Are Million-Dollar Homes Shrinking?

After years of record home price appreciation, the average $1 million home today has a much smaller footprint, fewer bathrooms, and is older than the million-dollar homes of 2019, Zillow reports. The median square footage of a million-dollar home in the second quarter of 2019 was 2,900 square feet, and by the end of June 2022, the median square footage of a home with a $1 million price tag was down to 2,624 square feet, a 9.5% decline in three years.

Million-dollar “shrinkflation” is most prevalent in cities like Phoenix, Austin, Los Angeles, and San Diego, where fewer new listings are creating tighter competition for smaller and more expensive homes.

While the decline was less than 300 square feet for the nation as a whole, other markets such as Phoenix saw the median size of its million-dollar homes drop more than 1,000 square feet, from 4,049 square feet in 2019 to 2,933 this past quarter. Nashville, which, like Phoenix, experienced an especially hot pandemic housing market, saw the typical million-dollar home drop from 4,200 square feet to 3,181. There were only two metros where the size of a million dollar home increased – Minneapolis and St. Louis. While the spatial gains in Minneapolis are minimal at only 36 square feet, St. Louis’ median million-dollar home gained 406 square feet, about a room and a half.

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