Look up the floor area of a home
For virtually every home in the Netherlands the usable floor area is officially registered, and you can look it up for free. Below is how, and why that figure sometimes differs from the square metres an estate agent quotes.
Where is the floor area of a home recorded?
The floor area of virtually every home in the Netherlands sits in the Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen, the BAG for short. Municipalities maintain that register and the data is public: you can look up the usable floor area of an address for free, without an account and without cost.
The figure you find is formally the usable floor area of the dwelling unit, expressed in whole square metres. A dwelling unit is the smallest independently usable space with its own entrance, so a single-family home or an apartment. For a home, that usable floor area corresponds in practice to what people call the living area.
Alongside the floor area you will find, in the BAG, the construction year of the building at the same address, its use (residential, office, and so on) and the status of the object. That last one is more useful than it sounds: the building status tells you whether construction has started, whether the building is in use or already demolished, and the dwelling-unit status tells you whether it is in or out of use.
How to look up the floor area
Three steps, no account needed, works for every address in the Netherlands.
Find the address
Enter street, house number and town in a BAG viewer. If the building has additions such as a house letter or apartment number, pick the right dwelling unit: each apartment has its own floor area.
Read the usable floor area
At the dwelling unit you will find the area in square metres, together with construction year, use and status. That is the officially registered figure.
Sanity-check it
If it deviates sharply from what you expect, look at the construction year and whether a permit was granted recently. An extension not yet processed explains most differences.
Calculating floor area yourself
If you would rather measure than trust the register, you follow the measurement instruction based on NEN 2580. You measure per storey, from the inside of the exterior walls. Load-bearing internal walls, shafts, stairwells and voids larger than four square metres come back off.
The rule that causes the most argument is the height requirement: floor area where the ceiling sits below 1.5 metres does not count. Under a sloped roof you only measure the part you can stand upright in. That is exactly why an attic room in a 1930s house comes out much smaller on paper than it feels.
What counts, and what does not?
- Living room, kitchen, bedrooms and bathroom
- Hallway, landing and internal stairs (counted per storey)
- Attic with a fixed staircase, at least 2 metres high over at least 4 m²
- Cellar accessible from inside the home
- Integrated conservatory that is insulated and heated
- Garage, even when attached to the house
- Detached shed, storage or external storage space
- Balcony, roof terrace and garden
- Attic reachable only by a loft ladder (does count in the BAG)
- Anything under 1.5 metres of ceiling height
Those last two categories explain nearly every gap between what a seller quotes and what a measurement produces. Garages and storage fall under other internal space or external storage, and are listed separately rather than added to the living area.
Why does the BAG differ from what the agent says?
This is the most common question about floor area. The answer: the BAG and the estate agent measure under the same standard, NEN 2580, but they report a different figure. The BAG records one total per dwelling unit, namely the usable living area plus other internal space. The agent follows the floor-area measurement instruction for homes and puts only the usable living area on Funda. That is why the BAG figure often comes out slightly higher.
The difference sits mainly in internal storage, internal garages and attics. An attic reachable only by a loft ladder, or nowhere 2 metres high, does not count as living area under the measurement instruction but as other internal space. In the BAG that space simply counts toward the total, as long as it is reachable from inside. What counts under neither: a detached garage, external storage and building-attached outdoor space such as a balcony. Space with a net height below 1.50 metres counts under neither, which is a rule from NEN 2580 itself. Differences of a few square metres are normal, larger gaps often point to a renovation that has not been processed yet.
BAG usable floor area
- Official register maintained by the municipality
- Free and public per address
- Nationally uniform and comparable
- Counts internal storage and attics toward the total
Living area under the measurement instruction
- Industry standard for estate agents
- Determined by an on-site measurement
- What appears on Funda as living area
- Reports only the usable living area
From one address to every address
A viewer answers the question how big is this house. A real estate professional's question is usually which buildings match my criteria.
Filter on floor area
Select in one go every home above or below a given number of square metres, within a municipality, district or an area you draw yourself.
Combine with other attributes
Floor area together with construction year, use, energy label and WOZ value. That is how you find, say, large pre-war buildings with a poor label.
Spot splitting potential
Buildings with a floor area that lends itself to splitting, combined with what the local environment plan permits.
Export your selection
Take the objects you found into your own analysis or file, with the provenance of every data point attached.
Frequently asked questions about looking up floor area
Can I look up the floor area of a home for free?
Is the BAG area the same as the living area on Funda?
Which figure is legally leading?
The floor area in the BAG is wrong, what now?
Can I look up the floor area of a commercial building too?
Why does my apartment have a different area than my neighbour's?
Search on attributes, not addresses
Floor area, construction year, use and energy label combined across the Netherlands, with a selection you can export.