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This might seem to be a drastically different stance from my last post on the dangers of being overly emotional when it comes to property investment, however, I come into contact with a broad spectrum of investors, buyers, sellers, and tenants in my line of work. My purpose is to provide a balanced commentary, and to help moderate potentially self-harming behaviours I come across.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, real estate, particularly residential property, is a very unique asset class. Even for brand new units direct from developers, units with exactly the same floor plan will have a slightly different view by virtue of the fact that 2 units cannot possibly occupy the exact same airspace, thus the views, elevation and orientation will be at least marginally if not drastically different.

I believe this is also why real estate contracts are one of the areas where specific performance can be ordered by the courts. I suppose it is recognised that sometimes monetary compensation simply cannot replace the enjoyment one obtains from owning a particular property.

If even homes with exactly the same layout can have nuances of difference, then is not rather artificial to compare homes on a per square foot basis? I can safely vouch by the sheer number of times I have people asking me, “what’s the floor size for this place, ah?”, that the average human being is unable to accurately gauge the floor area of a home. So why do we dwell so much upon this magic ratio of price to floor area?

I suppose it is difficult to quantify how pleasant or livable a space is in a strictly scientific manner. The pleasure one can potentially derive from a well-designed, ideally-located home is in fact priceless! But a good way to gauge the “homeliness” value of a property is how much a potential tenant is willing to pay to live in it. The irony is that transient tenants looking to stay in a home for a 2-3 year time line are, I think, a lot more focused on the value of a good home, whereas home buyers tend to get overly distracted by comparisons of numbers and ratios that may have little effect on the ultimate enjoyment of their homes.