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Purchase preparation

A square metre is not always a square metre: reading areas in listings

Two listings, the same building, the same floor, and a ten square metre difference: most often nobody made a mistake, different things are being measured. Whoever knows what is measured compares fairly.

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Three figures for the same space

Official statistics also work with defined areas: the completed-dwellings releases use usable area, precisely because only identically defined figures may be added and compared.1

Listings meanwhile mix living, gross and usable area, with balconies and storage rooms counted one moment and not the next.2

Where the differences arise

Balcony, terrace, storage and common parts enter different definitions with different coefficients, so the same flat legitimately carries several figures.2

The annual market review works with per-square-metre values from records: that figure too has its own area definition, a third one.2,1

How to compare fairly

To compare two flats ask for the same kind of area for both, and when in doubt have the seller say what the figure includes: a tidy listing has that answer ready.2

  • Area definitions in statistics: in the annual dwelling releases.1
  • Per-square-metre values from records: in the annual review.2