How Do You Calculate Square Footage for Your Property?

Use basic calculations to figure square footage.

Real estate, especially commercial real estate, is all about square footage. Square footage is often the most important consideration for buyers or renters. It is also an important consideration for home improvement projects such as painting or gardening. Determining the square footage for your property comes down to some basic geometry.

Instructions

1. Verify your property lines. You may need to go to the county courthouse to verify the property line's location. Lot dimensions should have been a part of your mortgage package, and your property may have been recently surveyed.

2. Measure the length of the property. You can walk off the area or use ruler tape. Let's say, for this example, that your property has a length of 50 feet.

3. Measure the width of the property. Let's say the width of your property is 100 feet.

4. 

   Calculate square footage with simple multiplication.

   Multiply the length by the width for the total square footage. The answer is: 100 feet x 50 feet = 5,000 square feet

5. 

   Use squares, rectangles and triangles to figure oddly shaped properties.

   Use geometry for property that is hard to measure. All property can be broken down into rectangles, squares, and triangles. Calculating the square footage for rectangles and squares is the same as what is described in Step 4---multiply the length by the width. For triangles, the square footage can be found by dividing this shape by 2. To get the total square footage, add all the shape sizes together.

Tips & Warnings

• There are 43,560 square feet in one acre.

References

• Demesne: Calculate Footage