House size sets new record high

Last week The Wall Street Journal reported that the median size of new homes built last year hit a new record high of 2,415 square feet. See: U.S. New-Home Sizes Set Record Last Year

So, how does that number compare to the median new home size here in the Reno-Sparks market? To find out I pulled all house sales from 2014 and then filtered on only those that were constructed in 2014.

The Reno-Sparks housing market saw 5,968 site/stick built homes sold in 2014. The median size of these sold homes was 1,815 square feet. [Incidentally these sales ranged from 532sf to 9,100sf.] The vast majority of these sales were re-sales; so next I filtered those homes built in 2014.

There were 290 new homes sold and entered into our MLS in 2014. These homes comprised the data set for my analysis. These 290 new home sales ranged in size from 1,276sf to 5,072sf, and exhibited a median size of 2,164sf.

So it seems the median new home size for the Reno-Sparks market is 10 percent smaller than the median new home size nationally.

[I wonder how the size of our garages compare though. 😉 ]