Should you care about the square footage of a UK home?

It’s often said that Britain as a nation is property-obsessed.

Many love to discuss house prices, are constantly plotting ways to increase the value of homes, have an eye on which way the market is moving, along with some online window shopping for somewhere new.

We also have reams of information about our homes at our fingertips. Some could recite stamp duty rates off-hand, or divulge their home’s energy performance rating or council tax band at the drop of a hat.

But one thing we don’t appear to know so much about is square footage. A recent survey by Zoopla found that three in five Britons didn’t know the size of their home in square feet.

Space now occupies the top spot on many buyers’ wish lists thanks to the pandemic. So is a property’s square footage going to become more important – and is the price of a home ‘per sq ft’ something buyers and sellers need to become more au fait with? 

According to Zoopla, the average home in the UK has a value of £250 per sq ft, with an average floor plan measuring 991 sq ft. 

The reason many of us don’t know our own home’s measurements is that traditionally, the number of bedrooms was the most important factor when it came to size.

But the pandemic has seen living space supersede this, with many spare bedrooms being put to better use as a home office, kids’ playroom or gym.   

For this purpose, bedrooms are interchangeable with dining rooms, studies or larger open-plan living spaces – meaning that having four bedrooms isn’t the status symbol it once was. 

‘Homeowners were once consumed with how many rooms a property had, but more rooms doesn’t always mean more space,’ says Tom Parker, consumer expert at Zoopla. 

‘Square footage has become increasingly important during the pandemic, as we have to make our homes work harder as they become a hub for work, school and play.’

They might not always talk about it in terms of sq ft, but more floor space is something buyers are increasingly interested in.

Housebuilder Redrow recently commissioned an Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults, in which 32 per cent said floor space would be a top priority when they next moved home. 

This was higher than the proportion who said that being within walking distance of cafes, bars and restaurants would be a top priority, at 19 per cent.

‘Over the past year the average size of our reserved homes has increased on a square footage basis,’ says James Holmear, group sales director at Redrow. 

‘There has been resolute demand for homes with even more space to both live and work. We are responding by ensuring that our plans for new developments incorporate an increased proportion of larger-footprint homes.’

Expressing the value of a property in pounds per sq ft used to be something that only really happened in the luxury end of the housing market – for example on London penthouses being bought off-plan – and in the commercial property world where square footage dictates the amount of rent a landlord can charge for an office, warehouse or shop. 

That has changed in the past decade, as estate agents began to show potential buyers floor plans – which include the square footage of each room – when marketing homes. 

‘Anyone who has a bought a home in recent years will know its square footage, or at least what it was when they purchased it,’ says Robin Chatwin, head of south west London at Savills.

‘The reason many homeowners won’t know the square footage of their property is simply that floor plans have only become common in the last decade or so.’   

Just because people know the size of their home in sq ft, doesn’t mean it necessarily matters to them – but there is a section of home owners for whom it has become important. 

Garages are not included in the sq ft of a home, but lofts and basements might be 

‘For those who maintain that size doesn’t matter, you’ll equally find more and more people who have become obsessed with the size of their property, as awareness of square footage has increased over time,’ says Edward Heaton, managing partner of buying agent Heaton & Partners. 

‘It’s a bit like acreage, in that where many people don’t know the size of their house, they will happily hazard an educated, or even uneducated, guess.’ 

Why is sq ft useful?

Square footage is a good place to start when working out the value of a property.

‘The first thing an agent really looks at when putting a price on a property is square footage. It does tell you a great deal of the story – but not all of it,’ says Marc Schneiderman of London estate agent Arlington Residential.

The reason it is useful is because it is one of the only ways of valuing a home that isn’t subjective. 

‘Square footage is basically the only tangible means of calculating the value of a property,’ says Varun Johal-Sharma, sales manager at estate agent Johns&Co. 

‘Most of the other factors that you take into account such as views, layout, natural light, positioning on the street, location – are all subjective, so it is useful to have something tangible to help you arrive at a meaningful valuation,’ he says. 

For buyers, it is one of the quickest ways to rule out a home that is obviously not going to fit their requirements. 

‘You can tell in a second whether to eliminate a house or go and see it based on one factor, and that factor is square footage,’ Schneiderman adds. 

Because it is so tangible, the price of a property per sq ft also forms a key part of mortgage lenders’ valuations. 

‘It is price per sq ft data that the mortgage valuation surveyors rely on,’ says Jo Eccles, buying agent and founder of Eccord. ‘Price per sq ft underpins values and it is essential to know where you are paying in line with that.’

The number of bedrooms is less important now that homes are also used as offices and gyms 

As a buyer, it is also a helpful tool when comparing the price you are being asked to pay for a home to what others have paid in the same area. 

Looking at price per sq ft allows you to compare values in a way that is not skewed by the different sizes of properties.

‘Once you know which property you are keen to make an offer on, it is critical to obtain granular information about what other similar properties have sold for and compare them to yours,’ says Eccles. ‘If other houses on the road have sold, you need to know what price per sq ft they achieved and make adjustments for any differences.’

These adjustments would be for things like the general condition of the property, the size of the garden and any repair work that needed to be done. 

What are the problems with pricing by sq ft? 

Sq ft measurements might be useful, but they don’t always give you the full picture. This is why they are one of many factors to take into consideration when buying a home.

One of the problems with them is that the measurements tell you about space – but not configuration. 

In the know: Having information about a property’s size can help buyers compare homes 

This means the formula doesn’t work well for homes that have been designed in certain ways, making potential buyers discount them based on a number that might not reflect them in the best light. 

‘We sold an amazing studio house recently,’ explains Schneiderman. ‘On a sq ft basis it was modest in size, but the floors had been taken out in some areas to give you an amazing triple-height living space.’

Measuring a home’s sq ft doesn’t account for volume, but this is increasingly important to buyers who value airy spaces and high ceilings. 

‘Volume has become very desirable as ceiling height and sense of space are factors that even RICS valuers now acknowledge and accept,’ says Hyman. 

It goes the other way, too – with large houses sometimes being over-valued due to their large sq ft measurement, even though they don’t have much else going for them.  

‘If you were to compare a smaller sized stately home in an amazing location, to a much larger house but in a bad location and awful position, that’s where square footage can really go against you – when the size is too high and can almost feel a burden,’ says north London estate agent Jeremy Leaf.

As gardens and land are listed separately to living space, pricing a house per sq ft also doesn’t reflect well on properties that have a lot of development potential.

‘There is another house we’re selling where the value to square footage formula is way out of kilter with what it should be because it’s a small house, but it has got a great deal of development potential and planning consent,’ says Schneiderman.

The figures can often be misleading, too, as it is easy for sq ft to be mis-measured. 

‘The problem with using square footage as a factor is that it can be misleading and often inaccurate,’ he adds. 

Does the figure include outside or circulation space? Has it been measured into alcoves and how have awkward or unusual-shaped rooms been measured? Square footage should be used as a guide only.’

There have even been legal cases where home owners have claimed their home has been measured wrongly.

‘Don’t base your decision on it – it can be tempting if you are buying from a distance if you can’t travel easily to the property because you are relocating, but don’t be fooled. Make sure you are basing your decisions on reliable information,’ says Leaf. 

Space isn’t everything – even in the pandemic  

The pandemic might have sent some buyers on an obsessive hunt for space, but not at all costs.

A smaller space can be more valuable depending on what is within that space – for example, a buyer might be willing to trade a large flat for a smaller house if it had its own garden.

‘We have one client who is in a fabulous penthouse apartment who wants to move and be in a house,’ explains Schneiderman. ‘He doesn’t want to go in the lift [because of social distancing] and he is willing to compromise on the space that he moves to in order to have his own entrance, his own front door and a garden.’ 

James Hyman, head of residential property at real estate consultant Cluttons, says that buyers are using ‘common sense’ rather than being too hung up on value per sq ft.

‘Buyers are using more common sense and buying practically again,’ he says. ‘This is why the one-bed market in London has been so severely affected – buyers are realising that paying £1million, for example, to get only one bedroom is too much.

‘They are now not going to compromise on certain things such as outdoor space, ceiling height and light for example – which are not covered by the pounds per sq ft barometer.’ 

Ultimately, Heaton says that sq ft is currently only a big factor in buying decisions in ultra-competitive property markets.

‘I have found that square footage is really only a factor in London and a small handful of other cities around the UK, such as Oxford,’ he says. 

‘The reality is that there are so many different factors that affect the value of a property that it simply isn’t possible to focus on size alone.’ 

With buyers more interested in how a home measures up, it certainly doesn’t hurt to be aware of the true size of your home, especially if you are looking to sell in the near future. 

Size certainly matters – but given that measuring by sq ft can throw up plenty of anomalies, it isn’t everything.