ST. LOUIS — Over the past three years, sales of homes costing at least $1 million more than doubled, but buyers in that price range – with exceptions in a couple of major cities – are getting less square footage for their investment, according to an analysis by real estate website Zillow.
Homes selling at or near $1 million shrank nearly 500 square feet, from a high of 3,021 square feet in mid-2020 to a low of 2,530 square feet in early 2022, according to floor plan data for Zillow listings nationwide, according to the company.
However, at the end of June this year, million-dollar home size bounced back and is now 2,624 square feet, still down 397 square feet from the peak in 2020, according to Zillow (Nasdaq: ZG).
Nearly every major metro area saw the typical million-dollar-range home shrink between pre-pandemic 2019 and 2022, the company said. New listings haven't been able to keep pace with demand during the pandemic, with fewer homes listed for around $1 million, forcing buyers to settle for smaller homes.
Bathrooms took the biggest hit from the square-footage loss, according to Zillow, with only four of the analyzed metros maintaining the same number of bathrooms in million-dollar homes sold in the second quarter compared with 2019.
Phoenix and Nashville saw the biggest declines in square footage, losing 1,116 square feet and 1,019 square feet in $1 million and up homes from 2019 to 2022.
Only two major metros saw floor plans grow in million-dollar homes: St. Louis, up by 406 square feet or "a room and a half," according to Zillow; and Minneapolis, up by 36 square feet, or "a closet."
In St. Louis, about $1 million in the second quarter would buy a 4,108-square-foot home with four bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms, at about $243 per square foot.
That compares with the the most expensive among the major metros: the San Jose area, where for $715 per square foot, you could buy a three-bedroom, two-bath home of just under 1,400 square feet.
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