Same when people use freedom units in general
I’ve spent a lot of time working at farmers markets and so have spent a lot of time both under a 10x10 foot canopy (EZ Up) tent and looking at long rows of the same. So I imagine both square footage and distance in feet in terms of how many EZ Ups.
A 5000 sq ft house is 50 EZ Ups. A 700 sq ft apartment is 7 EZ Ups. A 100 ft yacht of 10 EZ Ups long.
The other problem is that real estate footage isn’t well correlated to the actual number of square feet in the room. The advertised number is anywhere from 20% to 50% higher than the actual depending on the location and realtor.
There was a couple of years ago a real estate agency in Paris that would advertise a minuscule 1 bedroom apartment, wrote it has 24m² floor surface, in the description said it “feels like” 16m² (it was legally 12m² with a ladder to an attic where you cannot stand upright).
It isn’t technically, but very few people get prosecuted for it, so they do it anyway.
That was actually one of the fraud charges brought against trump in the NY lawsuit.
Relying on objectively false numbers to calculate property values. For example, Mr. Trump’s own triplex apartment in Trump Tower was valued as being 30,000 square feet when it was 10,996 square feet. As a result, in 2015 the apartment was valued at $327 million in total, or $29,738 per square foot. That price was absurd given the fact that at that point only one apartment in New York City had ever sold for even $100 million, at a price per square foot of less than $10,000. And that sale was in a newly built, ultra-tall tower. In 30 year-old Trump Tower, the record sale as of 2015 was a mere $16.5 million at a price of less than $4,500 per square foot.
I.15.a of this document
Best way I know of is to learn what square footage a couple houses/buildings you spend time in are, and then compare to that. “OH okay so this is like 300 sq ft bigger than my place” or whatever.
I’m having to estimate jobs based on square footage (electrician) so that’s how I’ve been getting a handle on it anyway.
When I was a kid reading detective stories and the like, I was always baffled by how witnesses interviewed by the police could describe the suspect as e. g. around 6’ 5" - until I realized people use their own height as reference and it’s much easier to judge the smaller, relative difference.
I guess that works for apartment sizes / area as well.