Square footage mis-representaion and earnest money

What is the name of your state? Washington ( Pacific Northwest State)
What is the name of your state? Washington ( Pacific Northwest State)

There was a property for sale by owner ( FSBO)
The flyer used for advertisement by seller had false/misrepresentation
about square footage.

Advertised = 2332 square-foot

I made offer in good faith to buy the house based on the
square footage given in flyer.


Since this is FSBO, the sale purchase is pretty basic with no clauses
about earnest money.

Sale Purchase agreement listed buyer/seller and property address.

There is no closing date listed on this Sale Purchase.
The sale purchase agreement has only my signature and my wife
has not signed it.

Subsequest to making offer, I discovered square footage discrepancy.

Actual/County Record/Builder have 2178 square-foot

There is another very similar house for sale very close to this house
with same plan.. and that is 2145 square foot and also that
matches county/builder square-footage. We visted this house
and checked it out personally.

This means the square footage mentioned on flyer is willfully/delibrately
was posted wrong on flyer by seller.

If I had known the square footage was so much ( 154 square foot ) less I wont have made any
offer on this house.

[ In terms of dollors: 154 square foot is approximate equivalent to $17710.00 at
the prevailing rate of 115 dollors per square foot... it is a major difference. ]

This is a major mis-representation.

Falsification of square-footage is main issue, plus there are other issues.

Seller even was un-willing to do even minimum things like cleaning
gutter, patio, glass surfaces, carpet stain etc

During inspection the crawl space could not be reached and that is a
big concern.

Seller stopped maintaining the house.
The carpet had permanant non removable stain.

The earnest money is with third party.. title company.

Title company says seller and buyer both should give consent in writing
that earnest deposit can be released back to buyer.

Additionally, I believe Washington is 50/50 marital state and since my wife
did not sign the offer are we entitled to our deposit back? just because of this
fact.

The seller is not co-operating, and is unreachable.

We sent many emails, seller has relocated to some other state on
east coast.

Now my 5000.00 earnest money is stuck as seller is not co-operating
despite he lied on the flyer, and I have the flyer with me which shows
wrong square footage.

Advertised square footage of the
house per seller's flyer 2332 square foot.
County/builder/actual is 2178 square foot.

Clearly it is falsification/mis-representation of square footage.

This discrepancy of 154 (2332-2178=154) square foot
is big difference, and 154 squarefoot is equivalent to
a big room of (11 feet * 14 feet) and so it is
clear falsification on the advertisement.

Recently I saw that he has put the home again for
sale through some agent this time.

Please advise what we should do. All I want is my earnest money back.
I will take legal advise/hire some real estate agent if needed to sort this.

thanks

[MortgageGuru]

Get new listing agent in on what has happened to you.

Clearly you have been violated.

But what do you expect with a contract without adequate verbage for your protection.

$5000 - Clean Gutters and Febreezed Carpet= Unhappy Buyer

Sue them to get your deposit back.

Threaten them with False Advertising Laws. This is Clearly deliberate/ intentional malitious False advertising.

But you didn't use a realtor or even a contract that could protect you from malicious dirty sellers did you?

[FloridaRob]

could of things. the county could be wrong as well. the county is 125 ft low on my house. Hooray for them. My taxes are only $3000 per year instead of $3800. You did not stipulate if the 2178 is total area or living area. maybe the owner did not stipulate either. You say actual/county/builder. Actual by who. The County shows my house at 2300. Builder shows the house 2400. I have been an appraiser for 30 years, measured my house and came up to 2427. I hired another appraiser to appraiser my house for recent financing and he came up with 2455. Who is actual? Who is right? (Well I am, but thats becaue I measure to the inch) County appraisers are wrong as often as they are right. Builders change their plans during construction all the time and if if is not signficant then probably dont inform the county. Owner may have used an appraisal to represent the sq ftg.

and another thing, 154 sq ft difference on a home is probably less than $6000 in teh valuation of an existing home. If the house was brand new then maybe a little more but not much.

If you hire an appraiser to inspect the home and if the numbers fall within 100 sq ft of the buyer then there is nothing to get worked up about. And if the value is consistent with the contract then no problem there either.

If you walked thru the home made an offer or accepted an offer then a judge may say you knew what you were getting.

Good luck getting your money back...

[JETX]

Originally Posted by xyz987

If I had known the square footage was so much ( 154 square foot ) less I wont have made any offer on this house.

Lets see..... how do I say this with tact??
You're full of crap!!
You purchased the house because you liked it. You very likely had NO idea of the square footage and didn't care about it at all. Simply, you liked the house and liked the price.
Now that you have found another house of the same type (probably for less money, better condition, etc.) you have 'buyers remorse' and are trying to figure out SOME way to get out of this purchase.

Please advise what we should do. All I want is my earnest money back. I will take legal advise/hire some real estate agent if needed to sort this.

You're now going to have to spend the money you should have spent BEFORE you signed that very poorly written, sucker contract. Get a lawyer to review it and see what, if any, rights you have and whether you can get out of the contract or not..... with or without your earnest money.

We are talking about living area ( heated area excluding garage )
per the stantard square living area footage rules used by appraisers.

It is not possible to guess the square footage just by looking at
home as I am not any appraiser. I also did not go with measuring tape
( no one does that ). I took the square footage in the the flyer and
trusted it to be true in good faith, but later only came to know about this fact.

I visited second house when one of my friends who saw the house
told me that the house seems smaller than the 2332.

Only after that I started looking for pointers about the square footage
and checked county web site, the builder.

I even tried to compare a similar house which happened to be there by chance.

I always thought other house will be smaller, but it was found to be exact same plan, and same size rooms/bathrooms etc... with may be 1% deviation
so the house in question can be 2178 at best ( may be less also ) as
other house is 2145 square feet.

It is a true case of intentional false advertising.

I have written flyer from seller with wrong and inflated square footage on it.

I dont want the house due to this false information,
plus other things that happened as I mentioned above.

Inspectors could not even go in crawl space area.

From Inspection report:-
Crawlspace was inaccessible due to waste line obstruction and size of opening in support wall.

With all these issues it is hard to go for the house.

Also my wife did not sign the purchase agreement, and I know
Washington is 50-50 equitable state. As she has not signed the
agreement, what are implications of this? Does this make the contract
Invalid?

Also as there is no closing date in agreement one realter friend mentioned
it may be invalid also, he mentioned I should be able to buy the house after 10 years at this given price.

Any other advise??
thanks

[JETX]

Originally Posted by xyz987

I dont want the house due to this false information, plus other things that happened as I mentioned above.

Simple, then don't buy it. And take the risk of a potential breach of contract lawsuit from the sellers. Your risk.

[quote]Also my wife did not sign the purchase agreement, and I know
Washington is 50-50 equitable state. As she has not signed the agreement, what are implications of this? Does this make the contract Invalid?
[quote] No. The only 'implication' is that the sellers can only sue you (as you signed) and not her (as she didn't). You are mis-applying the '50-50 equity' issue. You, as a (presumably) competent legal adult have the right to sign and enter contracts.

Also as there is no closing date in agreement one realter friend mentioned it may be invalid also, he mentioned I should be able to buy the house after 10 years at this given price.

I agree that there are LOTS of possible problems with the contract as you have described it. However, without anyone on this forum being able to read the EXACT terms, we can't state whether it is valid or not.

Do as I said earlier:
"Get a lawyer to review it and see what, if any, rights you have and whether you can get out of the contract or not..... with or without your earnest money."

[nextwife]

Square footage does NOT determine value! A vacant lot down the street from me just sold for the same price as a 1960s ranch home four blocks away. And it has ZERO square footage. LOCATION, condition, QUALITY of construction, school district, landscaping, all are part of what determines value. AS a matter of fact, a smaller home than mine, across the street from me would actually be worth easily a hundred thousand MORE or so, because it would have views of Lake Michigan. Sq. footage does NOT determine value!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not to mention that sq. footage at the tax office can often be WRONG. My house is reported as significantly smaller in the tax records because they fail to count the entire 24X11 stone and glass family room that was added in 1952, one year after built, which appears to be part of the originally built home. So, backing out of the deal because the tax records has a discrepancy - which you have not even proven whether correct or not, is ridiculous. Many people consider a well-built home of lesser square footage in a better location to be of greater value than a place of lesser quality materials and construction which is significantly larger. And the sq. footage you mention isn't even significant.

[JETX]

Originally Posted by nextwife

Square footage does NOT determine value!

I agree. However, if correct, his claim of 'deception' in advertising a larger footage than actual COULD be grounds to void the contract. Whether it is sufficient or not, will depend on many factors, which can ONLY be determined by a read of the contract and an ACCURATE review of the facts.
That is why the ONLY viable advice for the OP is to GO SEE A LOCAL ATTORNEY!

[nextwife]

Originally Posted by JETX

I agree. However, if correct, his claim of 'deception' in advertising a larger footage than actual COULD be grounds to void the contract. [/u]

Agreed. However, he has not even proven that there WAS deception. He only based the deception claim upon the tax records, which in my experience are OFTEN less than accurate. For all we know, what they advertised may be the MORE accurate number.

The house is 7 year old, and the seller is original buyer from builder.

Builder mentioned the square footage of 2178 or close per the plan.
All houses with similar plan are 2160 ( +/- 25 square foot approx).

Other similar house are all in this square foot range, and so should be this
one. All other similar houses have this square footage.

Dont know from where 2332 square foot came in his case, instead of 2178.

This is the main issue.

thanks

[nextwife]

And there are situations in which a builder and his buyer make changes in the plans after construction is commenced (trust me, I see "change orders" on a huge percentage of the construction escrows in process) - bump a wall back, etc., which could result in a bit of a difference in the sq. footage. These do NOT necessarily end up in the tax records all the time.

I bought my place from the original family. The family room/sunroom was decided while still under construction, and the change never seems to have gotten to the assessors office. And I'm in no hurry to tell them!.

If it turns out they are correct and you are wrong, you will have no legal leg to stand on. You never VERIFIED their ACTUAL square footage. You read something and, without using any professional determination that what you read was accurate, used that as an excuse to walk from the deal.

[JETX]

XYZ:
Quit your whining and crying. You may be correct about the square footage issue. Or you may not be. There is simply no way that anyone on this forum can determine whether you are right or wrong.
And next is correct. Tax rolls are not 'gospel'. They can and do have errors. Further, even other claims of floorplans are not necessarily factual either.

I will agree though that there MAY be an issue as to the footage claim and whether it is deceptive or not. And if so, whether it in itself is sufficient to void the contract.
As I have said, now for the THIRD time, go see an attorney.

Your continued debate on this forum is simply NOT going to resolve anything.

[HomeGuru]

Ok, I get it**************************** the writer never used a Realtor or real estate attorney and then contracted too buy a home from a fsbo. And did not bother to verify the SF at the building department and real property tax office prior to making the offer. That's not due diligence. That's doo doo diligence.

Thanks guys.. I think I got initial good information and the next steps.

I will meet with a local real estate attorney and follow up the matter
and see what are options in my case.

Not all of us are so much experienced, this is my first time home buying
experience.

Discussion via this forum has been a great help.

I think it is a great forum to learn about home buying/selling.

Thanks to all who replied... keep up the good work you all.
You all gave your opinions and now I am better informed.

thanks again

[HomeGuru]

Good luck to you and please let us know what your attorney says.