In the old days — say, 2019 — the size of a million-dollar home made sense, especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. It was a spacious 4,824 square feet single-family with at least four bedrooms and five bathrooms, perhaps 16 years old.
Today, a single-family, million-dollar home is now 20 percent smaller at a median of 3,818 square feet, according to a new report from Zillow.
Of course, valuations are not as hot as a few months ago, before the market somewhat cooled (check your Zestimate). It’s also a sign of the latest economic catchword, Shrinkflation, which we usually run into when we buy groceries these days.
In Zillow’s study, million-dollar homes are defined as single-family homes that sold between $950,000 and $1,050,000.
D-FW experienced the fourth-largest fall in million-dollar home square footage, according to the report. Phoenix, Nashville, and Philadelphia had larger decreases. Nationally, home sizes shrunk by less than 300 square feet.
Bathrooms were the biggest casualty of the square footage loss. Denver and Minneapolis lost the equivalent of a bathroom and a half in their million-dollar homes.
Rising home values saw the number of homes that sold at $1 million or more from 43,421 in the second quarter of 2019 to an all-time high of 90,110 in 2022.
In D-FW, the number of $1 million-plus home sales rose 174 percent. In Austin, the number was 220 percent, just behind Portland, Ore. Houston saw a 106 percent increase.
“Buyers with seven-figure budgets shopping for homes during the pandemic were doing so coming off the longest period of economic growth in U.S. history and with the help of historically low-interest rates,” Anushna Prakash, economic data analyst at Zillow, said in the report.
“Sales for expensive homes soared while buyers in the heat of competition accepted smaller layouts.”
What is Zillow? Zillow and its affiliates offer their customers an on-demand experience for selling, buying, renting, and financing their homes. It’s also a nationwide apartment search website and a part of Yardi Matrix.
Report review: Zillow knows how to crunch the data. The study is presented in easy-to-read static and dynamic charts. It’s a five-bunny rabbit hole. 🐇 🐇 🐇 🐇 🐇
