I have been trying for over 10 years now to get the local Real Estate Board here in Miami-Dade County to require our Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to have a uniform source for the square footage figures quoted online for listings. To date, they have not done this. So, beware, the square footage shown on realtor's listings may or may not be accurate. Here is a copy of my latest letter to our local real estate board which defines the problem and how it adversely affects the public.
February 3, 2009
Dear MLS Board of Directors,
I am hoping you can help me solve the long-standing problem of deceptive square footage quotes on our MLS system and, if not, perhaps you can direct me to someone who can.
Today is the 10 year anniversary of my quest to have our MLS require all MLS users to use one, authenticated source for the square footage quoted on listings published on MLS yet today, as per usual, a random sampling of several listings on MLS still shows that square footage of listings on MLS can be just about anything the listing agent decides to put in there. This has been the case for many years now and really needs to be corrected. Obviously, without one, agreed upon standard for the source, accuracy and authenticity of square footage figures on MLS our Real Estate Boards continue to fail, with impunity, in their legal duty to protect the public from dishonest real estate practices and I am still requesting that something be done about it soon. Too many realtors are getting away with "puffing up" their square footage on their listings on MLS which throws off all the computations we make on our CMAs and is a huge disservice to the honest realtors who refuse to puff their square footage and whose listings are then rejected by the buyers in favor of the ones with the faked, bigger square footage.
Right now MLS square footage for properties shown in the computer field marked LA: which stands for SqFt Liv Area and from which all our CMA's draw their SQ. FT. data, is auto populated from a feed from the Miami Dade County Tax Assessor but can be manually altered using many possible other sources such as; other public records data bases, an architect's rendering, an appraisal, a builder's spec sheet, a survey, an owner's opinion or a realtor's imagination. There is also no requirement for MLS users to identify the source from which the square footage comes when it has been changed from the auto-populated figure. Some realtors identify the source of the altered square footage in the comments section and some don't. Some diligently upload the document as an attachment on MLS (ideal!). Some realtors identify the source of the altered data but do not have a copy of the document from which they are quoting available to others who wish to check it. And since all of the above sources of square footage figures use completely different methodologies of calculating square footage using MLS square footage figures for "comps" is totally useless and all CMA estimates of value, routinely disseminated to the public upon request, are bogus. All of this is totally unacceptable, unprofessional, completely misleading and easily correctable.
Since the number one thing people want to know, prior to making an offer on a property, is what they are paying on a cost per square foot basis and how that compares to other recent sales, on a cost per square foot basis, realtors have a legal duty to make a reasonable effort to have a competent system in place to facilitate client requests for "comps". When the public asks members of the realtor community for "comps" the realtors have a duty to at least attempt to provide accurate data. While realtors cannot be expected to guarantee the accuracy of all square footage data they acquire from the public records they should not be allowed to knowingly disseminate data to the public which will be relied upon by the public to make important financial decisions that the realtors know may be flawed because there are no standards in place to insure its accuracy. This an open invitation for a class action lawsuit from members of the public who relied upon realtor CMAs to their detriment.
Another problem is that Realtors who choose to overstate the square footage of their listings in the MLS gain an unfair advantage over the honest realtor who declines to engage in such deception. Sellers who hire honest realtors may lose money as their listings do not compare as well to the listings of dishonest realtors who make their listings seem like better deals on a cost per square foot basis by inflating the square footage figures.
Charlette Seidel, manager of Coldwell Banker's Coral Gables office at 1501 Sunset, and I have offered solutions to this problem for the last 10 years, over and over again yet our real estate boards have never acted to fix this problem. Coldwell Banker has a policy that requires a listing agent to have, on hand, proof of square footage claims if they deviate from the public records figures. But we have no control over all the other non-Coldwell Banker realtors who input listings on MLS and whose often flawed data we must rely upon for CMAs which the public demands.
We have suggested, over and over again, that MLS go back to their previous system of blocking any changes on the one computer field that shows adjusted sq. footage which is drawn from the Miami-Dade Public Records and which is used in our CMAs to produce "comps". Obviously, this is not a perfect solution as the public records can be wrong but if the listing agent has an authenticated document that can be posted as an attachment on MLS which authoritatively shows different square footage, calculated using Public Records methodology, then that document can be referred to in the comments section. But, adhering to a strict policy of requiring the square footage quotes in MLS to all come from exactly the same authoritative source is an absolute statistics 101 must. Allowing realtors to post an attachment on MLS claiming different square footage allows for gross errors in the public records. Owners can also lobby the public records to correct their square footage figures. This way realtors and the public will be able to compare apples to apples when they use MLS data to compare properties and not be deceived by the occasional dishonest watermelon thrown in there.
Please let me know how we can go about correcting this problem. I realize that you are not a working realtor out in the field dealing with these issues on a day to day basis and so may not really have insight into how adversely this affects our business and I would be glad to sit down with you and show you specific examples of these problems and explain more fully how and why this really is such a serious and time consuming problem for all us realtors working out here in the trenches.
The market is so difficult right now and with the public really soured on real estate in general we really need to try everything we can to restore the public's confidence in the real estate industry. Having no standards whatsoever that MLS users must adhere to for the square footage we quote on our listings to the public is just absurd and I feel like an idiot having to admit that to my clients. Correcting this problem would go a long way toward trying to build up confidence again in our industry. After 10 years of asking for this to get fixed I don't hold out much hope but, hope springs eternal, right?
Thanks, Laura Mullaney
