S/O Tiny houses: do you know the sq footage of your home?

I know ours - 90sqm. It is pretty standard here to see the floor area in sqm in house/apartment listings.
I am still lost when it comes to square footage, as I don't know the conversion between square feet and square meters.

Not a clue

No, haven't a clue here either. I just know the size of each individual room i.e. the lounge is 123  x 123 and the kitchen is 234 x 234 or whatever.
I've never seen it listed in total on any estate agents details either.

I've not noticed the room sizes being listed on US sales individually either only the total overall, which to me isn't much help when I'm trying to work out what size the kitchen or the bedrooms are.

We know how to work it out but we tend to look at each room size individually rather than the overall square footage. If I was looking at buying a house I would want to know the length/width of the kitchen, the sitting room etc then the bedrooms etc because then I can compare it to my current home. If I read that it was, for arguments sake 1000sq feet I would have no idea if that was bigger or smaller that where I live now. It’s just not how we do things 🙂

Interesting. Yes, we know. I'm curious, how do you compare prices for homes if you can't compare overall sizes? By number of rooms? Also, I'm curious, what is a fairly average size house for your area?

In sq feet? No idea

I’m in the US and only bought our townhouse two years ago, so yes, I know the square footage. I was just looking at the (closed) real estate listing on Saturday as I wanted to steal the listing photo for a scrapbook page. Anyway, according to the listing we have 1544 square feet but I’m not exactly sure how they came to that number.

I don’t know what area, if any, of our bottom level is included. We have three levels...bottom is garage, hallway along side of stairs, closet under stairs, open area about 6 feet square which is currently my scrapbooking area, and a utility room with washer, dryer, water heater and storage space. Second level is kitchen with dining area, powder room/half bath and living room. Top floor is two bedrooms and full bath. We have an attic but it’s not really useable unless we put sub flooring down and use it for storage. 

Now my curiosity is peaked and I’m getting out the tape measure!

2150 sq ft

I do, but that's because we recently had an appraisal done (not to sell) and it was on the report. I had a rough idea before -- we built the house 20 years ago and I spent many an hour looking at the plans back then.
It definitely shows up on the data sheet when you're looking at real estate around here (US).

You can convert square meters to square feet by multiplying by 10.7.

The overall SF of the house is listed but also the actual length/width of the rooms are listed as well on the sales sheet here in the US.  You can't include a below ground basement in the calculations, although I've had realtors that would include one if it had windows to the outside and one that wouldn't. The total property size is also listed. When I'm looking to buy, I place a minimum on overall SF like I want nothing under 1200 SF. For me, I'd also place a minimum on the lot size. *I also place a minimum on bedrooms (no less than 3) and bathrooms (not less than 2). Then look at the results, which almost always have photos of each room attached. 

I usually keep the room dimensions in my head for about 6 months, then promptly forget them until I want to paint and have to remeasure. I usually round overall SF of the house and keep that in my head. I can tell you the SF of my previous 3 houses.

We have only ever purchased one home, and it was new construction, but even when deciding on what apartments to rent square footage was a big consideration. Price, location, square footage were all considered before we decided to even go look at a place. Didn't want to waste time with something obviously too small or large. Having a floor plan was ideal because I could knock quite a few out of contention that way as well. And when comparing fairly similar apartments or house plans, price per square foot was helpful. For example, you could see that in a certain area of town you were going to get much less space for your money. Or that one builder was quite a bit pricier than others, but the materials used reflected that. If similar sized house plans were priced the same, but the materials were not similar, you'd want to know why.

Our average sizes vary so much, even from state to state. Our very modest 2400 sq foot house would be considered huge in a lot of metro areas and some states, but is on the smaller end in our section of the neighborhood. And I imagine pretty average to below in size for the state.

dewryce - I think we basically all consider the same things, just in different ways. I think we probably judge overall sq footage in our heads here but estate agents (realtors) include floor plans when they list properties for sale too so you can see the overall space just the same 🙂

our house is 2100 sq ft which is big to me (our last house had twice as many people living in it - 6 vs 3) and was only 1200 sq ft.

US listings tend to show sq ft and photos but not individual room sizes or floor plans. I prefer UK listings to be honest - the floor plan makes such a difference.

I wonder if the fact that US houses tend to be bigger and size is often a selling point here is partly why sq ft is so important to include in listings here? I seem to remember that UK houses were smaller and more compact but laid out with much less wasted space (more efficient floorplans) in many cases.

and sq ft is usually only finished and heated (or cooled depending on where it is) space - not attics/cellars/garages. My house is a mobile home and lacks all of those but many houses have almost the same amount of sq ft again in unfinished space.

Not so in all markets in the US. It is not common for room measurements to be listed in our markets. And ANSI standards, which is what our state realtor board goes by, identify any finished (with heat) space to be included in the square footage. Figuring sq ft can get tricky when it comes to wall heights, sloped ceilings and stairways.