Jonathan J Miller, Columnist

House Rich, Land Poor

The average home in the U.S. is getting bigger, while the average lot size is shrinking.

March 26, 2015 at 4:46 PM UTC

Jonathan Miller writes about the housing economy and other aspects of real estate. He began a real estate blog, the Matrix, in 2005, and has written a column for Curbed.com. He is co-founder of Miller Samuel, a residential real estate appraisal company, and the commercial valuation firm Miller Cicero.

My home is my starter castle.
Photographer: Robert A. Reeder/Washington Post/Getty Images

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The living space in newly built U.S. homes is on a tear: Since 1982, the size of a new single-family house has increased by almost 1,000 square feet -- which was the size of the average U.S. house in 1950.

The rate of increase has been pretty steady except for a few stutter steps during the financial crisis. The reason for the brief decline in square footage was a combination of federal government breaks for first-time buyers and record-low mortgage rates. That drew first-time buyers into the market, pulling down the size of the average new home by 2.3 percent.