[originally posted: 4/4/2017]
It baffles me why house listings don’t include a floor plan. The realtor already has the room dimensions, but layouts can be difficult to imagine. Outside of apartment complexes, even most rental properties lack this detail that could make quite a difference.
And why not? I can’t think of a way that a floor plan would make a negative impression that wouldn’t otherwise be obvious as soon as one stepped through the door during an open house. Hmm, even security concerns don’t seem that significant from a simple sketch. Even if the current homeowner wasn’t a fan of having that information available to rando’s on the internet, perhaps listings could have a ‘privileged access’ level for those prospective buyers actively working with an agent. And 3-D model strategically integrated with images and video clips could be an inspiring way to highlight unique characteristics and captivating views. God, I can think of so many ways that even a dump could be creatively depicted to embody whatever enchanting adjectives have been used to describe it (quaint, cozy, must-see…)
Perhaps the housing market is doing well enough as is that none of this extra razzle-dazzle is necessary or worth the additional effort. Outside of the footnote sketch that an appraiser may jot down in their report, I doubt that many homeowners have any sort of detailed account of the measurements of the space they live in. Heck, you don’t need to be a homeowner to find value in having this type of information readily accessible.
Let’s say you are painting a room and don’t know how much you need for the square footage of the walls or see a piece of furniture you like but aren’t sure if it would fit. It doesn’t seem overwhelming pertinent to have this data on hand and it would make sense that before undergoing such a project or purchase, you would have made note of what you needed, but there are many such moments when this is indeed the case. Yard sales, clearanced items at home improvement stores, that super cute/cool novelty piece that just has to fit because it is perfect and what you’ve always longed for but just didn’t know it yet.
This doesn’t only pertain to the physical borders of our homes, but is also relevant to proportion larger items like beds, couches, tables, and how much space exists between those and the walls around it or to the ceiling above. Also yards, the size of flower beds, room in the garage. We inventory the value of our possessions, but how many people inventory the dimensions of their furniture? When I was a kid, I cut out pieces of paper to scale with the footprints of my dresser, bookshelf, bed, and desk and I would play around with the different ways I could re-arrange my room in relation to the the window as well as the bedroom and closet doors. It’s been a while since I’ve last feng-shui’d my living space, but it’s always seemed like a fundamental necessity to be able to reference that kind of information, particularly remotely.
My last thought on this topic is from some B-rated sci fi space movie, of which only fragments remain in my memory. I have conducted several failed google searches to try to find the exact movie this is from so I can explain it better or maybe just to confirm that I didn’t make this up, not that it even matters, but anyway, the part of the movie I remember involved a member of the crew getting lost and when the other astronauts went to find him, they discover these underground tunnels. They have this flying ball thing that jets through the tunnels and emits a sound wave or radar or equivalent fancy sounding scientific explanation to how it maps out in minutes where the tunnels lead, how long each passageway is, and reads back all the measurements to build a model of everything in them. How ultimately cool would it to have that, even if it were a stationary device, to plot everything out in a given space and upload it automatically to modeling software? Cell phone sonar scene from Dark Knight…I forgot about that one.
[Edit] I found the scene!! It’s from Prometheus: