How Important are Floor Plans?

One thing we provide to all our listing clients is an electronic floor plan of their house. The floor plan is then used to market the house along with photographs, a video walkthrough and textual description, usually incorporated into a virtual tour. Why do we include a floor plan in our listings? Because of its importance to prospective buyers. Recent research by Rightmove,
a property portal serving the United Kingdom, revealed that 1/3rd of buyers were less likely to inquire about a property that did not include a floor plan. The survey further indicated that a floor plan was the second most desired feature in a listing. Having a large number of images of the property was the most desired feature. A survey performed in 2011 by Homegain bears these findings out. The survey showed that Home Buyers rated room sizes and floor plans the 3rd and 4th most important features in listings that they viewed. First and second in importance were having a wide selection of photographs and showing the location of the property on a map.

The Rightmove research indicated that prospective buyers want to know the configuration of rooms in a house and to understand the flow of the property. Having room dimensions on the floor plan was deemed the most important feature. Buyers felt that floor plans were more definitive than photographs which could be deceptive. The Homegain survey indicated that use of a 2 dimensional floor plan with associated photographs was preferred over 3D and interactive floor plans--these allow one to drag and drop furniture into rooms,etc.

Beyond their importance to buyers, floor plans provide other benefits. For example, they can be sent to vendors of various kinds such as Home Depot as an aid to determining the amount of remodeling supplies of various kinds such as lumber, tile and paint that will be required to complete prospective projects. Designers and contractors can modify plans interactively to consider 'what if' scenarios such as removing walls, adding rooms, adding doors and windows, etc.

Below are images from a 2D floor plan I created from a real property. These were created using Magicplan, an application for the Ipad and smart phones that uses the camera on the device to quickly create a plan. Such plans are useful on their own but much more powerful as a sales tool when associated with specific images from the property. It's a relatively simple matter to associate a given floor plan with relevant images within a virtual tour such that the images and floor plan are displayed side-by-side. But that's a blog entry for another day.