By Living Room Realty, October 18, 2019
Oh, the square foot dilemma with homes in Portland, Oregon. First off, it is common practice in Portland to list unfinished basements as part of the square footage of a home-not delineating the difference between finished square footage, and unfinished square footage. This can be very confusing for buyers. They see a home that is listed with a total square footage of 3000 square feet and 1200 of those square feet are an unfinished basement. So total living space is really only 1800 square feet. And if the 1800 square feet are laid out poorly, that living space can feel even smaller. Suddenly your big house, lives pretty small-which leads us to layout.
Layout of a house can make all the difference. My clients, Ben and Corina, learned this first hand. They had been looking to buy their first home in inner-Eastside Portland. They had found again and again homes with lots of square footage, but with little usable space. The classic big house that lived small. Then, they toured The House. According to square footage, it was the smallest house they looked at with only 1500 square feet. It was a mid-century, single level home owned by a designer. The house was beautiful, thoughtful, and flowed. Every square foot was usable. The layout was such, that the home felt like 2000 square feet. The house lived BIG! Lots of buyers felt the same and there were multiple offers. The home sold for well over the list price. It’s not always about square feet. Congrats Ben and Corina!
