False Advertising?

A couple of things:
The tax records do not necessarily reflect the true finished interior size. They measure the foundation and double it for a traditional two-story home.
If you have finished areas over garages it may or may not reflect accurately. The square footage they list will not take into account the finished basement square footage, but will assess an increase because it is finished.

Some states do not allow you to list square footage in any advertising due to the different ways different people will look at the same house. Some will count basements, garages, screened porches, etc. in the square footage.

 

In the interest of complete disclosure, the previous post was made by me, not my wife!!

 

Well the county has on my tax records the exact sq ft that is finished in my basement and it is accurate. It is also accurate on the sq ft for the top two floors. They show the total basement sq footage and also the total finished sq footage. It may not take into account for tax reasons or not but it is there in the records.

In every single floor plan around here there is finished area over every garage. I would seriously doubt that they would do it that way as I believe it is county inspectors that give the tax people the measurements for the tax adjusters to base their assements on. That's why a lot of people don't get county permits to finish basements so the inspectors don't report the new sq footage for assement reasons. Just looking at the tax records they are way to accurate. They know the exact sq footage of the garage, my deck, my finished and unfinished portions of my basement, and some areas I'm not sure what they are cause I don't know what their abreviations mean. I believe they are adding in the finished area over the garage in one of the boxes.