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House-maps.com photo
STANDARD PRACTICE: John Ovrebo and his company, House-Maps.com, are
in the forefront of technological advances in property measurements.
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By Andrea Estrada
South Coast Beacon
John Ovrebo has taken
some of the guesswork out of furniture arranging with House-Maps.com,
his new service that provides detailed as-built floor plans and area calculations
for residential and commercial properties. His clients include real estate
agents who want to provide potential home buyers with as detailed information
as possible on the footprints and room dimensions of properties they represent
and home owners who want to document the contents layout of their homes
for insurance and other purposes.
“My background is as a high-tech machine designer,” said Ovrebo.
“My father was a realtor and I often did measuring of properties
for him. Over the years I turned it into a more formal business.”
Although he has provided the service on and off for the last 25 years,
only within the last half-decade have technological advancements made
it a viable business proposition.
“I’ve been playing with the idea since the mid-’70s but
it’s only within the last five years that technology has caught up
... and made it work in such a way that it can happen quickly and spread
(via the Internet) to other people quickly,” Ovrebo said.
Similarly, until recently no national consensus existed for measuring
homes and commercial buildings, and architects, builders, real estate
agents, lenders and appraisers used a variety of methods to estimate residential
floor area. In the commercial real estate industry, where square-footage
is purchased or leased based on square-foot units, standards of measurement
date back to the early 1900s.
In 1996, however, the American National Standards Institute adopted a
standard for measuring single-family residential buildings, which Ovrebo
uses to ensure accuracy and consistency. He also uses special software
designed for architects and engineers.
“ANSI standards came into effect a while ago,” Ovrebo said.
“It’s an industry standard that not very many people know about.
ANSI covers a wide variety of standards for machinery.”
To create a house map, Ovrebo takes property measurements, draws a preliminary
floor plan and then uses his design acumen to produce the detailed picture.
He also builds a Web site for the property, which can include photographs,
a flow plan and even icons that provide pop-up information about the property
or its contents.
“People who understand the value just love it and latch onto it,”
said Ovrebo. “The realtors send (house maps) out to other listing
agents. It gives them instant access to all the information they need
visually. Most brochures and even Web sites consist of pictures and a
ton of text. Most people are visual. They don’t want to sit and read,
read, read.”
Ovrebo keeps his interactive sites as simple as possible.
“You can see the layout and imagine yourself in it. It’s more
personal because you’re actually getting into the house or whatever
the property is.”
After all, he quipped, referring to the Web sites he creates, “a
picture is worth a thousand words.”
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