Might seem like a no-brainer, but always verify house size!

[Crystal Em]

Hey guys, I just wanted to remind everyone to make sure to independently confirm the square footage of any potential property against county or municipal records. Don't rely on the seller or what's in the listing.

Yes, it seems like a no-brainer, but when you are new to investing and trying hard to snag your first "deal", things can fall through the cracks.

We nearly purchased a property that was listed "per seller" as being 2570 sq ft. We could see on the walkthrough that it needed a LOT of work. Everything from the roof to the foundation would need to be touched.

But with the potential price/sq ft possible in that neighborhood, we could still make some good money even with all the repairs it needed.

It was pure, dumb coincidence that the house happened to be only 100 sq ft smaller than our own home, and had the same number of beds and baths.

We have a den (about 100 sq ft in size), and the property didn't, so I was able to make a mental 1:1 comparison between the other rooms in our home and those of the property and realized that every bathroom, hallway, closet, etc in the property was markedly smaller.

It was then I got the bright idea to actually confirm the size of the property on our county appraisal district website and saw that the county had the property at only 2065 sq ft!

If not for the fact that we happened to live in a house of nearly the same size, I don't know that I would have even thought to confirm the size. We were ready to go forward with a project that we would never have made money on without that "extra" 500 sq ft. We might have lost thousands, all because of a lack of basic due diligence!