International Property Measurement Standards

The International Property Measurement Standards, or IPMS, are a set of standards for measuring buildings the same way in every country. They are published by the International Property Measurement Standards Coalition, a group of professional and nonprofit organizations that first met in May 2013.

The coalition started with a standard for offices and then moved on to other building types. The goal is to let an investor or lender compare a building in one country with a building in another without the measurements meaning different things.

American home appraisals do not use IPMS. For single-family houses in the United States, ANSI Z765 is the standard, and it is the one Fannie Mae requires.

Further reading: International Property Measurement Standards on Wikipedia.