How Far $200,000 Goes in Square Feet

All real estate is local, and a new study by real estate site Property Shark shows just how much buyers can get for $200,000. The site measured the cost per square foot in the biggest U.S. markets.

The city where $200,000 stretches the furthest in terms of square footage is Cleveland. Homebuyers there can purchase 3,769 square feet of space. Close behind are El Paso and San Antonio, Texas, where buyers with $200,000 can get between 3,334 and 3,249 square feet of space, respectively, The New York Times reports. On the other end of the spectrum, Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston, the range of space that $200,000 buys is between 126 and 371 square feet, respectively.

Some of the areas encompassed entire cities, while others were geographically smaller markets like Manhattan and Brooklyn. (Of the 50 markets Property Shark reviewed, 33 had pricing data comprehensive enough to include.) It was no big surprise that Manhattan topped the list, with $200,000 (the approximate U.S. national median home price) buying 126 square feet of space — less than half of what you might get for the same amount in San Francisco. But some of the other places that made the top and bottom 10 were less predictable.

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