Do Floor Plans Help Sell Property? Tracing the Statistics

Last updated: 23 August 2026

Yes — but almost every statistic you have read about it comes from a single source: a Rightmove survey of more than 10,000 respondents, published in 2013. That original found properties with a floor plan received up to 30% more interest, that 1 in 5 buyers would ignore a listing without one, and that 1 in 10 would never book a viewing without seeing one first. The larger figures now circulating — "52% more click-throughs", "7.5× more views than maps" — appear in vendor marketing but not in the study they are attributed to.

We followed the citation chain because we wanted to use these numbers ourselves. This page is what we found.

The original study, and what it actually said

The key finding of this page is that there is essentially one primary source behind the entire "floor plans sell homes" literature, and it is thirteen years old.

Rightmove — the dominant UK property portal — surveyed over 10,000 respondents and published the results in 2013. Its reported findings:

Finding	Figure
Properties with a floor plan received more interest	Up to 30% more
Buyers who would ignore a listing with no floor plan, or only revisit it if nothing else appealed	1 in 5
Buyers who would never arrange a viewing without seeing a floor plan first	1 in 10
Sellers rating a floor plan's importance at 7/10 or higher	78%
Respondents who would not instruct an agent that did not provide a floor plan	More than half

Source: Rightmove floor plan study, 2013, reported via Metropix and The Plan Portal.

In short: the direction of the finding is strong and consistent. It is the precision that has degraded in retelling.

How the numbers grew

Search for floor plan statistics today and you will meet a different, larger set of figures — most often "64% of buyers want to see a floor plan", "listings with floor plans get 52% more click-throughs", "floor plans are viewed 7.5 times more often than maps", and "a floor plan halves time on market".

These appear on CubiCasa, BoxBrownie, and across the real-estate-photography industry, usually attributed to Rightmove and usually without a link to anything.

Two things are worth noticing.

First, every one of those pages sells floor plan services. CubiCasa sells floor plan capture. BoxBrownie sells floor plan production. RoomSketcher sells floor plan software. So do we — that is the honest disclosure this page owes you. Everyone quoting these numbers has a commercial interest in them being large, and none of that makes them false, but it does mean nobody in the chain has an incentive to check.

Second, the figures do not match the original. "Up to 30% more interest" became "52% more click-throughs" somewhere along the way, and we could not find the study where that happened. The "time on market reduced by 50%" claim is the weakest of the set: we found no primary source for it at all.

The key difference is between a finding and its echo. A 2013 survey of 10,000 people is real evidence. A number in a sales page citing "Rightmove" with no link is an echo, and echoes get louder.

What you can safely conclude

The bottom line, stated at the confidence the evidence supports:

Floor plans measurably increase engagement with a listing. This is well-supported and was true across every source we checked. Treat "up to 30% more interest" as the defensible figure.
A meaningful minority of buyers treat a missing floor plan as a reason to skip a listing. 1 in 5 disengaging and 1 in 10 refusing a viewing are the original's numbers, and they are the most actionable findings in it.
Sellers expect one. More than half said they would not instruct an agent who did not provide a floor plan. For an agent, that reframes the whole question: the floor plan is not only a marketing asset for the property, it is a credibility signal at the point of winning the instruction.
The precise conversion figures are unverified. Use them if you like, but attribute them to the vendor page you got them from, not to Rightmove.
The evidence base needs refreshing. The buying process has moved to mobile, to video and to virtual tours since 2013. No one appears to have re-run this study, and that is a genuine gap in the industry's knowledge rather than a rhetorical flourish.

What buyers actually want on the plan

The 2013 study asked, and the answer was specific: buyers want room dimensions, and they want to understand where rooms sit in relation to each other — the flow of the property, not just its inventory.

That is a lower bar than the industry often implies. It means the useful floor plan is:

Dimensioned. Every room labelled with its measurements. A plan without numbers answers half the question.
Complete. Every floor, including the ones people skip.
Oriented. A north point, and ideally which way the garden faces.
Legible on a phone. Most listing traffic is mobile, and a plan that needs pinch-zooming to read a room label is a plan that does not get read.

In short: a clear, dimensioned, mobile-legible plan does the job. A photorealistic 3D render is a different product solving a different problem.

What it costs to produce one

There are three routes, and the right one depends entirely on volume.

Route	Roughly what it costs	Suits
Commission per property	A per-plan fee from a floor plan service	Low volume, or where a photographer already attends
Capture app with a scan	A per-plan or subscription fee	Field work, agents who measure themselves
Draw it yourself in software	Free to a one-off licence	Agents already visiting and measuring

Drawing it yourself is only cheaper if measuring is already part of the visit. If it is, the marginal cost of a floor plan is the twenty minutes it takes to enter the measurements you already have — see how to draw a floor plan for the method, and free floor plan software for Mac for the tools.

One caution that applies to every route. A floor plan on a listing is a representation to a buyer, and in most jurisdictions a materially wrong area or dimension is a misdescription with real consequences — in the UK, under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations; in France, a surface Carrez figure must come from a qualified professional. Software draws what you type. It does not make you a surveyor, and no floor plan tool should tell you otherwise.

Frequently asked questions

Do floor plans really help sell a house? Yes. Rightmove's 2013 survey of over 10,000 respondents found that properties with a floor plan received up to 30% more interest, and that 1 in 5 buyers would ignore or deprioritise a listing without one. The direction of the finding is consistent across every source, though the larger figures now circulating are not traceable to the original study.

What percentage of buyers want to see a floor plan? The most-quoted figure is 64%, which appears widely in floor plan industry marketing but which we could not trace to a primary source. What the Rightmove 2013 study did establish is that 1 in 5 buyers would disengage from a listing without a floor plan and 1 in 10 would refuse a viewing outright.

Are floor plans a legal requirement on a property listing? No. In the UK, France and the US, a floor plan is optional on a listing — unlike an EPC or energy certificate, which is mandatory in the UK and the EU. But if you publish one, it must not mislead: a materially inaccurate plan can amount to a misdescription.

Can an agent draw their own floor plans? Yes, and many do. It is economical where the agent is already visiting to photograph and measure. The two requirements are that the measurements are taken properly and that the published plan does not overstate the property. A stated area that a buyer's survey later contradicts is a problem regardless of who drew it.

Is a 3D floor plan better than a 2D one? For the purpose the evidence supports — helping a buyer understand the layout and the flow — a clear dimensioned 2D plan does the work. 3D renders sell the feeling of a space and photograph well in a brochure, but no study we found shows them outperforming a 2D plan on engagement. The key takeaway: get the 2D plan right first; 3D is an addition, not an upgrade.

Methodology and disclosure

We searched for primary sources behind the commonly cited floor plan statistics on 23 August 2026, following each citation as far back as it went. Where a figure could not be traced past a vendor page, this article says so rather than repeating it.

Disclosure: we make Arti, a floor plan editor. We are one of the companies with a commercial interest in these numbers being large, which is exactly why we checked them.

If you know of a more recent study, or the source of the 52% and 64% figures, we would genuinely like to see it — contact@artiplans.com. We will update this page and credit you.