Enclosed Porch - GLA Or Not?

[Darrell Hignite]

I have read almost all of this thread. It seems to me that all of us appraisers should be doing things the same way. I plan to add a course on all of the things that we do differently. No, I couldn't do that, it would take 2-3 weeks to do a class like that. I truely enjoyed having a class of rookies measure a house and all of them come up with a different square footage. I even took them to other houses to measure just to laugh more. When I finally took them to a doublewide and watched them measure all four sides, I lost it.

I have no advice except to try to find similar homes with similar amenities and I know someone will follow this entry with "You can't always find homes with enclosed porches", but this will take care of most of the appraisers problems. I got a call a couple of weeks ago to do a log home, but since I live an hour from the coast of N.C. we don't have many log homes, but 2 weeks ago teaching in Cherokee, I got tons of comparables...bring them on. It's only 6 1/2 hours from Cherokee to my office. Anyway, I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Keep up the chatter.

 

[Thomas N. Morgan]

I may have at some time in the past, included the area of an enclosed porch as living area. There may be exceptions when it's OK to do this.

But, I think the practice of doing so is improper and misleading. As general rule, additions to a home are not as fuctional as the rest of the home. When we write GLA in our report, most readers interpret that to mean that the home as originally designed and constructed had that many square feet of living area.

Better to call it an enclosed porch, give at a value you think proper, I think. But, as an appraiser, it's your call to do what you think is proper under the circumstances.

 

[Big ole Boy]

Veracity of the original footprint in comp analysis is paramount to competent accuracy.