existing home, chances are it was measured by the ANSI standard or a variation of that standard. Does it really make that much difference? Only if “money matters.”
