this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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is there any source on this? Especially it being smaller. Because a lot of single-family houses (especially rural) more than a century ago very really big, because they were essentially small farms.
Drive through older neighborhoods and look for yourself. Also you can look up real estate property info on most county websites in the US. They'll tell you square feet and also the year built. Builders these days don't build reasonably sized homes unfortunately. I wonder if cities don't want them because it'll attract lower income folks. As for multi generations in the same home, I recently had a subscription to Ancestry.com and could see all the people living in one house as was recorded in the census data. Families had more kids too.
The economies of scale of setting up a job site, lining up all the contractors' schedules, getting all the materials and equipment in place, plus the paperwork of permitting, inspections, etc., mean that each additional square foot/meter of space is much, much cheaper than the first. That just naturally pushes towards bigger single family homes.
Multifamily is different, though, which is why many multifamily buildings gravitate towards 1- or 2-bedroom units.
A lot of those rural homes had an addition with each generation. Most families lived in 1200sq ft or less. The average size of a home has risen pretty dramatically.
Of course back then home only needed to be a place to sleep and eat and bathe. The rest of your life happened outside the home