Average Home Sizes in Washington D.C., Atlanta Twice As Much as in New York

An updated version of this study, completed in September 2016, is now available here.

For many the ‘center of the universe’, New York with its world-class restaurants, museums, fashion, and art is a place lots of people are willing to pay a fortune to call home.  Despite the stratospheric prices New Yorkers pay for their homes, especially in Manhattan, there is a downside – less than generous living spaces.

While it’s no secret that average homes in New York tend to be smaller than in other large cities in the U.S., we went a step further and compiled a list of 20 major US cities by average home size. Somewhat unsurprisingly New York City is at the bottom of the list.

The average home in New York City (all the five boroughs) is 1,124 square feet, which places the Big Apple at the bottom of the list of 20 cities in the U.S. Home owners in Washington D.C. and Atlanta enjoy almost twice as much space as New Yorkers. Californians don’t have it bad either, as an average home in Los Angeles boasts no less than 1,895 square feet.

And talking about Californians, home owners in posh areas like Beverly Hills and Malibu are in a league of their own when it comes to home sizes (and prices!). An average home in Beverly Hills is 3,884 square feet, more than twice the size of one in the City of Los Angeles, while a home in Malibu is on average 2,998 square feet.

The same can not be said about New York – while a home in Manhattan, New York’s most expensive borough, costs twice as much as one in Brooklyn and almost four times more than one in the Bronx, the average home size in Manhattan (1,226 square foot) is not significantly larger than the average in the outer boroughs.

Note: For the purpose of this report, a home is defined as a single-unit residential property (single-family home, co-op or condominium). In the case of Chicago, there’s no public information about the square footage of condo apartments. To overcome this issue we have used an estimate based on the apartments that are currently for sale in the city.